Off
we went on Sunday (after church….Ha!) with the aim of getting to Van Horn TX in
about 7 hours. It was going to be a long
day….. but little did we know just how long.
Everything
was going fine until about half way through the trip when the generator stopped
working and, of course, the A/C stopped dead.
We managed to find a gas station with extremely poor signage and bought
oil for the genny. Only after Nui
overfilled the reservoir did she figure out that lack of oil wasn’t the
problem. The poor generator simply
overheated from running the A/C for five hours.
(Note to self: get it fixed.) So we would alternate between opening the
windows (which caused the dog house to blow off), running the generator and the
A/C, and wearing cold, wet towels on our heads and bodies.
Did
we mention that we don’t like El Paso.
Last year, the coach threw a spark plug and we had to spend 2 days and
lots of money in El Paso before we could hit the road again.
This
time, we were just on the outskirts of town when we found out that the geniuses that run the road
work crews decided to shut down the only interstate highway that runs through
town. We sat in a line-up for an hour
and a half while 5 lines of traffic filtered down to one and then exited the
highway. That would have been fine,
except that from then on, we were on our own.
There were only one or two signs that indicated where the detour route
was and there was no indication of where the construction finally ended so we
could get back on the highway. We spent over 2 hours in bumper to bumper traffic, slowly winding through El Paso. We were extremely grateful that a car full of
young women stopped beside us and offered to guide us back to the interstate. We followed these El Paso Angels and managed
to get back on the road at around 6 p.m.
Make
that 6:00 p.m. our time. We still had 2.5
hours of travel ahead and figured we would make it while it was still light
out. We hadn’t factored in that we had
actually passed through not one, but two, time zones and it was actually 8:00
p.m. Central time. Ignorance is bliss, but we did wonder why it
gets so dark so early in Texas.
Needless to say, we wound up having to drive in the dark (not a big fan). Of course, it wasn’t that simple – there were
mountains, there were curves, there were border patrol stops, there was a lot
of road work, including one on a hill, on a curve with grey concrete abutments
that Nui saw just in time to avoid a rather spectacular crash. Remember those 7 dirty words that George Carlin said you can never say on TV? Nui said them all.
We
made it to the Van Horn KOA at around 10:30 p.m., exhausted, hot, hungry,
frustrated and very thirsty. That’s when
Nui found out that her nice new little car is a worthless POS. You can’t run the brake buddy system without
having the car on. (Note to self: get it
fixed) This means that the battery is dead and we are basically hauling around
a large doorstop. Nice….thanks Chevy. Good planning….. let me introduce you to the road
crews in El Paso.
So
today we are still in Van Horn because a) we’re exhausted b) the time zone has
thrown us off our schedule and c) it is so windy that the coach is
rocking. We leave for Abilene
tomorrow. I wonder what time it is
there.
PS Having a wonderful time!
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