The countryside is endless and rolling in West Texas. And you start seeing real mountains. And the road gets steeper as you head toward El Paso.
We stayed in a couple of Walmart parking lots along the way as we progressed. When we got to Van Horn (on I-10) we noticed that the winds had REALLY picked up and that there was a lot of dust in the air. We ate lunch at a McDonald's and made a spur of the moment decision to go north to Carlsbad Caverns first before continuing on to El Paso. The first 60 miles of 2-lane road wasn't bad. But the worst was yet to come.
Normally, I do research on where we are going. I hadn't researched Carlsbad at all because it was quite a bit north of I-10 and had a high enough altitude that the nights might be too cold for us. But we traveled toward the caverns, mostly to avoid the HIGH HEADWINDS we were running into. Our gas economy was in the tank and the truck was struggling heading westbound on 10.
We were looking forward to seeing the caverns until we got to a place called "Guadalupe Pass."
And yes, we had to climb the mountains in the background of this picture. The first steep grade that we came to reminded me of a hill that we climbed with an old Greyhound bus in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. We only made that hill with the grace of God. And I was praying a lot about this hill, thinking about the trailer and the truck. We were down in 1st gear and the tach said 5,000 rpm and we were moving about 15 miles per hour. We stopped at a pull-out to "rest" the transmission. After a few minutes, the trans fluid temperature had cooled down and we headed back out on the road - up hill of course. We celebrated when we crested the top of the hill. There were many more hills to come before we started down the backside of the pass but none as bad as the first hill.
We got to the entrance of the Caverns, only to find out that there was no campground on the National Park site. But, there was a nice little campground near the entrance and the price was right. We paid for our site and set up camp.
The next day we did the 7-mile drive to the entrance of Carlsbad Caverns.
We went into the Visitor Center and purchased two tickets for the "self-tour" of the "Big Room." We took an elevator 750 feet down to the lunch area. That's right.. you can purchase lunch 750 feet below the surface. We followed the signs and started the tour of the Big Room.
'The "self-guided" tour is fool proof. It is a very visible 1.5 mile path with guard rails on either side and it's a tour that we could take at our own pace. We saw some awesome sights. And my camera can't do it justice. Here's a small sample: of what we saw
Presenting pictures of Carlsbad Caverns is like presenting pictures of the Grand Canyon. They are nice BUT they can't do it justice.
We headed out from the caverns the next day back toward El Paso which meant we had to GO BACK OVER GUADALUPE PASS. God gave me peace about it and going back was easier than getting to the caverns in the first place. We chose to head straight to El Paso via a back road, rather than go back to Van Horn and take I-10. But it also meant no gas stations. We took a 26 mile detour just to fill up but we got rewarded. We paid $3.27 per gallon instead of the going rate on the interstate of $3.59.
We got to El Paso, got on I-10, looked left and saw Mexico, and headed west. Just before we got to New Mexico we saw signs along the freeway to pull over and go through a border patrol checkpoint. We waited patiently in line and answered the questions asked of us.. and put it all behind us as we motored into New Mexico - "the land of enchantment."
We saw our first real cowboy in New Mexico, spurs and all. Not in Texas - but in New Mexico. We also saw some very interesting rocks.
These are the "small rocks." The bigger ones by the freeway were as big as houses and cars.
Which brings me to Arizona. We decided to visit Tombstone Arizona - the OK Corral and everything that goes with it. We headed south off of I-10 at Benson, New Mexico for the 25 mile trip. It was another unplanned side-trip that worked out pretty well.
The old section of Tombstone is a couple of blocks off the main drag but it looks like an authentic wild west town. And it's all walk-able.
The downside is that there are only 3 main attractions in Tombstone: The OK Corral, the County Courthouse....
and the cemetery. Everything else is gift shops and eateries. For someone into western lore and looking for something to do, it could be an interesting place to visit.
Coming north out of Tombstone, we had to stop for another border patrol inspection.
This time they looked the trailer over, but were very respectful. We're glad they are on duty.
We stayed at a Walmart on the north side of Tucson last night along with a bunch of other RV'ers. This one was the most unique.
It just proves that if you have a desire to camp, you can do it, with almost anything. We have seen a few people walking with LARGE backpacks.
This morning we paid a visit to Harbor Freight to get a new electric trailer tongue jack to replace the one we had purchased January 3, 2012 in Lakeland, Florida. We walked out with a new one - no charge and no hassle. Thank you Harbor Freight. Our rig headed for I-10 again.
We made it through Phoenix and are now in another Walmart parking lot in Buckeye, Arizona. Rev. Paul Castle, our conference superintendent, pastored at one time at the Free Methodist Church in Buckeye. I don't know if we'll get to see it or not. We want to be in Quartzsite early tomorrow to pick out a camp site on BLM property (Bureau of Land Management) where we can camp free in the desert. It's also called "dry camping" or "boondocking." Thousands of campers do it every year and we're going to find out if we like it.
Until the next blog......
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