April 4 - 2018 Tucson, Arizona

The last 3 days we have been on a major move westward. Driving, driving and even more driving.

Monday, we drove 315 miles/ 500 km from San Antonio, Texas to Fort Stockton, Texas
Tuesday, we drove 290 miles/ 460 km from Fort Stockton, Texas to Las Cruses, New Mexico
Wednesday, we drove 350 miles/ 560 km from Las Cruses, NM to Tucson, Arizona with a little detour to Tombstone, Arizona

We stayed on I-10 all the way.
Not much happened aside from driving and stopping for the night, but we did pick up a lot of different impressions along the route. Very different.

The following is a mix of some of what we came across on the almost 1000 miles / ca. 1600 km long drive.



Roads blasted through rocky hills in west Texas

 

Oil wells (JJ wants one of these in the back yard)

The hills became flat plateaus in the west Texas wind.
And the landscape became dryer.



New Mexico was even dryer.

This is a dry river wash (udtørred flod).



The hills turned into rugged mountains.



We had to stop for a train. It had 115 cars and 4 engines.



 

We were warned about dust storms and rattle snakes.  

 

At one point, the mountains became huge rocks.



This huge rock looked like it was going to fall at any minute.

 

And then there were mountains again.

We were close to the Mexican boarder twice.
We thought for sure that they would search the camper,
but they looked at 2 old people and their Minnesota plates and waved us through :-)

We saw big cactuses.

 

A whole "forest" of cactus

 

We saw so much barren(ufrugtbart) land. No wonder that the ranches are huge.

I (JJ) talked to a neighbor when we stayed at Las Cruses. His grandfather had a ranch that was 10 000 acres
( ca 4000 hektar) and he thought that he had about 500 pieces of beef cattle (kødkvæg) on it.
That is 20 acres ( 8 hektar) a piece !!
The guy, by the way, was a welder (svejser) and had moved temporarily with a camper to Las Cruses.
He was on an eight month contract welding a 20 miles fence/wall  (23 feet (ca. 7 m) tall) at the Mexican border, filling a gap on the already existing fence.

 



When we crossed the border from Texas to New Mexico we saw big pens (folde) with cattle. It went on for over a mile and there must have been thousands and thousands of them. We thought it was some kind of marketplace. Found out later that they were milk farms.

On the whole trip we have been impressed with the rest stops along the interstates and have been meaning to comment on it.
We are not talking commercial stops (gas stations, restaurants etc.). They are nice too.
But the non-commercial, run by authorities (myndigheder). They are big, with lots of parking space, big spotless clean bathrooms, pretty buildings, covered picnic areas etc. etc. New Mexico was no exception.
(The ones we know from Europe can not even be compared to this standard. In Europe (Denmark included) we have been known to stop and then move on with unsolved business for sanitary reasons)

 

 

We are now staying at Justin’s Diamond J campground in Tucson. And again, we were positively surprised. At only $ 31.00 per night a large site for the camper. Full hookup and probably the best wi-fi we have had throughout the whole trip. Mountain view right behind the camper. And the weather is perfect (almost too hot): 90 F / 32 C, some clouds and a nice breeze.

 

This cactus in in our back yard. We estimate
that it is about 30 feet (10 meters)

 

Written by JJ and Mary