Day 20 - Deep into the Chihuahuan Desert

Van Horn - Quintessential bleak desert highway town

Having not made Van Horn yesterday, today was my shortest day's riding to date. A quick 35 miles deep into the very sparce ranching country of the Chihuahuan desert. After Arizona I didn't think it would get any more lonely, I was wrong. There really is no one living out in the sticks here. 

There's not a lot to say about the ride, it was along the I-10 frontage road with the freeway one side and the Union-Pacific railroad the other. With the wind tucked in behind me, and a long downhill into Van Horn I made good time, but the whole ride confirmed I am right to be holding here for a day.

With 74 miles of completely unsupported riding through the desert ahead of me from Van Horn, it would've been very dense to push on today. A mile out of Sierra Blanca I picked up a puncture from some sort of thorn that looked like a one inch nail. Repairs took well over 30 mins, as the tyres are still very stiff. Add to that the rather alarmist signs declaring "Extreme wildfire risk" and the fact I lost an hour crossing into CMT zone just West of Van Horn, and I would've been racing against the clock unsupported in the desert, not bright.

Full service drive thru banking

The puncture did have one upside, luckily it happened right by a petrol station and for the 40 odd mins I was there I got to see all of Sunday West Texas life go through; hungover students, truck loads of cowboys, complete with hats, jeans, boots, spurs....and a trailer full of very noisy cows, the county sheriff, state troopers (I don't understand the difference either), the border police, soldiers in uniform, mexicans, hicks, you name it. Given it was a fairly ropey little outfit, they were doing roaring business. 

The customers I found the most interesting were the minivan of what I assumed to be fundamentalist Mormons. This is just me guessing, but it looked like one chap, two wives, and 11 children. All the ladies/girls were dressed in the very old fashioned ankle length dresses plus socks, and head scarves you always see on the news. I'm not a million miles from Eldorado Texas, the Zion ranch and Warren Jeffs and his gang, so I guess it makes sense. They seemed like nice people, to be fair.

I'm laid up in rather bleak highway town of Van Horn. To give the town credit they're trying to make it friendly, but a town of 2,500 odd stretched over 3 miles of desert with 15-20 motels is never going to ooze charm. It's certainly not designed to be explored on foot and the 3 mile round trip to lunch, along dirt pavements in heat of the day, was thankfully worth it for the quality Mexican lunch. I was sat next to an old school Texan couple, complete with Stetson and jeans shirt for him and hairsprayed boofant hair and pearl set for him. Both were clearly deaf so I got to listen into their whole conversation, without straining.

Having lost an hour I don't need to leave till after 07:00 tomorrow to catch the dawn riding. I'm going to spend the rest of the evening checking the bike again and finding space in my bags for the 5 litres of water and trail food (aka M&Ms) I'm taking. After yesterday's little effort I'm taking no chances.

Route - Sierra Blanca - Van Horn

Breakfast - Two Bananas and a Powerade Zero - The budget motel didn't serve breakfast and there was precious little else I fancied from the Chevron petrol station

Lunch - Pecado Chicken - Chuy's Mexican, Van Horn. Decent grilled chicken and rice with tortilla. Solid little restaurant; sports memorabilia all over the wall, Basketball on the TV and Mexican food done well. Not worth a detour, but if you need lunch East of El Paso, sack off Wendy's and head here.

Snack - Strawberry Lemonade crush thing - McDonalds next to the motel. Wi-Fi is rubbish in the motel, so I'm using Maccers as my office, and needed to buy something.

Supper - Pass, not going to be big. Lunch was a big old feed and I didn't eat till 16:00ish.