You've got to get past El Paso to get out of Texas

We spend a quick night in Van Horn, Texas, don't even unhook our car, jump up the next morning and get ready to take on more of Texas, we only have a little more than 100 miles to go

But first we must get past El Paso, the sign says no trucks in the left lane for 25 miles, and we can see why, for 25 miles the city unfolds next to the freeway

El Paso is the largest U.S. city on the Mexican Border, and Juarez, is the largest Mexican city on the border, together they have over 2 million people in them

This is one of 5 boots places that I saw in El Paso, must be the place to get them

The border to Juarez is in the middle of downtown, Juarez is the most violent border town in Mexico, since last Friday 5 U.S. citizens had been killed there, the most ever

The is downtown El Paso, you can see the haze, look to your right and you will see a smoke stack spewing out something into the air

It just keeps going on for miles and miles, El Paso celebrates their Thanksgiving in April, that is when a group of people crossed the Rio Grande and had a Thanksgiving in 1598, 23 years before the pilgrims

More smoke stacks at the edge of town, didn't we take an Asarco smoke stake down in Tacoma because it was too toxic? I think they are tougher in Texas

Last thing we see as we leave Texas, the Texas star, I think it was all the billboards that we saw that didn't make us feel so welcome, the ones that said, "Welcome, Wintering Texans"

But here we are in New Mexico, they have free Wi Fi, free coffee, I feel Welcomed

Until I see the free Rattlesnakes

I don't feel so welcome now, what in the world am I doing here?

Gracie won't go on the rocks, it's just too unlady like for her

She wants to drag me in to rattlesnake country, but I am adamant, Gracie doesn't go for another 3 rest stops, no grass, she becomes a camel, Timmy however goes on the cactus, no problem, those girlie girl dogs are so high maintenance

I wonder if New Mexico was enchanted before or after Shirley McLaine came to live there?

First thing we have to do is go through the border patrol checkpoint, you know New Mexico has the smallest Mexico border but through political reasons managed to have the Border Patrol Training Facility put there, and not in Texas, where the majority of the border patrol are

They are not as serious as in Texas, ask us if we are citizens of the U.S. and that's it, no walk around with the dogs or anything

New Mexico looks a lot like Texas, but we only have less than 100 miles to go through  it

We are over 4800 feet right now, the mountains look like the Smokies here

The roads are bad and Gracie is impossible, Timmy tries to calm her down

I couldn't get any pictures of her diving under the steering wheel, as I was pulling her out

Just as we think we are going to have to lock Gracie up in one of the bathrooms, we reach Arizona and stop in Benson, not far from Tucson, we will be refreshed when we get to Yuma

We can't seem to find our way out of Texas

We follow Highway 83 up from Brownsville following the Rio Grande, it is 800 miles up to Highway 10, which will let us go west across the US, the towns are small and very Mexican, as the border to Mexico is the middle of the Rio Grande

Most of the time is desolate shrubs and cactus, then you would get a glimmer of a town in the horizon, this is Laredo in horizon

Laredo is much larger than we thought

We can get real Mexican Tacos, which is comforting as we are on the border, makes me wonder what is in those fake tacos I've been eating

We could get anything we wanted in Laredo, but it's too early in the afternoon and we have lots of miles to go, to get us out of Texas, we have to keep going, how did those covered wagons do it?

It is close to 100 degrees outside, and very humid, we have both the generator and the house air conditioner going and the chassis air, neither can keep up they are blowing warm air, our refrigerator is making a funny humming noise, it's having trouble too

We are still only a few hundred miles from the Gulf and it keeps this area very humid, can't imagine it in the summer when the temperatures are over 110, we are all panting now!

The automatic visor breaks and hangs down in front of Cindy, the bugs are smashing on to the windshield, and we are in the middle of no where, we could stay in the rest area, but decide against it, since all we see are border patrol, patroling around

We make it to Del Rio, never heard of it before, but it's big, really big, Laughlin Air Force Base is here, they train people to fly here, second largest employer is, The Border Patrol

It's got a dollar store so it's gotta be OK, life is good, if you have a dollar you can shop

But. better yet, it has a Wal Mart, I've got to get some stuff to fix the visor and clean up the windshield

Right out front they are featuring their hot peppers, and.......

Lard

Corn Meal

And Corn Husks, lots of tamales going on here

These are 28 cents each but I don't know what they are

Green prickly potatoes, maybe?

We get back on the road, we drove 400 miles in a day to Del Rio, and today we drove about 350, to Van Horn, it all pretty much looked like this, with no one on the road but us

We get stopped twice by the Border Patrol Check Points, one guard talks to us, while the other has his drug sniffing dog go all around our motor home and tow car, no problem

We finally see Highway 10 it goes from Florida to La, all along the bottom of the U.S., to us, it means better roads and more people around in case something goes wrong. We only have 120 miles to go to reach El Paso, the end of Texas

The Rio Grande Valley

As we are driving down through  Texas, to South Padre Island, 

everyone is asking us if we are headed to the "Valley", 

I didn't think we looked like "Valley girl's",

Cindy is  from the Livermore Valley and is truly a valley girl, 

but what they meant was, 
were we snowbirds, heading to the Rio Grande Valley to winter

Brownsville is the hub of the valley, 
and also the most southern point you can go to in the 

United States,
I thought Key West was they even have a sign saying it,
but no, it is here and this was the only Southmost sign I could find

The last battle of the Civil War was fought here, the Confederates used Brownsville to ship cotton to Europe, and they didn't get the news that Lee surrendered and were fighting a month afterward

You can't get to the port, but from the road you can see many shrimp boats, and freighters, Brownsville is right where the Gulf ends and Mexico and the United States come together at the Rio Grande

Railroad cars come out of the port, looks like a very busy port from the road

There are 3 border crossings into Mexico from the Rio Valley, this one is in down town Brownsville

 There are about 10 smaller cities making up the Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville being the largest, strip mall after strip mall, easily takes care of the over 500 RV parks in the area, but they also have this cute downtown area, right by the Mexican border, in fact most of the signs are in Spanish

We follow the Rio Grande River, the derogative term "wetback" came from the Mexicans swimming across the Rio, now days, at Brownsville there is so little water in the Rio that one could walk across it

As we followed the road we ran in to this sign and had to turn around, must be too close to the border

When we turned around we saw this fence, now why would anyone build a fence that tall, 18 feet tall, sunk in two feet of concrete, and steel mesh, but no gate, anyone could walk around it

As we followed the Rio we saw more of the fence, 2.4 billion dollars worth of fence, but I guess they never got around to getting the gates

After a few hours of driving up the Rio we came to the second border crossing, not much between the two, few houses lots of fields

I've heard that alot of our manufacturing plants are behind these borders in Mexico, Hotpoint, GM, and many more, but we didn't see any of that being Sunday and all

Thought this was funny, the first thing you see when you come in to the United States, 

Drive Friendly - The Texas Way

We decide to head back to South Padre Island, and drive through the north side of the Rio Valley, here is the first of the 500 or so RV parks, you don't see them all over the place, like in Yuma, because the area is so much bigger

Freddy Fender grew up in San Benito, who would have guessed it.

We get back home to our little bitty island, we are all tired, it's 95 degrees and very humid, maybe I can understand why there are no people here, it's hot!  We will be winding our way out of this valley, we are 800 miles a way from El Paso, where we hook into Highway 10 and start our way west, we will blog when we get a chance but it doesn't look like much is out there between here and there.