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.

Joys of Home Ownership

First task on the agenda is calling Frigidaire, the maker of my microwave, on the off chance that I can get somebody out to fix the microwave. They give me the numbers of two repair places. I call one and the number has been disconnected. I call the second and they no longer fix microwaves. Spend a half hour on the phone with Frigidaire just trying to get through the automated system to speak to an actual person. Bingo – got a live one. After much going around in circles with Ms. Customer Service, she says the earliest they can get anybody out to fix the microwave is on Thursday. I'm leaving town on Wednesday so that is a no go.

Then I run over to Camping World, my authorized Jayco dealer in El Paso. I am in luck, they can fit me into the schedule on Tuesday so I can get my steps fixed, my CO2 alert system fixed and an outlet that I recently found where you can't plug anything into because everything is out of alignment. All right!!! Things are looking up.

We hop into my car and head to Chamizal. Chamizal is a National Memorial along the U.S./Mexico border which commemorates the peaceful settlement of the Chamizal boundary dispute. Evidently, Mexico and the U.S.decided on a border based on the Rio Grande river. They jointly surveyed the border and everybody was happy. Of course nobody realized that the Rio Grande, being a river, will occasionally flood and change it's borders. So, all of a sudden, land that was in Mexico was part of the US and parts of the US became part of Mexico. It took about a hundred years for them to figure out how to peacefully make this border thing work. They built a concrete path for the river to follow and the river will wander no more. It was in the 1960s when this finally got resolved.

The memorial is actually a cultural center/theater, museum. We watched the customary movie, wandered the small museum and looked at some art. They had a whole wall of dolls . Each doll was dressed in native costume representing different areas of Mexico.

The art museum part of the memorial contained paintings by two local artists, Francisco Romero and Daniel Padillo,

Romero Painting:

Padilla Painting:

We were hungry so I asked Siri to find us the best Mexican Restaurant in El Paso. She came up with L & J Cafe. We drove over there and it is a dusty little restaurant sitting between a residential neighborhood and a cemetery. Went in and Siri was right – it was really really good. I have never tasted such light and fluffy corn chips. I think they put something in the dipping sauce to make it addicting, you just couldn't get enough of those chips. Each of us were extremely satisfied with the meal.

Home again for naps and several walks with Miko around the parking lot which we call home.

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