John Wesley Hardin, Cezanne, Picasso and the Border Patrol

Up early to pack up everything and unhook the rig from my utilities. Today I get some of my maintenance issues solved. Drive over to Camping World, drop the RV off and walk back to the campground.

Forty five minutes later, Camping World calls and tells me that they can't fix anything. Well, they can fix everything, but they have to order parts and the parts will take two weeks to get here. What? Well, fine – how about since you have diagnosed the issues, figured out that everything I said that was broke is broke – how about you call ahead to the Camping World in Tucson (my next big city) and get them to order the parts. They they will be there when I get to Tucson. Oh no – we can't do that – they have to diagnose the problems themselves. It is just the way we roll. Urg. Ok – I will have to figure out when I'm going to get to Tucson and then sit around there for several weeks. That is ok, cause there is a lot to do in that area, but still. Urg.

Ok, picked up the rig, set up housekeeping again, started up the air conditioner so Miko wouldn't get too hot waiting for me to come back home and took off for the El Paso Museum of Art. I was excited about going there because they had two exhibits I wanted to see. Paul Cezanne and Pablo Picasso: Birth of Cubism and Renoir to Remington: Impressionism to the American West. Both exhibits sounded really interesting. When we got to the museum, it turns out the Renoir exhibit had just closed last week. Oh well, n to Cezanne and Picasso. It was hilarious – there was a small little room and there was ONE painting by Cezanne and ONE painting by Picasso. I guess I was expecting a little bit more.

Wandered through the rest of the museum. Each little section was painted a different color. This was the yellow room. The colors don't do it justice – it was a very very bright color. Oddly enough, although it was a little off putting in the beginning, it really did show off the art.

Lou had picked up a brochure about “things not to miss in El Paso”. One of the “things” was to go to Concordia Cemetery to see Boot Hill and the grave of John Wesley Hardin. I got excited about this – I mean Boot Hill is a famous place and John Wesley Hardin was also famous, I didn't quite know for what, but if Bob Dylan had written a song about him, he must be cool. 
 

We got to Concordia Cemetery, a dusty little place. As we go in, there is a lonely security guard there and he was very happy to be our tour guide. It turns out that most every cemetery is considered Boot Hill because all these cowboys throughout the Southwest died with their boots on, hence the name Boot Hill. 
 

He took us to John Wesley Hardin's grave which is behind bars. Evidently somebody at one time had stolen his grave marker, so they fenced him in. I also found out that the Dylan song took some liberties with Hardin's story, even to the point of changing his name slightly to John Wesley Harding.

Funny thing – the cemetery just happened to be across the street from the L & J Cafe where we ate yesterday. We were very bad tourists and instead of trying some place else to eat, decided to eat here one more time. I am here to report that it was just as good the second time around.

Next stop was the Border Patrol Museum. It is a privately funded museum which is all about the history of the Border Patrol. The Border Patrol was founded in the early 1900s for the specific purpose of keeping the Chinese out of the country. Who knew. There were some interesting exhibits – there was some boats that Cuban refugees had used – one was mostly tarps wrapped around wood. The other was two truck hoods welded together. Amazing to think about how badly those people needed to flee their country. There was sort of a funny movie talking about the history of the Border Patrol. I know they didn't mean it to be funny, but the narrator was like somebody who did those 'As Seen On TV' commercials but with a Dragnet type of delivery. 
 

Back home, spent most of the night trying to figure out where we are going tomorrow. During my walk with Miko, I did take a couple of pictures of the Franklin Mountains next to our RV park.