Texas to New Mexico

Thursday 19 May, to Las Cruces, New Mexico

OMG - the insurance bill for severe weather related claims for the five months of this year alone is over $3 billion for Texas alone!  Just as well they found oil here I guess.

Lots of bunnies sharing our camp, pretty tame and very cute!  The camp doesn’t have much green, but we do have Mexican style adobe and terracotta tile covered patios. Would have been nice to sit out there if the weather was only warmer.

Balmorhea State Park TX

This morning we woke to a cool, grey overcast day, just 12C.  We have a bit of a delay while we top up the fluids in the jacks as the warning light wouldn’t go off.  Eventually we are on the road again.  Head off along a two lane country road where we see little wild pigs on the side of the road and a real life Road Runner ran across in front of us (looks just like the cartoon), before joining the I10 west once again.  Within the hour the weather brightens substantially - yay sunshine!  We come across lots of different scenery today, from a small bit of green, to just brown arid desert and the Texas Mountains to Mexican Mesas.  I find it a fascinating landscape, you can imagine how hard the settlers must have found it and why would you settle here anyway, bugger all water and not much protection. Good for making cowboy movies maybe!

Can you see John Wayne?

We moved into a new time zone too, Texas Mountain time and gained an extra hour in our day. 

Drove across the border and got the photo of the “Welcome to New Mexico” sign.  A little disappointed though that the Welcome Centre was closed so we don’t have much info about this state except it’s nick name is the “Land of Enchantment”, the Road Runner is the national bird and John Denver hailed from here.

Into New Mexico we saw some kind of a cattle holding right alongside the interstate.  Thousands of cattle, all bunched together under huge weather protection structures.  No grass to eat, lotsa dust, poor things!  

Cattle

On the eastbound lanes there was an Inspection Station and all trucks and cars were banked up for miles as they filtered through.  We are only a few miles from the Mexican border so can only surmise that is the reason for the inspection.  Donald Trump would have a huge job on his hands to build his wall…

Stopped at El Paso to fuel the coach and the tummies.  Diesel is still very cost effective so far, at around $2.05/gallon.  At that rate we are up for about $140-150 to fill up which gets us nearly 500 miles.

El Paso's housing spreads out in the valley and reaches up into the foothills of the surrounding mountains. There seems to be a mix of poor and the opposite here but there is substantial investment in extending the motorway system.  El Paso is the gateway from Texas to New Mexico state and Mexico.  The two cities, El Paso TX and Ciudad Juarez which is a big Mexican city seem to be intertwined.  I am not sure how they handle the flow of people backwards and forwards across the border here and of course we don't see anything of the Mexican side.

We arrived at our camp, The Coachlight RV Park in Las Cruces around 4pm so it has been a big day and now tiime for a relax in the sun and a cold drink as for us it is already 5pm!  There is not much for us here so will only stay the one night and continue our New Mexico adventure tomorrow.

PS  Some of the roads we travelled were rough today so our kiwi ingenuity coat hanger fix got a good test and I can happily report it worked a treat!