YEAAAAAH….We Made Tucson Alright!

It was pitch dark and 6:30 am when we left Van Horn,TX heading towards El Paso. There had been a wind advisory for the area, so we thought we might escape it before it really started. Our strategy worked out as planned. The wind had just started as we reached El Paso and after we passed Deming it pretty much stopped blowing. Sunrise on the Mexican side Traffic was on the light side and we had a clear sky. An hour later we saw the first signs of dawn in the east. El Paso, the border town was just about waking up and for a while we got into the rush hour melee.    Here we could also see where all those bridge beams we saw yesterday would go. The city is just about to build a “Spaghetti” Intersection and those long concrete beams would just fit in. For our German readers: Es gibt Bayrisches Bier in Texas (There is Bavarian beer available in Texas)     Ci  Ciudad Juarez architecture                                    ……El Paso architecture   El Paso isn’t really all that big so pretty soon we were leaving the city towards Las Cruces, passing into “The Land of Enchantment”. Las Cruces marks the southern beginning of the I-25 while our good old I-10 is skirting Las Cruces altogether turning west towards Tucson. And that was the way we wanted to go. Crossing the “Big River” the “Rio Grande” or “Rio Bravo” as it is called in Mexico, we saw that the river bed was drier than ever before. Where is all the water that comes from the Rockies?  Look at the picture to the left. It’s not even a creek crossing the river bed. Only a few miles down from this point the “river” becomes the border line between Mexico and the U.S. I have a book, written by Author Laura Gilpin describing the Rio Grande in word and picture. The book was printed in 1949 and shows a full river bed with plenty of water all the way down to the Gulf. The book’s title is “The Rio Grande – River of Destiny”. We had the usual long climb up to Deming, but we marveled over the big blue sky, the wide open vistas with desert stretching as far as we could see. We will never go tired over this grand entry into the former Wild West. And to me it still looks pretty wild. Maybe that is just what makes us longing to return to the Desert South-West, the wilderness peeking our imagination. I still like to watch Western Movies and whenever I do, I think of our trips through the south-west.   We reached Lordsburg, then stopped for a coffee break at Texas Canyon. This is an area of Arizona I really enjoy. The views across valleys towards distant blue mountains are nothing but breathtaking.    We had planned an overnight stop at Casino De Sol in Tucson, but our GPS-lady had sent us 7 miles too far and I was too cheap to turn around. So we ended up at Wally Camp in Marana just west of Tucson. Great place to park though there isn’t really room for many rigs. We, however were lucky enough to catch a spot and it seems to be a quiet place. We could have made it to Holtville, but chose not to as we want to be able to stop in at Yuma for some more shopping.   Riding up to Texas Canyon Thanks for riding along!