El Paso Passage...

 

We left Las Cruces early this morning...

 We stopped to fuel up at the Flying J at Exit 0 in Texas.  Well, I stopped to fuel up the coach, Joan went to the drive up at the Mickey D's across the street and brought us breakfast.  We ate while rolling.  Not our usual style, but we are looking to get through El Paso early and make some miles today.

It was before 8:00 (on a Saturday) that we started the trek through El Paso.  It is a big city, right on the US/Mexico border, and the drivers here are insane.  Well, not all of them... but enough of them that it is uncomfortable pushing this rig through the melee.  This morning, however, was easy.  The traffic was light, and I only saw one person in a Jeep go from the far left lane across 4 lanes of traffic, cutting in front of me, to make it to an exit ramp.  In the past, we have seen way too much "lane hopping" and stupid driver tricks.

Once on the other side of El Paso, it is west Texas: miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles.  There is some greenery in the desert right now...

... and not much else.  About 80 miles in, you come to the west Texas mountains...

Traffic was light.  A lot of big truck traffic, way fewer RVs than I expected, and quite a few motorcycles... makes me miss getting out on mine.  Soon.

With us driving separate, I am Rufus's only person; on my lap...

On his pad on the co-pilot seat...

And napping...

And not much else to report.  We had originally planned to stop in the Fort Stockton area, but wind forecast and getting there around 1:00 pm urged us to press on.  At a quick lunch and fuel stop, we made a reservation for an RV park in Junction, TX; that will make it about a 500 mile day.

The winds went from a nice tailwind (got 10.53 miles per gallon on that portion) to a less than nice cross wind.  No idea what this tank will be, but according to the fuel gauge, certainly less.  In the Equinox, Joan gets close to 4 times better mileage than the motorhome.

In this part of Texas, there are some scrubby trees along the Interstate that do offer a small bit of a wind break from the ugly south winds (as we head east)...

We rolled into the RV park around 5:00... and then I got to spend almost another hour with the maintenance guy trying to get their cable at our site to work.  In the end, he ran a long cord from a site about 100 feet from ours.  Whatever - we have some only slightly snowy reception... better than nothing.

After messing with the cable, when I came inside, Joan told me that the neighbor (who is a nice guy) has been letting people use his house and dock again... and I guess they think that means that they can use ANY dock on the island, including ours.  We have enough video from our security cameras to make a feature film of the trespassers.  Yes, we let the neighbor know.  Yes, he seems appalled that his guests would do that.  Yes, we have had this conversation with him before.  No, nothing changes.  It is the reason we installed security cameras all around our place.  At least this time, they aren't doing anything destructive - just letting kids run on the dock (I let him know that HE is responsible if anyone gets hurt trespassing on our property) and adults use the dock as their "short cut" to get to the bridge (that they aren't supposed to fish from)... which means they are walking on our other neighbor's property, too.

Yeah, I know: "Get off my lawn ya damn kids"... I sound like a curmudgeon.  Just trying to protect myself from stupid people getting hurt.  Let's cut to just a bit of the video...

I miss the good ol' days when people respected each other's property.  Apparently, our neighbor talked to them.  Didn't help last time, because these people are too damn lazy to go to the street to get to where they can illegally fish.  In the grand scheme of things this is more annoying than anything else.  I guess we will have to put up locked gates on either side of our dock.  I see stupid people.

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I took Rufus for a walk around sunset.  He walked good, but wasn't in any kind of hurry to get back to the motorhome.  Me, on the other hand - I had this blog post to get done.  But, I took the Equinox to get it fueled so we can roll first thing in the morning, before calling it an evening.  This day got long... may have something to do with 2 time changes since we left Arizona.  Not often you get "jet lagged" with an RV.  ;-)