While it was warm watching the moon rise last night, this morning the temperature caught us off guard—a chilly 36 degrees. While standing in line as the office opened at 8AM (to get one of 70 daily permits to do a hike/walk at Hueco), there were several college kids that were bemoaning the fact that they only brought a sheet and a pillow to sleep with.
Judy peeking in at the art
After getting our permits we headed back for breakfast and to let the sun work its magic on the air. An hour later we headed for our hike to check out the pre-historic wall art. The first site was an easy walk and as our eyes searched them out, more became visible. The next site was higher in the rocks and we thought of our friends Rick and Candy as we headed up the rocks. They had recently finished a similar climb but had to contend with loose rocks and sand. Our hike was over solid rock with hand rails made of chains provided at particular spots—much easier for us! We were feeling quite old as several groups of rock climbers passed by with boulder climbing gear (basically a folded cushion to land on with water and munchies in the middle. We did hear a guy scream and thought the worst before hearing him lament “I’d almost made it before the finger joint blew out on me!” Ah youth…
Close up of some art
After returning back to ground zero, we cleaned up and headed to El Paso to ride the tram up the mountain to see 2 countries, 3 states, and a whole lotta other stuff. During the 4 minute ascent we helped placate a middle schooler who was afraid of heights. Judy was especially good in this (Harris simply said he could always walk down the 2.5 hour trail).
The trail back down...
While at the top we heard about a must eat at Mexican food joint called Casita Queraos which had a little pig in front of the restaurant. Harris, a sucker for Mexican food, had tried once with Rick in Good Year (terrible), a second time with Rick and Candy at a place in Miami, TX (ok but nothing matching the excitement of the person recommending the place) hoped that perhaps the third time is the charm might take effect. So off we went, taking a scenic drive that showcased down town and many mansions (a la Mulholland Drive), and passing it because we were looking for it on the wrong side of the street. Wonderful, awesome, great to the last morsel food. The mole sauce was so good, we asked for a to-go for our leftover sauce for sandwiches. The waiter gave us a small cup and we gave him an extra good tip.
Some "new" art with the old...
On the way out of town we wanted to check out the fence that would help protect us from all those people wanting to take our jobs so we headed to the border (we would never be closer) and made sure we didn’t end up in any lane that would take us over to Mexico because neither of us brought our passports. We traveled along the border highway and saw what had to be the most boring job in the US; a guy in a truck parked under a shade awning looking down the fence along the border. The fence looked expensive and I flashed back to stories and pictures of the Berlin wall and Soviet Union borders of long ago.
The El Paso tram ride up
The last stop in El Paso was a mission that turned out to be closed, but we ran into two brothers and their wives who have made it a mission (pun intended) to see every mission from San Diego to San Francisco. Very nice and interesting folks. We got out around 4 PM and stopped in Van Horn around 7PM (lost an hour and we’re now on Central Time). Harris didn’t want to pay $30 for an RV place just for the night and Judy didn’t want to do a Walmart parking lot so we compromised with a stop in a Knightly Inn parking lot with Harris paying the owner $10 for the privilege. Since they have wi-fi, we’ll be posting the blog on the same day!
The Fence...
Distance traveled today 135 miles
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