Greetings from Texas

November 18, 2007
Anthony (El Paso), TX

We hit the road today, just about on schedule (we were about 10 minutes behind our planned 10:00 AM departure). It was a beautiful day for driving: no/low winds, reasonable temperatures, little traffic and no construction delays. We’ll pay for this, I’m sure! :-)

Our route took us from the RV Park east on AZ-74, south on I-17 right through Phoenix, and then east on I-10 for the rest of the day. Actually, we’ll continue to follow I-10 for a good chunk of tomorrow as well.

We stopped for fuel in Eloy, AZ, about 60 miles east of Phoenix, because I like to start out close to a full tank, and our last fill-up was in Kingman after we left Las Vegas in October. We entered and crossed southern New Mexico through the day, and made it to the NM-Texas border just after dark. We pulled into a Flying J truck stop at “exit zero” in Texas (it’s right on the border), adjusted all the clocks to Central Standard Time, fixed up a nice dinner of pasta (pre-made at home just for travel purposes), and had a nice Chianti. We're about as far west in Texas as possible and, speaking of borders, we're less than 15 miles from Mexico. Tomorrow, as we go through El Paso, we'll be able to see the Rio Grande (here, it's anything but) and Ciudad Juárez on the other side right from the Interstate.

We’ll call it an early night and get a quick start (after a dog walk and a coffee run) in the morning. We’ll follow I-10 to the western terminus of I-20 and then head toward Dallas. We’ll stop just short of “the big D” tomorrow night, and try to beat the traffic around the city before dawn on Tuesday. We’re on target to get to Alabama early Wednesday afternoon.