Out West Adventure: Part 1--Crossing Texas, New Mexico and Arizona

January 28-30: (Monday) I had to get up to visit the bathroom at 7:00 this morning so Marv got up too and started the coffee. Therefore, we had an even earlier start than anticipated. By 8:30 we had eaten yogurt and bread with peanut butter and closed up the camper, needing only to dump the gray water before we hit the road. Going up I37 to San Antonio we got over 18mpg! San Antonio is at 700ft. altitude. Taking I10 west from there our mileage dropped to just over 15 as we rose to 3000ft. There is a whole lot of nothin’ west of San Antonio but there was little traffic and we listened to 2 disks of Jill Connor Browne’s Sweet Potato Queen’s American Thighs, and one disk of David McCullough’s 1776, both read by the authors. We also heard almost all of Earl Robinson’s last “Sports Talk” streamed live from WKAR on my phone, all the while wondering why he was taking his sudden retirement. Time passed fairly easily. We made very few stops only pausing to eat, to stretch our legs, and to fill the tank before we hit the stretch where we knew from last time there would be few gas stations. We saw gas for as much as $3.49 so were happy to pay $3.09 and $3.19 instead. Along the way we saw the miles and miles of wind turbines we remembered from that last trip. Sometimes they co-exist with active oil wells, which is an interesting mix.  Marv was very happy to make it all the way to Balmorhea, where we got snowed on in 2010. Today it was as warm as the low eighties as we drove along and was still in the sixties when we got to Balmorhea. There were only a handful of other campers there and the office was closed since it was after 6:00. After setting up without unhitching (we know we’ll only be here one night), we walked over to the Cienaga (Spanish for pond) and then to the spring-fed pool but it had closed at sundown so we couldn’t get in to it to feel the warm water. We’ll probably stop tomorrow on our way out. We had a late dinner of salad and the leftover Dirty Rice then journaled and watched our first “Northern Exposure” of the trip on the computer before going to bed.

Mesas in Texas

I10 in Western Texas

Wind Turbines

The Eastern sky at sunset at Balmorhea

(Tuesday) It got down to about 47° overnight with occasional strong gusts of wind but they weren’t consistent. Once the sun rose, the wind began to really howl. Marv made oatmeal while I took at quick shower. (And I do mean quick. The showers at Balmorhea are very draughty and they have one big button to push for 8 seconds of warm water. This makes it extremely difficult to wash thick, curly hair.) No sooner were we on the road than we started getting some light drizzle, which soon mixed with snow, and then turned into whiteout snow squalls. We were headed directly into 50mph gusts, the temperature dropped below freezing, and we were climbing eventually to 4700ft. so our mileage was a miserable 10.2 mpg for a while. Luckily there was very little traffic so we just kept plugging along. By El Paso the snow had stopped and the temperature was in the upper thirties but the wind continued to howl and visibility was nearly as low as in the snow, but this time it was a yellowish fog of sand and dirt obscuring everything. There were tumbleweeds blowing furiously across the road all along and we narrowly avoided one nearly 4 feet across. We got off for gas and lunch and happened to be right at a Sam’s Club so we got gas for $2.92, a few groceries, and a piece of pizza before getting back on the road. We had thought we’d go back to City of Rocks in New Mexico before stopping for the night. But conditions there looked even worse with the temperature at 30° and dropping to 22° overnight. Instead we opted for getting out of the wind and low mileage at Las Cruces, NM for a night in an RV park. We set-up quickly and didn’t even hook-up the water. We had put water in the tank, thinking we would be camping without electricity or water at City of Rocks. We wiled away the rest of the afternoon with email and some internet searching, enjoyed BLT wraps for supper, and headed to a local cinema to watch Lincoln. On the way back we bought a pint of ice cream to eat back at the camper after we took a walk around the large Sunset RV Park in the beautiful moonlight and fierce wind.

Whiteout conditions in the snow east of El Paso

Snow on the desert near El Paso

"Yellow out" conditions in the blowing sand and dirt west of El Paso

Sunset over the Black Mountains at Balmorhea
(This should be up with the other Balmorhea pictures but it won't let me move it!)

(Wednesday) As forecast, the winds died overnight and the temperature dropped into the twenties. But we stayed cozy with a wool blanket, an electric blanket, and a quilt bedspread. The movie the night before had gotten out too late for us to do some needed grocery shopping so we decided to take the time to get the oil changed in the truck and get groceries before leaving Las Cruces. We hadn’t made good use of our time there the day before and, as it turned out, we did no better today. We dropped off the truck for the Express Oil Change that was supposed to take fifteen minutes when they finished with the one car in front of us. So we walked down the road a couple of blocks to Dick’s to get some breakfast while they worked on the truck, thinking they’d call while we ate to say the truck was ready. Alas, no call. We walked back and waited about 10 minutes in the waiting room before Marv went up to see what the problem was. They said they were just finishing up. When we finally got the truck it had taken them an hour and ten minutes and cost over $40.00! Sheesh!! Oh well, it was taken care of. We went to a local grocery store to get a few items and returned to the camper, where we had a date to Skype with Analyn, who had requested talking with Boppa. After talking, making a picnic lunch, packing up the camper, and stopping for gas (at $2.99) we were finally on the road at 11:15, a good hour later than we had hoped. But today’s driving was as good as yesterday had been bad. Immediately west of Las Cruces we came upon several 15 mile long “zones” cautioning drivers of gusting winds and dust storms, with instructions to pull over and turn off the lights if caught in one. We could only imagine what we would have found had we not decided to stay the night in Las Cruces. The skies were crystal clear, there wasn’t significant wind, the temperatures climbed to and stayed mostly in the high 40s and the air was dry, dry, dry! We made good time across New Mexico and stopped at the first Rest Area in Arizona to eat our BLT wraps and stretch our legs before continuing on through the pass at 5000ft. where there are huge rocks scattered everywhere and then dropped about 1500ft to get off I10 and go south, eventually arriving at Patagonia Lake State Park, only about 10 miles from the Mexican border, just north of Nogales. Our mileage, which had ended up yesterday at 12.4, improved today to end at 15.4mpg. Patagonia Lake is a dammed creek forming a reservoir which attracts many birds and has even more this year because of the cold temperatures which are driving the birds even farther south than usual. Because the ranger had just shut down her computer we were told to take a spot and hope that it wasn’t reserved for the weekend. Moving would be a pain but this appears to be a beautiful park that we’re eager to explore over the next few days.

(Top 2) Rocks along I10 in eastern Arizona

(Bottom 2) Sunset at Patagonia Lake State Park