Richmond to Phoenix, Day 12, Part 1 El Paso to Tucson

January 8, 2011

Destination:  Davis Monthan Air Force Base, FamCamp

Depart El Paso, TX     7:10 a.m.  44 deg.

Arrive Tucson, AZ        2:00 p.m.  54 deg.

Miles traveled today:     316 mi.     7 hours

Miles remaining to Phoenix:  140 miles

Miles from Richmond:  2,460

On the road to Tucson!

These events and related text aren't in perfect order, as I compiled them after the fact.

We've been on the road 20 minutes
and we've just crossed the border into New Mexico.

I missed the sign because it caught us off guard---
and I was working on this blog.  Sigh!

We got an early start, the hitch behaved beautifully, and the weather is lovely, again!  The mountains are well-defined in the early morning light, lots of defining shadows.  We're driving west, so our shadow is in front of us.  Hopefully, we won't be driving into the low western sun.

The sky is blue, so I'm wearing blue socks; no desert colors.

These are sparkly socks, trust me.

You can see if you look in the lower right corner!

First rest stop will be at a Flying J in Las Cruces, only about 20 more miles.  There's another one about 160 miles from El Paso.  I have fanny fatigue already, so not sure where we'll stop!

We're passing the stockyards, which I HATE, and it sure stinks here.  I don't look up; it upsets me too much to see them.  But I haven't stopped eating beef altogether yet.  Ugh, I looked up---dead coyote in the road.  No roadrunners yet.

At Las Cruces we always look for the landmark Roadrunner,

New Mexico's state bird.

We're 146 miles from the NM/AZ Border, and it's 8:00 am.  We have 279 miles to go to Tucson. Many miles before we ---sleep?  It's very bright now, too bright for scenic pictures.

We're crossing the Rio Grande---it don't look very grand to me right now. 

 But there's our Roadrunner milestone here in Las Cruces.  We have lots of pictures of this guy, but I always take more.  Once when we were staying in Deming, the host at the RV Park refused a FedEx package for us, even though we had reservations for that very night and are members of that RV club, Escapees.

So we had to drive back to Deming the next day to get it, about 50 miles.  We had a really nice time, though. We found a wonderful Mexican restaurant, went into the historic section and took lots of pictures, and we're able to pull over and get some fairly good shots of the roadrunner. 

Border Patrol
It's 8:20 am and we just went through the Border Control checkpoint

At the border:  looking for personnel

Flat and dry here.  Lots of warning signs.

We showed some dust in an earlier post, but have seen worse.

From the New Mexico website
The State Bird of New Mexico

Wide open spaces here.  I love watching the trucks!  The only color is my socks!

Rest stop. it's 40 deg.  110 miles to the Arizona border.

9:45. Back on the road again after a wonderful hot breakfast at Denny's in Deming.  It didn't look so hot from the outside but the par king lot was packed, so we thought that was a good sign.  It WAS,!  The people were friendly and the food good!  Now it's only 82 miles to the border.  Well'll stop at Lordsburg for fuel first.  I'm taking pictures of trains again.  Just got a decent one.  Hard to get, so I take lots. We have sooooo many already from past trips.


Are we having fun yet?   Not getting bored???