Borderland

We are at a Walmart at the northern end of El Paso, Texas (map). This is a familiar stop for us, and we again walked across the street to Leo's restaurant last night for dinner. Unlike our last couple of visits, this time we are in the small lot in the rear, often filled with containers. It was much quieter and more pleasant than in the front of the store, although a flatbed did come by at 0730 to haul away one of the containers.

Crossing El Paso on I-10 is always a slog, with some of the worst traffic for hundreds of miles in any direction. We're glad to have gotten that out of the way yesterday, so we can have a more relaxing start today. We did stop at a Valero on the other end of town and put $800 worth of diesel in the tank. At $3.599 per gallon, the cheapest for miles, that was over 220 gallons, nearly filling the tank. Since fuel will only get more expensive as we head west, we'll try to stretch this tank as much as we can.

Today we will head west along the border on New Mexico 9. This is one of our favorite drives, far preferable to the alternative of remaining on I-10. Since this route will bring us within a 30 mile detour of Sierra Vista, Arizona, and we are slightly ahead of schedule, we contacted our friends there to see if they were up for a visit. While Glen is off in Liberia at the moment, working with the International Red Cross, Julie is home and would welcome our company, so we'll be heading in that direction rather than swinging back up to I-10 near the state line.

Photo by dan taylor, used under a Creative Commons license.