Mountains ahead

We left Fort Stockton this morning without a specific destination for tonight. I thought I would drive as long as I was comfortable driving, stop when it was time.

What a surprise to find that someone had apparently snuck out of Fort Stockton to paint another underpass with a Texas scene.

After that, the terrain looked like my stereotype of Texas -- flat, dry, and barren. There were no hills and no trees. And certainly no water.

But there was a beautiful blue sky that seemed to take up almost all the space of the day.

And before long I saw this friendly little hill, a foreshadowing of more to come. I was eager to see mountains again, since it has been months now since I left Montana and passed through Wyoming and Colorado.

The next thing was, way off on the horizon, those faint blue-grey-purple images of mountains.

Which began to come more sharply into view as we travelled along.

We stopped at the side of the rode and had lunch, I had a cheese sandwich with a can of V8 juice, Chorro had a small bowl of lamb and brown rice nuggets, topped with a little of the leftover juices from the chicken I cooked in the crockpot yesterday. His lunch did seem more interesting than mine today.

We decided that we would just keep travelling, and about this point we reached 4500 feet, going over a pass I guess, and the mountains to the south were near and clear. At the same time, I came to a sign telling me that we had just crossed into Mountain Standard Time. It felt like home!

Except that these mountains are grey and brown. I haven't seen anything green since San Antonio and I was hoping for mountains with pine trees and maybe some green from watershed. But as far as I could tell, these mountains have not seen water, perhaps ever!

Then we were flanked by the Rio Grande again, which also meant we were flanked by the border patrol. I was going the wrong direction this time for the inspection stops, I guess people coming across the border illegally would want to head away from El Paso, not toward it. Hmm. Do they know something about El Paso that I don't?

Now, close to El Paso, these mountains that I see are in Mexico.

Then, after a nicely uneventful day of driving, we reached El Paso in time to settle in and show you a quick shot of El Paso at dusk, during the long-awaited doggy walk of the day.

Tomorrow is a new day.