Day 16 – Chasing Arda

A good day but very different. I was up and at ‘em at 6:15 AM to eat breakfast, do my homemaker’s duties, get the trailer ready to travel, and most important of all, dump the grey and black water tanks… good for another week or so!

I decided since I had 2 ½ days to catch Arda in Kerrville, I would take the same route she took from Silver City through Emory Pass. Well I am very happy I did for two reasons: 1) it was beautiful… pictures don’t do it justice and 2) Arda was right (can you imagine that) about the height of the pass and the proof is in the picture on the right. Arda put a height of 8828’ on her web site but the map shows a height of 8228’, which I had used on my blog. Well my blog is now changed. Since she gave me the map, does the right cancel the wrong (after all it was her map)?

I wasn’t as lucky as Arda coming down from Emory Pass. I had a headwind all the way down and once I had descended about 3000’ it flattens out and I had to work really, really hard to keep the pedal to the metal to maintain my speed… boy am I tired!

El Paso made me realize why I dislike large cities… I hit the rush hour and it was stop and go with everyone cutting in and out of their lanes… must be mellowing (a euphemism for getting old).

I stopped by one of the many copper mines I saw along the way... there are a lot of old mines in Arizona where they have started to re-cycle the tailings because with new "leeching" processes and the cost of copper, they can get additional copper from the mines. It is amazing how deep the mines go into the ground...

Just past Ft Hancock TX, I saw at least 24 cop cars going east and west (no not all at once) on I10 within a distance of 20 miles. There were state police, local sheriffs, and border patrol so I am not sure if they were having a convention somewhere or just having fun catching speeders. The border patrol had also set up a checkpoint where all the vehicles had to drive through. The guy doing the checking was waving everyone through as fast as he could… go figure - so why bother!

Temperature = AM in Benson, AZ 43 and PM in Van Horn, TX 82.