Western Texas

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.