Trip out West

On January 6th, we left Plano and headed out West.  The first day we drove to Midland, TX. about 350 miles.  We got good gas mileage for about the first 250 miles (11.7).  Then we ran into winds that got stronger and stronger (between 25 and 30 MPG) and our mileage dropped to 10.2!
If you are not familiar with the Midland and Odessa (20 miles away), you will miss seeing oil well after oil well and all the supporting businesses and equipment required to find and pump oil.

The temperature dropped down to 27 degrees which was unexpected for us, but we dealt with it.
Anyway, the next day we drove to Deming, NM (406 miles - a long drive for us).  Along the way we saw several trains carrying containers.  Not an unusual sight but what was different was that in addition of engines at the beginning and one at the end, there were two in the middle!!

We did stop in El Paso at a Walmart to stock up on a few things.  When we arrived at our RV Park in Deming,

they mentioned that this was Taco Tuesday at the hotel next door and we were welcome to come.  So we got parked and had dinner with about 20 of the other campers in the park.  Good food and good conversation.
Deming's elevation is around 4,400 feet, and, as a result, the temperature dropped to 21 degrees at night so we put water in our fresh tank and didn't use the campground for water that night because our hose would have frozen and maybe split.  And it would not have coiled up for us to put away the next morning.  Fortunately, both mornings were bright and sunny and it didn't feel that cold.

We are now in Tucson, AZ for 3 nights.  Very nice park and a great site with no one behind us, just desert.  I think it might be the same site we were in last March when we were here.
We are here for 2 reasons - 1) the daughter of good friends of ours from church is here now.  Rebecca is a Lutheran Campus Pastor at the U of Arizona.  We are going to meet up with her on Saturday morning for breakfast before we head out for Mesa for 3 days.  We knew Rebecca when she was still high school in Plano and Judy and I would go to the youth gatherings and she was part of the group.
2)  We are also here to see Mikayla Pivec (Oregon State) play basketball against the U of AZ on Friday night.  If you are following our blog, you will know that we watched her and her team last year when they came here to play AZ and AZ State.  We will be watching OSU play AZ State on Sunday afternoon in Tempe.

That should catch you all up on our travels.  But we will be leaving Mesa on Tuesday and driving down to Why, AZ to meet up with some friends before going into Mexico on Wednesday (Puerto Penasco).  Our plans are to be there for about 6 weeks so I'll be updating the blog again after we get settled there.