Crossing from New Mexico into Texas, we immediately found ourselves in El Paso, a city of over half a million people. There was only one UU church, and it had less than a hundred members — one gets the feeling that these UUs are special, in their isolated outpost. Since we were there on a weekend, we went to their Sunday service (topic: Animal Rights; take-home point: Jeremy Bentham) where we met some friendly people and went with them to brunch at a Mexican restaurant.
The state of Texas is enormous. It's about 800 miles tall and 800 miles wide. For comparison, Minnesota is about 400 miles tall, so just think of how far it is to drive across Texas. Not many people live out in Western Texas. These are the wide open spaces, where the wind blows hard and we saw tumbleweed blowing across the road ahead of us. Some days, we'd drive miles and miles until we came to a little place with a gas station and a cafe, and if it had an RV park too, we rejoiced and stayed overnight.
Van Horn (pop. 2,000) has a lot going for it, located on Interstate 10, the main east-west highway for hundreds of miles. But all up and down the main street are vacant buildings and sites where buildings have been torn down. The place is withering away, part of the great migration from rural to urban.
We headed up to Pecos, just because it had a supermarket and because we liked the name. The name is shared by the river, made famous by Judge Roy Bean, "the law west of the Pecos." When the first railroad was put through Western Texas, outlaws made it difficult for the workers, and Bean was appointed judge to help civilize the territory. He was an uneducated bartender who held court sessions right in his barroom, and was famous for his drinking and thieving as well as his legal decisions.
From there we drove south through the part of Texas that actually has mountains, clear to the Mexican border. We stayed in the small town of Presidio, and although it's on the U.S. side of the border, you wouldn't know it. It exemplified what we'd observed in other border towns in other states — You don't have to actually go to Mexico to experience it, just visit a small border town on the U.S. side. The culture somehow leaks across the border — All the restaurants serve Mexican food, Spanish is heard more often than English, and if you leave the main street you find yourself on a dirt road, patrolled by a small skinny dog running loose.
The RV park in Presidio had an interesting tradition. Each afternoon at 4:00, fire crackers were set off and everyone headed to Happy Hour at The Lounge, a simple outdoor seating area. Beverages were bring-your-own and hors d'oeurves were pot luck. It was about the most interesting event in town.
From there, we headed southeast, bound for Big Bend National Park.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Arizona
Leaving California, we entered Arizona at Yuma, way down south on the border with Mexico. A local laughed, "It never rains in Yuma, it just sprinkles a little," but our first night there, two months worth of rain fell overnight. We were drenched by the downpour and buffeted with winds that rocked the RV. It was a tropical storm that came up from Mexico and continued northeast directly to Minnesota, where it provided the first big snowfall of the season.
Another night, in a state park, a burro wandered through our campground. A burro is also called a donkey or an ass, and has been a beast of burden for thousands of years. Burros living wild in the desert are descendents of pack animals used by prospectors and other early settlers.
North of Yuma, in Quartzsite, we paid to park on barren land where RVs formerly parked for free — the feds now require a permit to park there, on what is unimproved public land anyway. Snowbirds flock here by the thousands to enjoy the mild winter weather and the huge permanent flea markets, but we were too early for the high season and were just as happy to find the place comparatively empty.
Headed for Phoenix, but still many miles away, we noticed a huge white cloud rising into the sky. We drove toward it and found that it came from the Palo Verde nuclear power plant, the largest such facility in the country, supplying enough electricity for 4 million people. All the other nuclear power plants in the country are built on large rivers, lakes, or oceans, to supply them with their enormous need for cooling water. This plant, in the middle of a desert, is the only nuclear power plant in the country to cool its reactors by evaporating water. Each day it takes in 55 million gallons of water and turns it into steam, which is what we saw climbing into the sky. The facility is located only 40 miles from Phoenix, and only one mile from the nearest public school. One fervently hopes that no nuclear incident (remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl!) ever takes place here.
One day, while pumping gas into Cruisemaster, a fellow wandered over and introduced himself. "I see by your license plate you're from Minnesota," he said. Turned out he was from Burnsville and had moved to Arizona a couple of years earlier. He was unhappy with the move, complaining about lack of employment, and, of course, the heat in the summer.
By the time we reached Tucson, cold weather had arrived — frost on the ground! We hurried on, leaving to another time to visit Bisbee and the surrounding area in Southern Arizona.
New Mexico
Because the weather continued cold in New Mexico, we decided to postpone visits to the Carlsbad Caverns, Roswell, and White Sands, and instead headed directly south into Texas.
Another night, in a state park, a burro wandered through our campground. A burro is also called a donkey or an ass, and has been a beast of burden for thousands of years. Burros living wild in the desert are descendents of pack animals used by prospectors and other early settlers.
North of Yuma, in Quartzsite, we paid to park on barren land where RVs formerly parked for free — the feds now require a permit to park there, on what is unimproved public land anyway. Snowbirds flock here by the thousands to enjoy the mild winter weather and the huge permanent flea markets, but we were too early for the high season and were just as happy to find the place comparatively empty.
Headed for Phoenix, but still many miles away, we noticed a huge white cloud rising into the sky. We drove toward it and found that it came from the Palo Verde nuclear power plant, the largest such facility in the country, supplying enough electricity for 4 million people. All the other nuclear power plants in the country are built on large rivers, lakes, or oceans, to supply them with their enormous need for cooling water. This plant, in the middle of a desert, is the only nuclear power plant in the country to cool its reactors by evaporating water. Each day it takes in 55 million gallons of water and turns it into steam, which is what we saw climbing into the sky. The facility is located only 40 miles from Phoenix, and only one mile from the nearest public school. One fervently hopes that no nuclear incident (remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl!) ever takes place here.
One day, while pumping gas into Cruisemaster, a fellow wandered over and introduced himself. "I see by your license plate you're from Minnesota," he said. Turned out he was from Burnsville and had moved to Arizona a couple of years earlier. He was unhappy with the move, complaining about lack of employment, and, of course, the heat in the summer.
By the time we reached Tucson, cold weather had arrived — frost on the ground! We hurried on, leaving to another time to visit Bisbee and the surrounding area in Southern Arizona.
New Mexico
Because the weather continued cold in New Mexico, we decided to postpone visits to the Carlsbad Caverns, Roswell, and White Sands, and instead headed directly south into Texas.
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