Road Trip – Days Eight and Nine

Our drive to El Paso — slightly more than 500 miles — was the longest one-day segment of our trip. The “West Texas Desert” that we expected to be rough terrain most of the way to El Paso turned out to include both extensive hill country and mountains. Once I-10 turned north on the final run to El Paso along the Rio Grande valley, the land was more green.

We enjoyed a rest at a village-like Holiday Inn complex in El Paso that permitted us to avoid the car and instead to walk that evening and the next morning. Kathy asked the desk clerk which way was Mexico and she was advised that she could go either way on the adjacent main road to reach Mexico because El Paso is almost surrounded by Mexico. We attended Mass in a beautiful new church on the north side of El Paso that had both Mexican priests and largely Mexican or Mexican American parishoners. Many of the cars parked at our Holiday Inn had licenses from Mexican states or districts. The city’s economy and society appears well integrated with Mexico.

We entered New Mexico minutes after leaving El Paso and found more intense desert with more sand and sand storm warnings. We soon encountered mountains that continued to grow as we moved across both New Mexico and Arizona. Toward the end of New Mexico we found a self-serve car wash and recovered our car from a serious air attack by a flock of birds in San Antonio.

The temperatures have been over 100 degrees since at least El Paso and while we have enjoyed this evening in a small Arizona city — Casa Grande, referring to a large building constructed by Indians in the 14th Century — the temperature was 109 at 9 PM.

On to San Diego!

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