Aug 21 - Heading to El Paso

When we arrived in Van Horn last night, the mosquitoes were awful! After hooking up, we kept all windows and doors closed until we unhooked in the morning. It took a few hours to kill all the ones that came in with Rich and Bryan.

We headed out this morning for El Paso, Texas. The Wyler aerial tramway is here. It is a 4 minute gondola ride to the top of Ranger Peak in the Franklin Mountains. It travels one mile up the mountain. It was built in 1960 to build an NBC radio transmitter and service platform. I have to say that I was pretty nervous about dangling so high in the gondola from the cable, but the view was incredible!! We could see all of El Paso, part of New Mexico and Juarez Mexico!

El Paso is a really interesting place. The Mexican boarder is literally right on the other side of the highway, and as you drive around you can always see the border fence and the houses on the other side. There is a huge Mexican flag flying right on the border that you can see from just about everywhere in El Paso. It was lunchtime, and Bryan remembered seeing a place that was featured on the Food Network’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” show. He was pretty sure that the restaurant, “Chico’s Tacos” was in El Paso, so we hunted it down. Yay – found it! No kidding, they were the best! It was a little hole in the wall place, but the line extended out the door and never let up the whole time we were there. Good call Bryan!

We still had a long drive ahead so we set out for the Tucson area. This was a really crazy leg of our journey - we were in 3 different time zones in the same day! We left Texas, went through New Mexico and headed to Arizona! We decided to drive for a few hours and see if we should stay in Tucson, or try to make it to Mesa. We hit Tucson around dinner time, so we decided to eat there, then we would be refreshed enough to go on to Mesa. We checked the restaurant listings for the area, and found that there was a "Famous Dave's" Bar-b-q. We really had a great time at that restaurant in Colorado Springs, so we thought Bryan would enjoy it. He was not disappointed!

We then headed on to Mesa. Well....good bye interstate 10 and hello to the darkest, out in the middle of no where road. Even our headlights didn't help much. Then came the CRAZY lightning! The good thing was it helped to light the way, but I was hoping that the rain would not be next. Only 2 more hours, I think we can do it. Some showers here and there, but nothing too bad. Finally we began to see signs of life in the distance - yes, it was Apache Junction, our KOA for the night. As I walked up to the night registry, a huge scorpion ran right in front of me, then stopped with his tail held high and froze! There I stood, just a few inches away from him in my flip flops!!!!!!!! I called Bryan to come see, and I ran back for my camera :) You better believe I had the flashlight pointed to the ground while we hooked up :/