In the southwest corner of El Paso is a very special mountain--Mount Christo Rey. From the top you can see into New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. But the most important thing is the 30 foot sculpture of Christ on the cross at the summit.
Such a special mountain should be hiked on a regular basis. But its proximity to Mexico has given it a bad reputation for not being safe. Over and over we saw and heard that you shouldn't hike here alone. But we had great timing in being here during the Easter weekend, because several churches sponsored hikes to the top.
We couldn't make the Good Friday hike when the weather was beautiful, because we were waiting for the repairman at the motorhome. But we wouldn't miss the chance at a very unusual hike. So we braved the cold air and 35 mph winds on the day before Easter. The 2.5 mile trail to the top has all the stations of the cross, and the sponsoring church provided a leaflet with descriptions of what happened to Christ along the Via Delarosa at each station.
The picture below was our first glimpse of the cross at the top. You can see the terraces of switchbacks, and some of the hundreds of people that we hiked with that day.
You can see into Mexico at the 14th station. That big wall that divides the two countries was definitely imposing even from that height.
There was a bible reading at the top, as well as a prayer and singing. It was great to be at the top of Mount Christo Rey on the day before Easter!
On the way down, we could look over the United States valley. That large oval in the near valley is the horse race track (with the lake in the middle) where our motorhome is parked. Again, you can see the trails that zig-zag across the face of the mountain.
It's just sad that this hike can't be done any day of the year. The warnings we had heard about the safety of this hike certainly seem to be true. We have never seen a hike that necessitated a phone call to the police department.
You would assume that a 5 mile mountain hike would be enough exercise for the day, and that was certainly what we had planned. But we decided to go for a tram ride to the top of another mountain that day. The Wyler Aerial Tramway goes to the top of one of the tallest peaks in the Franklin Mountains, and it only runs on the weekend. Since this was the only weekend we would be in El Paso, we wanted to take a ride. The 35 mph wind had laid down, so we were sure the tram would be running. But when we arrived, we found that they were still waiting to start the tram. So for some unknown reason, we decided to hike up to the top. This is one of the most strenuous hikes in the Franklin Mountains. It isn't the length, it's the fact that the trail goes straight up. But there are great views. We are just on bench 1 (of 4 benches) and we could already see most of the city of El Paso.
We took another break half-way to the top for another photo opportunity. Actually, we took many breaks because this was a tough hike. 
It's the kind of hike that you have to register with the ranger at the bottom before you start; not because it is in a crime-ridden area, but because they will come looking for you if you don't make it back down. The ranger that registered us suggested that we try the hike up to the first bench. He obviously never considered that we would make it to the top. But we did make it to the top, and it was a great view. It's hard to see these tiny panorama shots, but it was quite a view of the city and the surrounding peaks.
After talking to the ranger, we assumed that they would be starting the tramway soon so we could ride it down. The winds were quite light and it was a pleasant evening. But the ranger in charge had determined that the winds were still too brisk. This is the tram that we really wanted to ride down that mountain.
So it was another long hike to the bottom. We had a lot of time on that hike to plan what we would do with all the money we saved from not having to buy those two tramway tickets! We were surprised to see a couple of the rangers coming up the path as we got down to bench 1. They had noticed that we were gone for an awfully long time for a couple of old retired people that obviously weren't going to make it past the first bench. So they went out looking for us before quitting time. They were really surprised to hear about our hike to the top!
Later that night, as we rested our weary hiking bones, we had to chuckle when we listened to the 10:00 news. It seems that a couple (ages 19 and 20) were lost on a trail on the Franklin Mountains and there was a search going on for them. If we had just hung out on the mountain a little later, we could have made the news too!
We love visiting the Texas State Parks, and we found another favorite for our list today! The address for Hueco (pronounced like Waco) Tanks is in El Paso. But since we are parked on the west side and it is on the far eastern side, it took us an hour to get there. We found that "hueco" means "hollows" and these depressions in the rock hold water and become tanks when it rains. It obviously hasn't rained in a while, because this hot-tub-size hueco was dry.
Hiking on top of the north mountain is like hiking on the moon. The terrain looks like something out of this world. There were rocks to scramble over and huecos to scramble into. It was a very fun hike with great views of other mountains all around. Rock climbers from all over the world come here because the surface of the hard igneous mountains has eroded into perfect hand and foot holds that make climbing on a natural surface so fun.
An added bonus to this climbing is that it can take you to some very well preserved pictographs that were painted on the interior of caves hundreds of years ago. Because the hollows held precious water in this desert, it has been a gathering place for people for many centuries. One group, the Jornada Mogollons, lived here in 1150, and they are famous for their well-preserved rock art. Many of their drawings include "masks" on faces. In fact there are more than 200 in the park. One group of masks can be found by scaling to the top of North Mountain and finding a duck-shaped rock.
Then we hiked from the duck towards the alligator-shaped rock, walked under his nose and straight up the mountain to a small cave entrance. You'll have to get on your belly or back to crawl in and out of the cave.
But once inside, you have some perfect mask pictographs that have been protected from the weather for almost 1000 years so they are very clear!
We found out that the reason they are so clear is that the painting was done with colored minerals that were ground into powder and then liquid was added to make a paint. This mineral-based paint soaked into the igneous mountains and became part of the stone. If it was a plant-based paint made from berries, etc., it would have washed off years ago. The pictures are quite clear, and there are over 2,000 different pictographs found throughout the park.
This cave was almost tall enough to stand up in, and had interesting shades and shadows.
We had a great time finding the hidden cave with some hiking buddies. They offered to take our picture right outside the cave. Have I mentioned lately that we are having a great time?
Because of the sensitivity of the area, only 70 people are allowed into this state park at a time. So reservations are always a good idea. While the North Mountain is open to those 70 people on a self-guided basis, the only way to go to the other mountains is with a guide. Again reservations are necessary. But while the word "guide" usually means expensive, here at Hueco State Park you can get a delightful and knowledgeable guide for the $2 guide fee. Our guide was a volunteer that has lived here in his motorhome for the last 7 winters. We liked him immediately when we found out that he was a retired pediatrician from Oklahoma. John explained the plants that we saw along our hike, including their medicinal uses. Here he is talking about those Engelmann cactuses that we all love!
He led us up and over rocks and into more mountain caves where more pictographs were found. He explained the pictures we were seeing and their ages. Some of these pictographs were a thousand years old.
John explained the difference between petroglyphs (that are carved into the stone) and pictographs (that are painted on the stone). At signature rock, we saw the rectangle framed petroglyph and the red painted horse pictograph together. There were also signatures from gold miners heading west to California in the 1840's. But sadly, there was also graffiti and signatures with fake dates that were added recently. That is why the park was formed and is so closely monitored now.
John showed us indentions in the cave floors that were used hundreds of years ago to grind seeds and grains into flour. Some of them were colored and were probably used to grind the minerals that became the paint for the pictographs.
After John led us over mountains and scrambled down into caves, one of the boys in our small group asked him how old he was. John said we would never guess, and he was right. He is 85, and attributes his good health to staying active. He won second place in the national senior pole vaulting championships when he was 72!
We spent 6 hours in the park, and had a great time hiking and climbing. We also found some beautiful cacti blooming, so Denisa coerced Mark into another picture since it matched his shirt today.
It was getting close to closing time, so we were heading back to the car after six hours of hiking for the day. Mark was in the lead when the rattles sounded. He jumped back to see this rattlesnake poised and ready to strike right in front of us.
Denisa ran half way back up the mountain before Mark got her stopped! We had to patiently wait as the western diamondback rattlesnake finally lost interest in us and crossed our path into the brush. He was about 4 feet long, and was too long to get a picture of his entire body in the clearing of the path.
Denisa was sure glad to get back into the safety of the car. She was also glad that the rattler showed up on the very end of the day, because that experience would have certainly stymied all the fun we had throughout the day before that. One last picture of the day, just because Denisa liked it so much, and she didn't want to end with that nasty snake picture!
Mark has started calling Denisa a tomato peddler, because she is offering free tomatoes to everyone she meets. But she found a bicycle trail that parallels the Rio Grande that we went on today. So she went from peddling to pedaling for the day.
This is a new cement path that is amazingly flat, and it was a beautiful morning to be on a bicycle. This picture was taken at the southern end of the trail when we are fresh and cool.
Since we were riding along the Rio Grande River, we were looking forward to the water views and birds along our trip. But this is the view of the mighty Rio Grande.
We talked to a local that rides this trail regularly, and he said they rarely have water in the river bed. So the river looks a little different than it does further south where we were kayaking on it a couple weeks ago! Denisa had thought about contacting some river outfitters to see about kayaking here, but I guess that was a silly idea.
Instead of seeing ducks and geese we saw more land-lover birds. We saw a hawk fly off with a rodent in his talons. We scared up a covey of quail, lots of dove and our favorite--the road runner. We saw 7 different road runners while we rode today. Those of you that are missing Mark and his sense of humor should know that Mark questioned Denisa's bird identification skills. When she pointed out another road runner, he pointed out that the bird was not on the road and was not running. He determined that it must be a "field jogger" instead.
We rode until the very end of the trail and dismounted for some rest time. Here we are cooling off in the "river."
We really didn't know how long the total length of trail was, and we knew we had to ride it all the way back. So Mark set his trax app on his phone to check the length as we headed back to the car. It is a nice ride when you see the mountains around you, but don't have to ride up and down those mountain slopes!
We were getting surprisingly tired on the return ride, and we were looking anxiously for the turn off to the car. Wouldn't you know that we missed it, and added another two miles to our ride by the time we figured that out? We were even more tired when we finally got to the car and checked the mileage app to see how far we had ridden. We were both surprised when it turned out we had gone 25 miles today!
Denisa had also planned a hike in the Franklin Mountains State Park, but we decided that we had enough hard-core exercise for the day! So we opted instead for a stroll around the campus of the University of Texas-El Paso. This is the home of the Sun Bowl Stadium, literally chiseled into the Mountains of El Paso.
We ended up getting some hard core exercise as we walked around the rolling hills of this campus. There are some interesting buildings, as they must straddle the valleys and the mountains of this area of the city. But one of the main reasons we came to campus was to walk through the Chihuahuan Desert Gardens behind the museum. We were hoping that things would be labeled well, so we could put names to all the flora we had been seeing on our hikes in the desert. The gardens needed a little TLC, but we found a few labels that will help us. We also found this blooming cactus that matched Denisa's outfit today.
The UTEP campus is undergoing some major remodeling right now, so it was hard to find our way around the day we were there. Once it is finished, this rolling hills campus will be really pretty!
We left Van Horn, Texas early and filled up with diesel at the local Chevron. We were pretty excited about the $2.59 per gallon price--the lowest we have ever found. We had heard that the winds in the desert can make driving Interstate 10 treacherous in a motorhome, so we left early to beat the afternoon winds. We are glad to report the winds never kicked up, and we had a smooth trip to our destination in El Paso. Two different RVers had recommended an interesting place to stay while we were visiting here. So we pulled into our new home alongside a horse race track.
This picture shows the entry gate of our parking lot, and you can also see one of the roller coasters of the amusement park across the street. At the very top of the mountain that is framed by the entry way is a 30 foot cross sculpture. That is Mount Christo Rey, and we hope to be hiking there before we leave.
Our main reason for coming to the city was to get several things fixed on the motorhome. The motor on our automatic steps quit on the day we took our driving tests over a month ago. Mark took apart our television antenna to make some temporary fixes, but it needed to be replaced. Our residential refrigerator has a recall that needs to be done. We have a warranty that should cover all of that, but it has to be done by a certified repairman that doesn't mind the extra paperwork of dealing with a warranty company. We found Double T RV Repair in El Paso and had made an appointment with them. They arrived Monday afternoon. So this was Denisa's view from her perch at the computer inside the motorhome.
The repairman was getting information about the parts that needed to be ordered, while the race crew was setting up for the Monday afternoon horse races. Our parking place was just ten yards from the race track, and Denisa snapped this picture just as the horses were off to the races.
After meeting some of our neighbors and giving away more tomatoes, we took advantage of the cooler temperatures and headed out on a hike in the Franklin Mountains State Park. Within the city limits of El Paso is the largest urban state park in the country. The city curls around the Franklin Mountains, so there is mountain hiking available from all sides of town. It was good to be hiking again! There were some wildflowers, but Denisa was more impressed with the cactus flowers today.
The blooms are so bright that they look like fake plastic flowers.
This cactus was especially interesting with its
pineapple-shaped blooms. It was also naturally decorated with pink streamers that
looked like grosgrain ribbon. Such an interesting cactus!
It was hard to believe that we were in the middle of the city when hiking in the mountains. When we finally got to the top, we could finally get a view of the metropolitan area around us.
But Denisa's favorite view of the day includes her favorite two things--Mark and flowers!
After the hike, we went back to our home at the race track, with the setting sun lighting up the mountains in our back yard.
So far, we sure like living in El Paso!
After having no cell phone service and very limited internet and no sewer hookups for several days, we needed to head to a full-service RV park for a few days. So we decided to drive part-way to our next destination, and landed in Van Horn, Texas for a while.
As soon as we arrive at a new place, Denisa starts checking with the chamber of commerce or tourist office for fun things to do. We look for hiking and biking and kayaking possibilities, factory tours, museums, unusual places to eat, local festivals, ball games . . . I must say that Van Horn is one of the least interesting places we have landed since we retired. But this was a good thing, because we were really here to get our income taxes and our laundry done. We have been far too many fun places, and we were way behind on both of those projects!
We did check out the local museum. It is housed in an old building that had most recently been the Clark Hotel. It is a work in progress, but we got a personal tour and met an interesting resident curator there.
The other famous hotel in town is the "El Capitan." It is the sister to the hotel we had just toured in Marfa, and was designed by the same man in 1930.
The lobby looked very familiar to the Hotel Paisano. They must have had the same interior decorator--there were buffalo and long horn heads mounted at the Paisano, while there were moose and elk heads at the El Capitan.
The El Capitan had a restaurant, with a sample menu from the old coffee shop. It looks like any way you order it, a cup of coffee is going to cost five cents. But we thought it was interesting that it would cost an extra 5 cents if you wanted your coffee "Saucered and Blowed." The fine print on the menu also warns, "Please check your ticket. Our waitresses are not honest."
We did some bike riding around town for exercise, but with no public trails, we had to take a break from hiking to give our legs a rest. Those are the Van Horn Mountains in the background. Who knew that Texas had so many different mountain ranges?
We spent more time around the RV Park than usual, but we got to know the family that owned it. We especially enjoyed Teddy, the 75-year-old woman that ran the park. We gave away dozens of tomatoes and made new RV friends. We went to a nice Palm Sunday service at the local church. We got all that laundry finished, and we got our state and federal taxes filed. It wasn't exciting, but it was a very productive time in Van Horn. Even when you are living on a permanent vacation, you still have to be productive occasionally.
On the drive to Fort Davis, Texas, we couldn't help but notice two huge greenhouses. We did some research, and found that these were the largest hydroponic greenhouses in the world. They were growing tomatoes upside down in water. We also found they are very efficient and broke the world record for the amount of vegetables produced per acre. How interesting!
The sign out front said "Village Farms", so of course Denisa called them to see if they had tours available. No one ever answered the only telephone number she could find on the internet, but we did find their tomatoes in the local grocery store. So we decided we would just show up at their door to see if we could take a tour.
The very friendly gate keeper explained that they didn't do tours. When we asked if we could buy produce here, she gave us a pass into the packing plant to find out. This is a huge operation, and they were loading 18-wheeler trailers full of tomatoes. They don't often sell to individuals, but they would do it only on Monday or Friday.
So we showed up on Friday morning as we were leaving for our next destination. The smallest units they will sell is a whole box of tomatoes. They grow 4 different varieties--Roma, grape, villagio marzano, and compari. We had never had campari tomatoes, but they looked delicious and they were the cheapest.
Denisa was so excited about her purchase of 25 pounds of tomatoes! They were just picked that morning, and they smelled so good! We don't buy many souvenirs, and this was the best $12 souvenir ever!
From the picture you can get an idea of the length of each green house, and they are stacked one after the other for a quarter of a mile. We found that they had 122 producing acres of greenhouses on this road! The only thing bigger than the green houses is the smile on Denisa's face!
As we drove away, her wheels started turning on the possibilities of what we could make with these tomatoes. She asked Mark about his favorite things made out of tomatoes. In his usual helpful way, he replied, "salsa and ketchup." It soon became apparent that Denisa might be on her own for using up these tomatoes.
As soon as we got set up in our next site in Van Horn, Texas, Denisa started sorting tomatoes. She was glad to see that they included various shades of ripeness.
The ripest obviously needed to be eaten first. She gave some to the manager of the Desert Willow RV park, and then immediately made a fresh batch of salsa before Mark even got the electricity hooked up to the motorhome. It was delicious!
Since then Denisa has made cucumber and tomato salad, fresh tomato spaghetti sauce, tossed salad (that looked more like tomato salad with a little lettuce added), sauted vegetables with tomatoes, BLTs, and fresh tomato soup. We are also enjoying fresh salsa every day.
But it was obvious that we could never eat 25 pounds of tomatoes, and they were certainly too tasty to waste. So Denisa gave them away to everyone she came in contact with. The phrase, "We have way too many tomatoes, would you like some?" showed up in every conversation. We found that in every RV that pulled into our park, there was at least one tomato lover. Denisa found that most people smile very big when you hand them half a dozen beautiful tomatoes for free. They went to people from all over the country (and Canada) that found their way into the Desert Willow RV Park during the three days we stayed there. Denisa was on a mission to give away tomatoes, and she was like the welcoming party when a new RV pulled into the park. She took them to the preacher on Sunday, and handed them to our RV repairman.
Because everyone seemed so happy to receive these tasty tomatoes, it has been easy to "dispose" of them. Denisa loves that unexpected smile that everyone gives when they receive something so good for nothing. Those tomatoes have blessed us over and over in many ways!
