The Trek To Texas

The Interstate 20 across Texas does not count as my favorite travel route in the US. But our need to get to the East Coast makes this the best alternative. It is going east all the time and it runs through an area with warmer weather than what we would find farther north. Another benefit of it is that we don't have to climb across a major mountain range. We have gone that route earlier and are kind of familiar with it.

So this morning we left Portal,AZ at our usual "we-are-ready-time", which is 7:45am what ever local time zone we are in.

As our own tradition commands it, we stopped at the "Roadrunner Rest Area" high above Las Cruces. I have shown and described the statue of the roadrunner in an earlier posting. It is fascinating to see what garbage can used for.

Then we rolled down to the city, which is the southern-most in the State of New Mexico, before Interstate 10 runs into Texas at El Paso.  

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El Paso never fails to make us gasp at its steady growth year over year. We call them "Spaghetti Highways" when their intersections are built like a crescendo of roads crossing each other at multiple levels of height.

Today's crossing of El Paso went well, even with that mind-boggling amount of Saturday morning traffic we had to deal with. After roughly 45minutes and some 55kms we reached the southern end of what looks like a never ending mass of industrial and residential areas.

So now we were back into the desert, endless plains with sand and typical desert vegetation. Fabens is a place containing of a few spread buildings and a truck stop. We took a lunch break there and topped our diesel.

At some point the I-10 gets us to the beginning of the I-20, but before that, it climbs high, passing Sierra Blanca, a small town surrounded by mountain tops and high desert. Reaching Van Horn, yet quite a bit higher in elevation, it plateaus, now approaching the intersection with the I-20.

We had phoned the Balmorhea State Park and were told they still had 2 sites available for a one-night-stay. Now, Balmorhea is a few miles down from the I-20 intersections and along I-10. But we had been there years ago and found their overnight rate affordable. Besides, we wanted a place where we could walk Dixie without wading in the usual garbage of a rest area. For the next morning departure we only have to follow Hwy 17 which eventually us up to the I-20.

Balmorhea State Park once was a quaint park with simple RV-sites in a natural setting. Over the last 2 years it has gone through "upgrades" which pretty much changed it from a natural setting into a place with paved roads, concrete pads and a city-like atmosphere. And while doing that the planners ignored that bigger rigs might want to come which would need slacker curves and room for wide turns. So not the ideal place for us and our 65ft total length. But someone with a Van or small class C would be fine here. Yet, I find sites are built too close to each other.

So today we drove 365miles (587km) and I was doing a lot better than on our first travel day.

This Was Not Easy

After this morning's breakfast I decided I wanted to give Dixie and myself one last desert walk, before our daily routine would disappear in eating miles along endless highways.

Shortly before we returned to the rig, Dixie stopped walking. I called her - she wasn't moving, she even laid down on the trail, just looking at me. Of course, she had realized that this walk had been the final walk and that she would have to get into the bus for a long boring day. You might think that I just imagine this, but I'm telling you, I know my dog. And she is incredibly smart.

It took quite a bit talking on my part to make her get up and do the last steps back into camp. To me this was really heartbreaking.

But it was nearly 8am when we rolled out of camp. 

This was the saddest farewell ever. And it is 20 years ago we visited this place the first time, so yes, it does feel like home.

We had a short stop at Gila Bend to check on our load and release more waste water, then back on the highway. Getting close to Tucson traffic became a nightmare. Will there ever be an end to increasing the size of that city. 4 lanes full of trucks and cars in both directions.

Picacho Peak

Stopped for lunch, after which I had to take a short nap on the couch. My headaches had started to bother me again.

Shortly before reaching Benson we got into a traffic jam several miles long. It turned out it was because of a construction site, where nobody was working. Yet they had blocked the left lane for at least 2 miles. Why are they hampering traffic for everybody if the construction site is empty?

At Benson we stopped for diesel.

Bea had then figured out that we could get to a rest area shortly before reaching the New Mexico border.

It was 7pm before we stopped driving at the San Simon rest area. 

We made 406 miles and have been on the road for 10hrs.

We are both super tired.

Dixie, finally fallen asleep

We Need To Leave And Go Home

The thought of going home early has been mentioned on and off over the last couple of weeks, but it took my headaches getting more intense and prevalent.

I have avoided talking about it earlier here, but since early January I have been plagued with ongoing steady headaches. Everybody gets a headache now and then but usually it is short-lived. Mine persisted and if it hadn't been for Ibuprofen we would have gone earlier yet.

Clearly, something is wrong and it needs to be evaluated - at home, where we have free healthcare.

Sooo today was the last day for us here at the Holtville Hot Springs. We hate to miss out on our last 6 weeks of winter stay, but it can't be helped.

This day had its own full agenda, as we needed to dump waste water, get fresh water and get a few things in Holtville.

Returning to camp, we hitched on the trailer and gathered all our stuff we had spread around the place, then stowing it away in the motorhome.

After lunch we loaded the car, always a job to be taken seriously, with all the tie-downs in the right places.

A light check turned out all lights working, so now we could relax.

Our neighbours, Annie and Rick came over for a last chat and say Good Bye. They had barely sat down when more people appeared. There was James from New Mexico, Jurgen, a wandering nomad from Germany, Roberta, Anne and Peter (another Peter) all from Alberta, Canada.

Talking about life in Camp and exchanging memories from past years is what camper friends do when they meet.

Besides of our friends, Dixie's friends also came: Bella, Emma and Mesa - all super active, and when they got the zoomies racing around like headless chickens, Dixie was watching all this from a secure spot between me and Anne. I wonder what she was thinking about this circus.

Needless to say we all laughed so hard watching the race.

What a great moment, this was.

I need to tell the story about Bella, Emma, and Mesa, which began 3 years ago. 

It was still early in the morning when I met James at the front dumpster. He was clearly not himself so I asked how he was doing. It turned out he hadn't been able to sleep all night. A dog which had turned up with him days earlier and which he had taken into his trailer, had thrown out a litter of 8 puppies during that night. Now James was all up in arms as the mother dog wouldn't let the puppies drink.

So James was ready to run to town to get formula for dogs. However, when he came back he found his 8 puppies happily sucking milk from their mother.

6 weeks later, James had turned into a nervous wreck, other campers, incl. us, took over watch hours for the puppies while James tried to catch some sleep. And then it was time to find people interested in adopting a puppy  or two. It wasn't difficult. The puppies were really cute  heartbreakers, so soon all puppies found their forever homes. So Bella is the mother, while Emma and Mesa are two of her kids. The others went to other homes, one named Pedro still lives in Holtville.

These Images from 2023

We enjoyed this impromptu gathering tremendously, it is good to have friends.

Every Year In February

 Yes, it was that time again for the one big event in the little California town of Holtville. The annual Carrot festival was luring us into town to watch the 79th carrot parade.

While I in previous years have posted images, this year I put together a short video with some of the most interesting views taken from the sidewalk.

For those of you who are not familiar with Holtville,CA, it is a town built on agriculture. It is part of the Imperial Valley which stands for a huge percentage of all vegetables produced in the US. And in order to get those veggies to your super market, thousands of people from Mexico and Central America are working in the fields. So if you are one of those who support the removal of those people from the US, you should think about the field workers toiling in all kind of whether to actually produce your food, while others are qualified healthcare employees or construction workers.