El Paso, Texas

About sixteen hours after leaving Spanish Fork after 1am Tuesday morning (is it still Tuesday?), we arrived in El Paso, Texas. Fortunately the drive was mostly flat because the driving conditions were sketchy at best. I awoke to this . . .

. . . in Jamestown, New Mexico after Victor had driven nine hours.

I then took the wheel for the next nine hours and an almost continuous snow. I saw three pickup trucks spin off the road in front of me, one police SUV after it had impacted a guard rail, another pickup truck on it's roof in the ditch, a greyhound bus sized RV on its side blocking two lanes of traffic, a little tiny car with it's trunk crushed up against another guard rail, and a few other more forgettable accidents.

As we arrived in Los Cruces, I thought the 35 mph cross-winds were going to knock us over. Strangely, they completely stopped as we crossed the border into Texas. Unfortunately, the snow didn't stop at the border.

I'm now sitting in the local Hooters restaurant attached to the Mall containing our JCPenney, at which I backed the truck up to the loading dock for a 4:30 AM unloading. It's now 11:23pm and the place has cleared out. And fortunately quieted down. Not where I would have preferred to go for dinner, but other than Red Lobster, Hooters is the only place within walking distance on this very cold and blizzardy night. (I was hoping for classic Tex-Mex.) The girls are cute but the outfits are stupid.

I asked the manager what the weather was like yesterday - 70 degrees. Just my luck that we'd arrive on the only blizzard night of the year. Victor is catching as much sleep as he can until he has to help unload at 4:30am. I'm sipping cheap tequila.

Back to Spanish Fork tomorrow. I'll drive through Monticello and Moab. Hopefully get some good photos.