Traveling to the Land of Enchantment

Here we are in The Land of Enchantment, yes New Mexico.  Proof is in the pictures below welcoming us to the state.  The past three days have been an exciting trip across Texas.  It is easy to see why someone came up with the slogan, “Texas - It's Like A Whole Other Country.”  We have seen in our various trips through the state the forests and lakes of eastern Texas, the plains around Dallas-Fort Worth and endless miles of emptiness in the Panhandle, the Hill Country of Fredericksburg and Austin, the Gulf Coast from Houston to South Padre and now the mountains in far west Texas and around El Paso.  Texas is truly a magnificent and HUGE state.

First welcome sign on road

Main Welcome Sign

During our sojourn from the Fort Worth area through El Paso yesterday, we saw many things to add to our ‘To Do’ list someday.  The Civil War Museum in Fort Worth, eat at the Smokestack Restaurant in Thurber and visit the ghost town, stop in at Mary’s Café in Strawn, Texas to partake of the ‘Best Chicken Fried Steak in Texas,’ visit the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains, go to highest point in Texas at Guadalupe Peak, visit Fort Stockton and the list continues to grow with many other interesting sights to see and experience.  For now our travels have taken us to sunny Las Cruces, New Mexico located just forty miles west of El Paso.

As I sit writing this, the view from our front window is spectacular.  The sun is rising over the mountains and is as warm and inviting as any sunrise I have ever seen.  The temp outside is around 38 degrees but it warms up during the day to the high 60s to low 70s.  This is something I can get real used to quickly.

We met David and Sophie at Lake Benbrook south of Fort Worth and took off on Wednesday after spending some time catching up and making plans.  We stopped the first night just outside of Big Spring at Whip-In RV Park.  We whipped out the next morning and the next night found us in Van Horn, Texas at the Van Horn RV Park.

Here we dined at Chuy’s Café on Broadway and sat right next to the John Madden Haul of Fame table.  John Madden (of NFL fame and no Haul is not misspelled as this is how the area is labeled) does not fly and as a result traveled by rail or coach across the U.S.  He stopped here and found the food good and the company even better so he (and his family) make it a regular stop whenever they pass through Van Horn, Texas.  As a result, the owners have a table that is permanently reserved for Mr. Madden which is strategically located right in front of the TV so he can watch whatever game is in progress during his meal.  He always orders #21 from the menu.  I considered the selection but it was too much to eat late in the evening so I chose a different entrée.

Before dining, the management of the RV Park told us about the sunset and the view of the mountains that was spectacular.  So our intrepid photographers waited for the sun to set and snap just the perfect shot.  The pictures below do not do justice for God’s scenery and can never reflect the glory He shows us all the time.  In waiting, we had a later than usual dinner.  We wanted to have a hot breakfast the next morning in the café at the park.  Three of us partook of a marvelous breakfast plus coffee, I will leave it to your imagination as to who skipped the 'early' (8 AM) morning repast.

We wondered why the sun went down so late (according to the clock) in Van Horn.  We found out the next morning as we took off.  We were only three miles from the change in time zones from Central to Mountain.  So we were located about as far west in the Central Time Zone as you could be accounting for the difference on the clock that we were accustomed to for a sunset.

This last day of travel through Texas showed us some interesting and delightful sights as the shadows on the mountains changed throughout the trip highlighting them in different ways.  We also learned interesting things along the way.  For example we passed an area called Sierra Blanca.  Now from my old Spanish class in high school I recognized ‘blanca’ as a female version of white.  But I did not know what ‘sierra’ meant or denoted so Bibi took to the internet and discovered it means saw or tool in Spanish.  So the saw implication means jagged peaks of the mountains coupled with white aptly describing what we saw at Sierra Blanca.

We arrived at Hacienda RV & Rally Resort.  It is very nice with paved streets and a super nice clubhouse.  This will be our home for the next week while we take a break from driving and before we move to Tucson for our next stay.  We will explore some of the area sights and report on our adventures in the next posting.