Day 71: El Paso to Anthony: A Real State to be In

March 16, 2014

Well that's it for Texas! I like the words of Doug McArthur. In case you don't download the song, he says in part:

Well now you’ve heard my story and I hope it made you grin

Cause the great state of Texas is a real state to be in

It’s big and wild and beautiful and everybody knows

If it was half as big again it would be Ontario!

And the wind comes up as the sun goes down And the Dust of Davy Crockett is blowing all around

And oh, a joke for the computer people out there. Doug says it's hard to write a computer joke into a song!

I was driving South from Houston with a truckload of bad code

I was almost ‘cross the border, Federales checked my load

They said “Doug , you know you’re overweight and painfully out of touch?”

I said” The Ones they might weigh something, but the Zeroes can’t weigh much”

And the wind comes up as the sun goes down And the Dust of Davy Crockett is blowing all around

The Interstate, I-10, runs through El Paso and swings around North, heading for Las Cruces. It's possible to follow this general route, though not on I-10. ACA shows the way, but everyone recommends the alternative Anthony Gap route. To do this one, you head straight north from El Paso, beside the Franklin Mountains, and then cut west on Highway 404 through a gap in the mountains, to arrive at the town of Anthony.

From where we had been dropped by yesterday's road angels, we were off the ACA Anthony Gap route. So we "bushwacked" north to join the route, on a street called Yarbrough. To our surprise, this street included a bike route and was completely safe. It passed through some tidy suburbs before depositing us on the ACA route beside the Fort Bliss army base. From there, we traversed flat roads through more suburbs.

In El Paso we thought this would be interesting to our German friends. But its just a hotdog joint.

A safe bicycle lane - not what we expected in El Paso

Wow, yield to bikes. Most places in Texas have never heard of bikes.

Dodie looks to the mountains we plan to sneak through

Fort Bliss - lots of military housing and vehicles

Photographing warning signs can make authorities nervous, for some reason

An unexpected surprise in these suburbs was a bakery. We have seen places labelled bakery before in the South, and been disappointed. But this one was called the Supreme. With a name like that, it had to be "good", at least. Clearly a lot of people shared that assessment, because inside was a lineup of customers. This was mainly a Mexican bakery, and the majority of the customers were of Hispanic background. We joined the lineup. When daughter Laurie had worked for a summer in Houston, it was the same story - the Mexican bakery is the place to go for any hope of quality product.

Ten assorted pieces plus a chocolate milk came to $7, and yes the stuff was good. We also spoke to people in the line, an extra bonus. One man had been to Canada, and had been impressed. He said he wanted to retire there, where he feel it is clean and green. Conversely, of course, many Canadians like the South, where it is warm and dry.

Lots of eager customers at Supreme Bakery

Chatting with people in line at the Supreme bakery

This is not exactly "native costume" but both ladies are wearing things that come from their culture.

Gearing up at the bakery for Easter business

Through the suburbs we got onto 404 and began the ascent through the Gap. As we had been told, the slope was very gentle. The Gap is not really a "pass" but more of a, yes, "gap" in the mountains that you can sneak through.

Just this side of the top we spied the familiar outline of approaching touring cyclists. It was Jake and Kara, who had started at San Francisco. Naturally we tried to exchange as much information as possible in a short space of time. Natural topics were the road ahead (each way), places to stay, which way to go, what equipment was working out well, where else we had cycled, etc. etc.

One little bit of conversation was about the goathead thorn. I mentioned our fairly fruitless search for these famous trouble makers, and gave the opinion that they were out of season and that maybe we had passed out of their territory now. Kara corrected this, saying they had had plenty of flats (mostly in their Bob trailer tires) in New Mexico and Arizona from goatheads.

After we had said goodbye, exchanging internet addresses, Dodie immediately came up with a goathead in her tire. No harm done, because the tire had resisted it. But Dodie now scored 3-0 for finding these. Later, Dodie found one in my tire. Now that's a difficult call, but the referee gave it to her, for 4-0.

Through the Gap, one can look down on the flood plain of the Rio Grande, with further mountains off in the distance to the West. We zoomed down, to hit I-10. The plan calls for crossing I-10 and heading north on the smaller hwy 28. But for now, we headed back down I-10 a mile or two to find a motel. The I-10 on-ramp said "no bicycles". Yeah, yeah, whatever!

There is camping in this area, but now we find we are usually choosing a motel nonetheless. At first we fought against needing a motel, because there was no camping. But now, we seem to be spoiled. We would never, ever, do this in Europe - so why here, and now?

Dodie submits that the Southern Tier, including the weather we found on it, has been way tougher than what we have done in Europe. So rather than it being a question of camping (non) availability here, it's more that she is more tired here.

Tomorrow we should have an easy cruise to Las Cruces, and into the arms of Warm Showers hosts Jenia and Jim. Jenia contacted us almost from the day we began the tour, and invited us to her place, the Pecan House. Two and a half months later, we are about to show up!

The local paper has a photo of the dry Rio Grande at the El Paso border crossing. Tomorrow we will see if it is also dry near Anthony

Made it out of Texas and into New Mexico!

Dodie's goathead. Ha ha, tire was too tough for it.

Going down from Anthony Gap to the Rio Grande flood plain.

On I-10 at the Texas border they have two of these presumably Texas stars. They look more like goathead thorns to us!

Where we were today and where we are going tomorrow. If you look at the map below you can see loop 375 anbd then a road leading to 404 through the Anthony Gap. That is how we went today. 404 then cross I-10 and the Rio Grande and reaches highway 28. 28 is a famous winery route, and leads to Las Cruces. That will be our roa for tomorrow.

Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 4,166 km (2,587 miles)

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