Days Inn Van Horn

... much there and the marker thats placed has seen better days. It riddled with bullets holes and covered with graffiti. Still kinda cool to see.

The rest of the day is riding hard!! I was about to give up after about 700 miles but found myself on a stretch of highway with nothing for about a 100 miles so I headed reaching my goal of Van Horn Texas against my will.

I finally made it to my hotel at 1045pm. Just about 15 hours of riding!

These are the same as those I emailed out yesterday.... plus with any luck, a few pix. Ft. Stockton, TX RV Park (actually quite nice, a small town out in the middle of nowhere 100 miles north of Big Bend Nat'l Park, 250 miles east of El Paso) May 9, 2009 My grandfather's birthday. He'd be about 133 or something like that. Texas, Texas and more Texas. We actually have really liked it. Greener than expected. More rolling in many places. Western ...

... on the map and felt that it would be a good place to stop as he like the name! As with all these decisions, it probably proved to be a safer choice as we heard on the news later in the evening that some of the problems in Mexico in respect of the problems with the drug gangs had overspilt into El Paso and that Mexican troops had been brought into Chihuahua to deal with the situation in Mexico. Once again - not something you wish to be amidst, especially as people who ...

Made it to Van Horn, TX. Not much here. I stopped to see the THING. See photo. It is an interesting tourist trap. I only cost $1 for admission. The exhibits are in open air tin barns. They are very dirty and could stand an ...

... but it wasn't in our natural reaction! We see a scorpion and run... Dan showed us his office at Phoenix and at 9am we started our trip...mile after mile after mile...for 550 miles, taking us through Arizona, New Mexico, along the Mexican frontier at El Paso and into Texas. We have also "lost" two hours as we have passed two time zones in total, so by the time we arrived at the motel it was already 10pm ...

... we had a second encounter with American wildlife as we drove on north from the observatory: a black bear. This one was less quick to run away. In fact, it would not be doing any more running. It had become road kill. We sped on past, not wishing to add pictures of dead animals to our photo collection. Who knows, perhaps we will meet a live one somewhere else on our travels - then we can convey our condolences for the loss of its cousin.

... Sunday after spending the night in Las Cruces (the City of Crosses) where we spent the night in a hotel and got cleaned up (refer to last entry as cleaning up was necessary after rustic camping.) You know Christians are pretty gracious but a foul odor from strangers could really test their friendliness, right? After church dad and I raced a storm that was heading right for us. We went 42 miles in 2.5 hours which is pretty good ...

... we were now in another time zone). Getting off the bus was like stepping into a blast furnace, and there was no respite from the heat even in the shade, where it can't have been far off 100 degrees. We had booked into the Travelodge in the city centre, and phoned them from the Greyhound station as there was a free shuttle bus service to take us to the hotel. While we were waiting, I chatted briefly to a girl from Dallas who was complaining about El Paso and wished she was ...

... to try to camp out here. It was a little scary since we parked at the campsite and we had to find the place for our tent. After using the flashlights and walking around we found a spot so we set up camp. The stars look beautiful at night here. They're big and bright....like the song. It's actually really nice out tonight with a nice breeze. Tomorrow we will hike the mountain. Well, that's all for now. Time for a beer and bed.

Up and going at 8:15, first stop at 11:12 at rest area east of Benson. I added a quart of oil. Next I got gas at The Thing Trading Post but I didn't see the Thing. On to the rest area near the New Mexico line and then stoped at the New Mexico weigh station to watch the sunset. Gas in El Paso and a couple more stops with a final stop for the day at ...