Leg 3 - Scorpions and Snakes and Heat, Oh My!

Tucson, AZ to El Paso, Texas

I had a wonderful morning.  I didn’t wake with the sunrise because I didn’t sleep well that night, either.  I woke up around 6:30 and made my coffee.  I sat outside in the Sonoran Desert early morning and gazed at the cactus and desert shrubs and mountains that ringed the desert.  It was truly beautiful.  It was about 75°, so I sat outside in just a t-shirt and shorts.  I love being able to do that.  It was so quiet.  I couldn’t hear vehicles or people, or anything besides the wildlife.  It was one of the most peaceful places I’ve been lately.  I could see living here.  Except for the heat.  Everyday.  I kept wondering what the natives had done to stay cool back in the day.  I would find out the answer to that later.

I decided to go for a hike around 8:30. I wanted to see the campsite I was trying to find the night before.  It was 87° when I set out at 8:30 a.m.  Yikes.  I expected to be out for an hour.  I was nervous, mostly because of rattlesnakes.  Maybe scorpions.  Maybe crazy people.  And definitely heat.  I never did find a campsite.  I suspect what I was looking for was a pull-out exactly like the one I ended up staying in.  And there was NO WAY my van would have made it any further up that road.  It was incredibly rutted and was no place for any vehicle except a dune buggy or motorcycles.  So me backing up and parking where I was ended up was a very smart thing to have done. 

Also – re: my thought about parking in the middle of the road for the night: at about 7:00 a.m. a pack of mountain bikers rode by my van on the rutted road.  They would have been very surprised and not happy to find a van parked in the middle of their mountain bike trail!

I finished my hike in about 50 minutes.  That was plenty.  The heat was really intense.

The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz

And the sky with no clouds

The heat was hot and the ground was dry

But the air was full of sound.

I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name

It felt good to be out of the rain

In the desert you can’t remember your name

‘Cause there aint no one for to give you no pain.

                                                America, Horse With No Name

Another treat for the day:  there was a place called Colossal Caves about 2 miles away from where I parked.  They gave tours and said the temperature in the caves was always about 70°.  I was totally down for that!  The tour lasted about an hour.  They said that so far they had mapped 39 miles of cave tunnels, and there was still more!  It had been a CCC project to put in walkways and handrails during the years 1934-1937.  Here is their website: HOME - Colossal Cave Mountain Park And that is when I found out what the natives had done to get out of the heat back in the day – they went underground to the caves.  Very smart.  I was thinking that no house above ground would ever be able to stay cool during the day without air conditioning.

After this tour I headed out on the next leg of my trip.  I wasn’t sure what my end goal was going to be for the day.  Like the day before, I realized that I don’t really want to park by 3:00 in the afternoon and just sit around in the heat, so I was going to see how far I could get.  I ended up in El Paso.  It is a large city, and I have no interest in staying in cities.  I took some time to do some research online, trying to find a place to sleep for the night.  It was frustrating and took a long time. 

Note to self:  don’t travel this way anymore.  It is too stressful. 

I finally found a place on a farm in a town called Fabans, just east of El Paso.  It ended up costing me $64 to park my van for the night.  No hookups.  I am not thrilled about that.  The place would hold 6 r.v.s, but I was the only one there.  When I arrived, I was pleasantly surprised.  It was in the middle of a pecan tree grove and another crop that I didn’t know what was.  There was a field in the back of a house.  They had listed the place as a wedding venue.  I contacted the host via hipcamp.com to say I was coming, and he had to come back from somewhere just so I could camp at his location.  He didn’t come around at all, just met me on the road in the front of the house and told me where to park.

I parked and settled in for the night. 

El Paso, Texas to Balmorhea, Texas

Wow – last night was brutal.

First of all, I drove another 8.5 hours yesterday.  As much as I don’t want to drive that much, the alternative would be to sit in my van in a desert town in 104° weather.  I opt for longer drive time in an air-conditioned van.

At about 1:00 a.m. I woke up and decided that the host was going to murder me in my sleep and steal everything.  Ohmygod, Reba!!!  WTF?!?!  But I couldn’t get it out of my head.  Took me forever to get back to sleep.  Then I woke up around 3:00 a.m. and my head was pounding.  At this point, I was convinced that the host had run a hose to the open window of my van and was pumping in a gas that was going to put me out so he could sneak in and slit my throat.  

I have watched too many psycho movies.  Note to self – no more scary movies.

In the morning, I found out why my stomach has been bothering me and why my head was pounding:  I have a cold.  Great.  I kept putting the early symptoms of a cold down to change in climate.  And maybe that is what brought it on.  Not sure.  But I feel like crap this morning.

This is another part of the “Adventure”.  I expected to be sick at some point, so here it is.  I just need to keep plugging away.

Wow – this heat is something else!  I don’t know how people live here. 

I had a short drive this day – about 3 hours to Balmorhea, TX.  I wanted to give myself an easy drive day, since the previous ones had been so long.  This may have been a mistake.  I arrived in Balmorhea around 2:00 in the afternoon.  Balmorhea is a natural hot spring that has been turned into a national park site.  You need to make reservations to go there, so I had booked a time.  My reservation wasn’t until 3:00, so when I tried to check in at 2:00, the ranger told me to come back at 3:00. Here is the website: Balmorhea State Park — Texas Parks & Wildlife Department

I went first to check out the free campsite that I had seen online.  It was on a lake, but like my previous night, there were no other r.v.s there.  I have decided that I don’t feel safe being alone out in the countryside.  I wish I did – they provide better nature locations.  I had seen a couple of places that had signs saying “RV parking” in town, so I headed back to check these out. 

I found one that had full hookups (yaay!).  It was $30 for the night.  I was fine paying that, because I really needed to dump my tanks, and would have had to pay $10 at the next truck stop I found anyway.  So at about 2:30 in the afternoon I spent about 20 minutes outdoors dumping my tanks.  When I got back in the van, the temperature gauge said 125°!  The rest of the day I didn’t feel good at all.  I was nauseous and could hardly move.  I think I may have been on the verge of heat exhaustion.

I went to the pools at 3:00.  I thought going to water was the best idea, given this heat.  I wasn’t even interested in swimming or getting in the pool.  I got in for a bit, up to my thighs.  I hate that I am no longer interested in swimming.  I used to love it so much.  Anyway, I gave up and went back to the van around 5:30.  All I wanted to do was lie under the AC.  I bought a couple bottles of Gatorade on the way back and drank one.  Ate some top ramen, as well.  I started to feel a little better, but I still only wanted to lie under the AC. 

The good news is - the AC in the van works.  But in this heat, it really only cooled down the bed area.  Couldn’t even get to the front.  Maybe I’m supposed to have the van on and use the front AC as well…?

I fell asleep with the AC running.  At some point in the night I started to get cold, so I turned the AC off.  Was able to get back to sleep fairly soon.

A very limited human interest story:   A man who was camped in the RV park offered to help me take out my trash when I was carrying a bag of trash and headed toward the trash bin.  I was afraid that would lead to chatting, so I said no thank you and he didn’t make any further overtures.