Are We Doing A Rain Dance?

Saturday April 17, 2010


Big Bend National Park to El Paso Tx  350 miles

Day 23

Starting week four, the first few weeks always go fast...then the 30 foot box starts to shrink a little every day....

Woke up to...surprise RAIN!  We figured if we went to the desert areas, it would stop.  Nah. 

Clouds were low as we left the park

So we left our tame (and still waiting for food) buzzards and headed across the park to the west side where we exited.  Just wish it had been sunny, because the desert landscape is so much more colorful.  We picked up Texas hwy 118, a very good road.  Jim didn't have to turn the steering wheel until we got to Alpine, eighty miles,  how's that for straight? 

We had lunch in the RV near Alpine in a thunderstorm, with lightning striking close by.  Later we watched the clouds turn black just to the east of us.  Fortunately, we didn't go the original way we planned, a more scenic way, by accident.  I was talking on the phone and Tom Tom told him to take US90.  If we'd gone the other way we'd have been in the mountains in severe storms, so it worked to our advantage, for once.

We passed through some interesting town including Marfa.  Hwy 90 goes directly through the town, we noted the architecture of the old buildings...there's the movie house, the feed and seed, the post office, bank and....WOW - the county courthouse!

That picture was obviously NOT taken today.

We continued on Hwy90 in the stormy weather.  At one point the sky was so black to the northeast that I phoned my son to check the weather on his computer.  I really didn't want to be surprised by anything funnel shaped dropping down in front of the RV and taking us to Oz! 

A few miles up the road we noticed a huge, strange blimp-like thing off in the distance.  Yup, that's exactly what it was....a huge blimp like thing, or a TARS (Tethered Aerostat Radar System)  It's all by itself in the middle of a cattle range.  It's a surveliene system...we're very close to the border, figure it out.

The sun was shinning by the time we got to El Paso.  Stopped on the eastern edge of town at a so-so park, but for an overnight it was okay.  A little difficulty getting settled, the first site we were sent to had someone's car parked square in the middle.  Went back to the office, get a new site, circle around again and there's already a motor home in that site.  Finally we just pulled into the next site...

Took a little ride to a grocery store and Home Depot.  I did not hear one word of English in either place. Gee, if I spent a few days in the stores around here I'd be speaking Spanish in no time!

Easy rotisserie chicken, salad, corn on the cob and fresh asparagus for dinner.  Got in touch with a lovely lady, who is a friend of mine from an Internet site that I've been a part of for many years.  She and her husband are meeting us for lunch.  Really looking forward to it.