New Year's Day - Traveling

We left Las Cruces and headed down IH-10 East towards El Paso and Texas. The morning was cold and our water lines were frozen but we had loaded up water the night before so the situation did not cause any concern.

It was a travel day - all day. I'm sorry to report that the only excitement was the brief stop in the US Border Patrol Inspection Station along IH-10 outside El Paso. We have some pictures of the process. Basically, they announce via signage that all lanes must exit into, and under, a huge sun shield / shed into 2 or 3 lanes of traffic where each vehicle is inspected by a group of officers. They have cameras monitoring you as you approach and I assume they select which are the target vehicles during the slow creep up to the stop sign and the uniformed officer. Some vehicles get a lot of questions and some get waved on. We got waved on with nary a word spoken. Dexter was hiding under a blanket in his bed and missed the whole thing.

From there we merged onto IH-20 near Van Horn, TX. We drove through Pecos (leaving the Mountains behind us), Odessa, Midland, and into Big Spring. Miles & miles of Texas. We are stopped at MM 191 in a Rest Area having dinner and posting this Blog entry. Most of the larger Texas Rest Areas have free Wi-Fi and this one is no exception. We'll grab a movie (DVD) after dinner and sleep until dawn. We have just 4.5 hours to go before home with one required fuel stop. I plan to visit the Flying J outside Abilene at Tye, TX. Flying J has special RV pumps separated fromthe cars and the commercial trucks. With their free RV Card, you get the cash price (even using a credit card) and a one cent per gallon discount. If we get started early (like 6:45am), we can be in Carrollton and home by Noon Saturday.

Of the photos, some show the last vestiges of the mountains as we left the El Paso area and moved onto a broad plateau. I also included a few shots of the US Border Patrol Inspection signs and of the process as we approached the checkpoint.