After wandering around Texas for almost three months, it is time to retire our tattered Texas Road map and move on to New Mexico to find His wonders in a new state.
So we traveled all of 100 miles down the road and landed close to Deming, Texas at Rock Hound State Park. We were welcomed by blue skies and fields of gold as we got closer to our destination.
We had meant for this to be a two night stay to catch up on laundry and explore the state park. But we really like our site here at the foothills of the Florida Mountains. One reason to stay at Rock Hound State Park is the very nice RV sites
that are far apart and pretty level.
They each have a covered picnic
table and cooker, and a great view. This is our view of the Florida Mountains from our motorhome.
We're a little confused by changing to a new state. We moved from Texas to New Mexico by the Florida Mountains. Sometimes, we don't know where we are. Most of the time we don't know what day of the week it is, and we have no idea what day of the month it might be. So we have a calendar on the refrigerator where we write down what we did and where we are. So when in doubt, we can always check the refrigerator to get our location and date. But wherever we are, we have lucked into more wildflowers in the desert, and Denisa is loving that !
We even lucked into the camp host spot that has full hook ups. It costs an extra $4 per night, but that means that we could wash clothes with reckless abandon. For the last 9 days in El Paso we were without sewer hookups, so we had to take very short showers and use paper plates. So it is nice to be able to cook and clean with a more liberal water policy.
Unlike most state and national parks, Rock Hound allows visitors to pick up rock souvenirs, and take home up to 15 pounds of rocks. Since we live in a motorhome with weight restrictions, we won't be taking any souvenirs with us. But the good news is that we seem to have some weight to spare. We don't have any scales to prove it, but with all this hiking our clothes are getting looser. Mark's belt is on the tightest hole, and he'll have to punch a new hole to avoid losing his britches on some hike in the future. No pictures to prove this point, but it seems a good time to sneak in another picture of the beautiful Mexican poppies at our state park home.
Our site is right next to the Botanical Garden trail, and there are some really nice cactus specimens in the park. This agave looks very healthy, and it is sending up the largest shoot that we have ever seen. It's almost as big around as our heads! We would love to stick around to see the magnificent bloom that will come on such a large stalk.
This is a type of "century plant" that grows for many years, then sends up a single bloom bract.
Here's a picture of another plant that is just starting to form that woody stem that will raise out of the center.
Because of all the energy needed to produce this single bloom, when it finishes blooming the plant itself will die. Here's another plant that has finished blooming. The dried stalk is like a tree trunk, and the beautiful agave plant that produced it will turn brown and die. Because we have never been around many of these desert plants, we are fascinated by their lives.
And of course we are still great fans of the famous Engelmann cactus. Here is one in the botanical garden at our state park with its name on the plaque.
And just in case you should think that Denisa is only taking pictures of plants, we'll throw in a lizard. Because he was posing so well, we have twenty different pictures before Mark convinced Denisa that the only reason the lizard was sitting so still was because he was planning how best to run up her leg. So she suddenly decided to move on and quit taking pictures.
We don't have any bird pictures, but we do have nest pictures. It seems that the birds around here don't have any trees to build homes in, so they make do with cacti instead. We found two different bird nests nestled amongst the spikes of two different cacti.
We are really enjoying our home base here at Rock Hound State Park, and we are finding lots of things to do in this area of southwest New Mexico.
One of the things we really like about our parking
place at the horse track is watching the trainers exercising the horses
each morning. We've learned a lot about the daily things that go on
around a horse track, and it has been a lot of fun having a front row
seat to it.
Some of the horses are merely trotting, but others are running full speed. All of them are beautiful animals!
We love this adventure of living in a motorhome because we like learning how people in other parts of this great country live. Since we were here 9 days, we got a good taste of what life in El Paso is like. First of all, we knew we were in for some changes when we first saw the local weather and they have a special section called the "wind-cast." I think spring is usually the windy season, and we got to experience spring in all its glory. The 7 day forecast shows winds from 30 to 40 mph every day! They tend to be lighter in the morning, and usually calm down some during the night. But we had one "wind event" that was hard to sleep through with those 40 mph winds all night. This doesn't even count the gusts that are harder and sudden and make you wonder if the motorhome will be swept away. We have also ushered in unseasonably warm temperatures that have neared record highs some of the days. So we aren't putting El Paso on our short list of places we would like to live permanently some day.
In the short term, we have learned to hike early in the day, and hunker down in the motorhome in the afternoon. El Paso boasts being "Sun City", but our morning hike with temperatures in the 60's was feeling hot by 10:00 with the sun beating down on us.
We also looked up the demographics of the area, and found that El Paso's population is 85% hispanic. We definitely feel in the minority, and there are lots of conversations going on that we can't translate.
We spent our first Easter on the road here in El Paso. It's always interesting looking for a church to attend. Mark found one that had good Easter activities and we found it also was in a beautiful location in the mountains when we arrived for church.
While living in the desert, we have taken lots of hikes, and have come to identify many of the desert plants. One of the most unusual that we really admire is the ocotillo. Some of them are huge!
Starting in Big Bend, we have been watching their buds. We have been impatiently waiting for them to burst into bloom for the last three weeks of our travels. We finally found one beginning to bloom on a hike yesterday!
We also found out that their lanky stalks sometimes put on tiny green leaves. We saw that for the first time on a hike here in El Paso.
I guess we can leave the desert now, as we finally saw those flashy blooms on those tall stalks. There was a shy hummingbird flitting around the blooms too. The flower structure is perfect for hummingbird food. The desert is going to be beautiful when thousands of ocotillo explode into red blooms!
All the motorhome repair parts finally came in, so the repairman was back this afternoon to do the installations. We are happy to be able to move on down the road, and pleased with the service from Double T Repair.
We found that the positive from this first repair scenario is that the warranty we purchased is good to work with and covered what the contract says it would. The negative is that we found for the first time it doesn't cover shipping cost of getting parts to your location. They certainly never mentioned that in the sales pitch. When our repair company tried to expedite the shipping so we wouldn't have to wait around any longer, it ended up costing us lots of money. We were horrified to find that 2 day air delivery of an antenna costs $132. We wouldn't have gone that route, but we live and learn.
But for now, we have steps that actually work, a new antenna, and it is time to head north into New Mexico for more adventures!
Because we have to be frugal travelers, we are always on the lookout for free attractions. Because we knew we would be in El Paso for a while waiting on parts for the motorhome, Denisa made a very long list of things to do that wouldn't cost us a cent. After 9 days in El Paso, we made quite a dent in that list.
One of our stops was downtown, where we must confess we had to pay for parking. So we fed the parking meter and set out for the Civic Center, which had been turned into an over-sized bowling alley. We came to find out that El Paso hosts the annual U.S.B.C. Open Championship. So they bring in 62 bowling lanes, and host tournaments on a daily basis from March through July. We were there during the week, and almost every lane was in use. Denisa talked to one of the women at the information desk, and got a glimpse of just how big this event is for the city of El Paso. They will have 50,000 bowlers come to El Paso from all 50 states trying to earn the top prize money of 5 million dollars. We had been seeing 6-foot-tall neon bowling pins in businesses all over town, and now that made sense to us.
We walked up and down some of the streets, and found out that there is much work being done here. We had hoped to see La Jacinta Plaza, but it was a mess of workers and construction today. So it should be in great shape for future travelers.
El Paso has many free museums, and we briefly visited two of them downtown. We checked out the new digi-wall at the Museum of History, and then spent more time at the El Paso Museum of Art. In most of our pre-retirement travels, we haven't taken the time to visit many art museums. But now we have the time to meander through the masterpieces of the 1200's and the modern sculptures. And we did just that! This is Mark in the plaza right outside the museum.
Denisa's favorite display was this sculpture of a woman, still wet from her ride on the tube. It was so life-like, and the texture of the water on her skin and the tube was perfect.
We enjoyed some magnificent paintings from the masters. We loved the details of some of the paintings. But of course Mark's favorite painting was neither magnificent or very detailed. The title was "Pig's Knuckles on a Pewter Plate" painted in 1630. You can tell that he is still as sophisticated as ever.
After we saw everything downtown, we headed next to Fort Bliss. We have seen billboards around town that say, "El Paso is Fort Bliss, and Fort Bliss is El Paso." Once we got on base, we found this army post is as big as a city. We headed for the museum on base.
This was a special place to visit because Denisa's Father did his Army basic training at Fort Bliss back in the 1950's. I'm sure that things have changed a bit since he was there 60 years ago. The museum focused on the role of the "Ironside" division, which are the tanks. We learned about their role in the wars over the years.
From a layman's point of view, we had no idea there were so many kinds of tanks. But from a citizen's point of view, we have many thanks for those service men and women that have spent time at Fort Bliss.
We saw a poster advertising the poppy festival at another free attraction, the Museum of Archaeology. We were excited to see the Mexican poppies in bloom outside, and toured the museum inside.
There were special outdoor exhibits, like a white wolf from a New Mexico shelter. You could also try your hand at shooting a bow or launching an atlatl (which we learned was a spear throwing apparatus). We were there during a visit of a hawk from the El Paso zoo.
The festival was on a Saturday, and we were surprised to see the crowds there. In fact, we had to park at the local junior college campus and got a free bus ride back to the museum grounds. Nearby is another free museum, the Border Patrol Museum.
Of course, we would also recommend an afternoon of horse racing as another free activity. Denisa struck up a conversation with a spectator who was a friend of one of the jockeys. The jockeys will follow the circuit all over the country, riding in several races each racing day. For trivia of the day, we found that jockeys change clothes for each race, as the owner of the horse will provide an outfit that matches the horse's blanket. I guess the racing silks are one-size-fits-all, because if you are too big for the jacket you are too big to be a jockey. We watched the races from the outside gallery, and were surprised at the number of families that were there together. There were children of all ages enjoying the day at the races.
Another free stop we had to make was Rosa's Cantina. Every time the guitars come out at an Engelman family gathering, someone will request a song made famous by Marty Robbins, "El Paso." We've been humming that song ever since we got into town.
Many times we've heard the line sung, "Out in the west Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl. Night time would find me at Rosa's Cantina, music would play and Felina would whirl." So it wasn't night time, and we never saw Felina, and the only music was coming from the juke box. But we have experienced Rosa's Cantina.
Actually, this wasn't a free stop since we also ate lunch there. It wasn't the best, nor the worst Mexican food we have eaten. The restaurant had several Marty Robbins albums on the wall.
Just in case any of you remember the last verse, "Out through the back door of Rosa's I ran, out where the horses were tied . . ." So we also took a picture of the back door. You guessed it--no horses were tied there the day we visited.
So we have been well entertained while we have been in El Paso, and we did it without spending much money. We went on free hikes all over the mountains that were too many to document. We also visited the gardens at UTEP, the rose gardens, and a bike ride that were mentioned in other blog entries. I'm guessing that we saw more sights of El Paso in our 9 days here than many locals see in 9 years.
You should know that Denisa has a weakness for flowers. You should also know that Mark usually lets her take way too many pictures of flowers. So we apologize right now for too many pictures of beautiful roses that will just slip in through out this post.
We never know where the day will take us, and we were getting a little low on exciting places to visit. Denisa had almost forgotten that she read about a rose garden in El Paso. She is still on Oklahoma time, where no roses will be blooming this early in the year.
But she noticed roses blooming in someone's yard, and we were off to the El Paso Municipal Rose garden. She was almost jumping out of the car before Mark got the car into park.
This is a beautiful garden, and the roses were at their peak.
We had barely gotten into the gate, when a group of ladies asked Denisa to take their picture among the roses. We have done this often in the last three months, and it is a great way to meet people. Denisa had them all framed up in their camera lens and took a couple pictures.
Then she noticed a photo bomber in the background. A guy with a big camera was right behind them, and he was clearly going to ruin the picture. So Denisa repositioned the ladies and took a different angle for them.
Right after they left, we saw that the photo bomber guy was heading our way. Then we noticed that he had press credentials on a lanyard around his neck.
He explained that he was from the El Paso Times. It was a slow news day, and he had heard that the roses were in bloom. He had also heard that it was packed on Easter Sunday.
When Denisa was taking the picture of the ladies, he was actually taking a picture for the newspaper. He needed our names for the caption. We talked for a while, and of course we took a picture of him for the blog.
We never know what will happen to us when we are out wandering His wonders!
It was a beautiful day, and Mark made himself comfortable in the shade while Denisa continued snapping more pictures of those roses!
The next morning, we almost forgot about the newspaper. When Denisa asked our friends at the security desk at the casino where she could buy a paper, they insisted on going to purchase one for us just so they could see the picture too.
There we were, in living color in the El Paso Times! If you can't read the caption, it says, "Denisa Engelman, top, takes a picture of a family amid thousands of roses during a Monday visit to the El Paso Municipal Rose Garden, 3418 Aurora. The All-American Rose Selection public garden is one of more than 100 certified gardens within the United States. There are more than 1,900 rosebushes, with 500 varieties, according to the city's website. Engelman and her husband, Mark, both of Oklahoma, are traveling through El Paso and visiting several sites for inclusion in her blog.
We couldn't have said it better!
