Unexpected

The week in El Paso went by quickly, and that’s a good thing. With about a million people (plus another 2.5 million in Juarez across the border) it’s a big, noisy, dirty city and not quite on par with most of the places we’ve been staying so far. The only reason we were in El Paso was so Lauren could be near an airport to make a quick trip up to Denver for a doctor’s appointment.

And about the only thing of interest that happened while in El Paso was that I got to experience my 2^nd ever substantial earthquake. While Lauren was up in Denver, I was woken up at 3:30am Wednesday morning to the 5^th wheel shaking back and forth. I was confused at first because it felt like the someone was running a very unbalanced load of laundry on the spin cycle but that didn’t make any sense. It ended up being a 5.3 magnitude quake with an epicenter about 200 mikes to the east and it was the largest earthquake in Texas in 123 years and the 4^th largest ever recorded in the state. Not exactly was I was expecting to have happen while in Texas for the week, but there you go.

On Saturday (yesterday) we left El Paso and traveled up north about 100 miles to a boondocking spot just outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico. We’re here for about a week to explore White Sands National Park and some of the museums in the area. Oh, but right before we got to our spot the check engine light came on (more unexpected things!) so after setting up camp I drove into town and had it checked out. It turned out to be a not very serious turbo boost issue and I made an appointment at the Ram dealership to get it fixed on Monday but in the meantime we’re fine to drive the truck as normal (that was a relief).

With the truck issue handled, we decided to make a quick trip into White Sands NP for a sunset hike in the dunes and we’re glad we did.

Some really beautiful and amazing scenery.

And the view of the small lake outside the front door at our boondocking spot isn’t too bad either.

I know we’ve said it before, but being in a boondocking spot out in the wilderness just feels so much better than even the best campgrounds or RV parks we’ve stayed at. It’s so peaceful and beautiful and relaxing.

This morning we’ll be heading back into White Sands NP for a more substantial hike over the dunes and then we’ll head into town this afternoon to check out the Museum of Space History. There are a couple other sights in the area we want to check out over the week we’re here and then next weekend we move to another boondocking spot down by Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns national parks for the two weeks surrounding Thanksgiving. It should be a great few weeks.