Land of Enchantment and Big Ole Texas

Thursday, October 3, 2008
We tried to put a lot of pavement under us today as we are officially headed home and are at a HI Express on I-10 east of El Paso. I do want to tell you more about New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment since we have had absolutely no internet service since yesterday outside of Santa Fe. This is probably one of the more diverse states as far as scenery is concerned that we have travelled through. There are mountains of red rock and pinion trees (bushy conifers), the concreted they use is adobe colored because the gravel is ground down from the local rock, therefore, the bridges are adobe colored and the rails are painted turquoise! This is the way it is done throughout the state, at least on Interstate 25, which is how we traveled throughout the state until we got to El Paso, where we hooked up with I-10. There is serious flooding in the deserts so there are “washes” or dry streambeds that carry the flood waters away and to the Rio Grande or the Rio Puerto rivers. There is a lot of gambling on the Indian reservations and horse racing is huge out here. Everybody has a horse or horses and live on ranches of thousands of acres. Another thing we noticed is how pristine everything is. There is no trash to speak of on the rights of way and we passed several teams of inmates cleaning up the side of the road. The air is dry and cool at night. Last night we sat outside until sunset and it was kinda like San Francisco in the summer of 2004; no screens on the windows, no bugs and no humidity and it dropped to the 40’s at sundown. We decided to treat ourselves and go out and have a fancy dinner. We have up until now just grabbed anything or ordered room service because we were so tired. But yesterday we did not go all the way to El Paso and stopped early enough to rest and get a good meal. John ordered Wild Boar! I got the all you can eat Rib-eye Steak dinner and we got some decent wine and had a wonderful time. While we were waiting for our table we sat in the bar and the bartender was so friendly and we talked with her the whole time we were waiting. She wanted to know all about our trip and we just had a lovely and wonderful evening and best of all, we were able to walk there and back from our hotel which was incredible since it was a cool night and the stars were out and brilliant. We got to El Paso today and were going to take a picture of the border but we were astounded at the nastiness of the area and at the number of people WALKING back over the border into Mexico. I was afraid to stop because the people we saw on foot didn’t look like anybody you would want to meet in a dark alley. I mean, rough looking folks. So we skedaddled on out of town and we are back in our comfort zone in a new, clean HI Express with internet service (Yippee). Tomorrow we are planning on making Abilene, TX and then on Saturday, we hope to make Shreveport, LA, Sunday hopefully Meridian, MS, Monday to Birmingham (sweet home Alabama!) and then to Bolingbroke on Tuesday. We will keep you apprised as we go along of course. We are just now ready to get back home as we have done and seen all or almost all we set out to do.