El Paso

And at last here I am
On the hill overlooking El Paso
I can see Rosa's cantina below – Marty Robbins

Travel Day again. Got up early, flushed tanks, filled my water tank, hooked up the car, walked the dog. All the little tasks one has to do to get back on the road. It was to be a short driving day – only two hours to get to the other side of El Paso.

We start off as usual, Davey and Lou leading the way. We had phone service the whole way and it was nice that we could communicate between the rigs as we travel down the road.

Davey had looked on Gas Buddy to find the cheapest diesel near El Paso. His GPS got a little confused and we ended up going around in circles. Turns out the station was attached to a Walmart. Picture this: two big rigs, pulling cars behind them traveling in a Walmart parking lot down one of the regular lanes where the cars park. Can we say tight squeeze? Thank goodness people were rather understanding and there was no damage down to any vehicles.

After Walmart, we passed around the southern side of El Paso, right next to “The Wall”. Two huge wire fences designed to keep nations apart. I am not going to get into the politics of this – I am sure I don't understand all that is involved especially since I am from Minnesota, far away from the Mexican border.

 

Davey wanted to stop at Lowes. Again, his GPS is going nuts, sending us in strange directions. I decided that I would just cut out and head directly to the campground which was north west of El Paso in the little town of Anthony.

My GPS decided to take me over the Franklin Mountains. Beautiful drive, but the poor RV had to really work to get up the mountain. At the top there was a sign saying 8% grade and it was a long way back down. You can tell it is a big grade when they have truck runoff lanes in case your vehicle gets out of control. I just put the RV into 3^rd gear and didn't have to touch the brakes once. Pretty proud of myself, I am.

Got to the campground, American RV Park/KOA and settled in. I was all set up, talked to Tony for quite a while before Lou and Davey showed up. I have no idea where they were wandering but they finally made it.

We are directly across the street from a Camping World. I'm going to get up early and go over there to see if they can take care of my microwave and steps. I don't hold out much hope since every RV place seems to be booked up weeks in advance and I'm only here for a couple of days. Besides that, the guy in the RV park office said to me that the service area at Camping World really sucks. We shall see.

** special thanks to Pete Lee for supplying the very cool postcard