El Paso

    El Paso was our first stop in Texas.  Actually, we stayed in Anthony, Texas, at the Road Host RV Park.  Is used to be the KOA.

    There is a Camping World store right down the road, so, of course, we had to go shopping.  We bought a new Winegard  TV antenna.  Getting that set up took some time.  We also had a clothes hook in the back seat of our Chevy truck replaced.  The clothing rod kept falling off!

    Yesterday we visited the Centennial Museum and Gardens in town.  We expected the gardens would be a good place to walk.  That didn't turn out to be true.  They were only the few gardens surrounding the museum building.  We learned that the plants of the Chihuahua desert are quite similar to those in the Sonoran desert in Arizona.  

    The museum, however, was interesting.  We both enjoyed the "Tiny Tunnels, Big Connections" exhibit about ants.  

We learned that ants are close relatives of the wasp.  

These are photos of any colonies.  The top left shows ants building a nest in gel.  Below that we see honey pot ants hanging upside down in their nest.  The bottom right photos shows the queen ant on ant larvae.

 Some birds are called ant followers.  When large numbers of ants move from one place to another they can even be seen by birds flying above.  Those birds are known as ant followers.  They know that the insects fleeing from the marching ants are good food.  So they follow the ants and get a meal.  The scarlet tanager is one of those ant followers.

One section showed the geology of the area.

The oldest fossil found in the El Paso area is colenia frequens in a marble deposit 1 to 2 billion years old.

 These children's sandals are made from turtle flippers by the Seri people who lived along the northeast coast of the Gulf of California.

This is a feather skirt, made of untanned pelican skins by the Seri Indians.  They usually sewed together 6 hides for skirts for both men and women. This one was made about 1890.

We have all seen pictures or movies of early carts using cart wheels like this.  They were used in Mexico and the southwestern United States in the early 20th century.

While walking around outside the museum we saw what looked like an oriental building.  Why, here in El Paso?

We learned that the building was a gift to the people of the United States from the Kingdom of Bhutan.  In 2008 it was entrusted to the University of Texas in El Paso.

I think this beaded cat is stunning.  Read the description in the following photo.

I have heard stories about the Chinese laundries.  These photos show items found in downtown El Paso.  The Chinese were brought to the United States to work laying the Southern Pacific Railroad during the 1800s.  In 1881, when the line was finished some of those workers settled in El Paso.  The large bottles in the exhibit contained bluing used in the laundries. Numerous buttons were also found.

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A Somber Visit

Wednesday we visited the Holocaust Museum in El Paso, Texas. It was very thought provoking. But first, why is there a there a Holocaust museum in El Paso? After World War II, El Paso became home to nearly 100 Holocaust survivors, including Henry Kellen.  He established the museum.

The museum looks at pre-war Jewish life, the rise of Nazism, the escalation of terror and "The Final Solution" and resistance and rescue.  I gained new insight into the extent of restrictions faced by Jews in Germany, and details of mass killings--I knew about the gas chambers but wasn't aware of the trenches where Jews were shot. I knew a little about resistance to the Nazis in some countries but wasn't aware of the uprisings in Polish ghettos and some of the concentration camps.

These are propaganda headlines and magazine covers with anti-Jewish messages.

Doors of homes where Jews lived were often marked with the German word for Jew.

I didn't realize that the Nazis used the hair cut off Jews to fill mattresses.

Jews had to remove their shoes and clothes in the concentration camps.  These children's shoes were found in one of the camps.

This is the yellow Star of David that was worn by Henry Kellen before he escaped the Nazis in Germany.

These are actual shower heads from a Nazi concentration camp.  I always thought they sprayed out gas.  In truth, they were fake.  Pellets of rat poison were dropped from the ceiling.  When the pellets were exposed to air, they gave off poison gas.

This the front off one of the cremation ovens used in a concentration camp.

If you click on this image you can read about the massive extermination of Jews in European ghettos.

The Nazi guards used "Collective Responsibility" to control behavior in concentration camps.  Click on this photo to see the extent they went to in retaliation of the death of Nazi personnel.  It would have been a very hard decision to revolt or attempt escape under these policies.

For a long time people in the rest of Europe and in the US were blind to what was going on in Germany.  In Germany and the rest of the world, many who at least suspected what was happening chose to do nothing.  This quote we saw at the end of the tour of the museum really spoke to me.

If you are in El Paso, a visit to the Holocaust Museum is well worth your time.

The Trip Begins

We will be spending December in Texas and we began our travels Monday, driving from Gold Canyon to Willcox, Arizona. There are interesting sights along the way. These are the rock formations in Texas Canyon along I-10.

Today we drove from Willcox to Anthony, Texas, just west of El Paso.

We saw these mountains near Las Cruces, New Mexico.

This roadrunner statue was on a hill above the interstate.  The real roadrunners are one of the wonderful sights in Texas.

It is still fall down here, with trees turning yellow.

These mountains lined the route east of Las Cruces.

 These yucca plants were the tallest vegetation in Southeastern New Mexico.




Not far from Anthony, we passed a sign that read "Eat More Ice Cream, Drink More Milk." It wasn't long before we came to this dairy farm.

The wind picked up as we approached the El Paso area.  We could hardly see the mountains and realized there was a lot of dust in the air.  Then we passed a sign warning of dust storms for 15 miles.

We have a lot more to see and do between now and Christmas.

Pecans and Dairy

Driving east to and through El Paso, Texas, the first big impression is that the area grows lots of pecans. Just look at these lush orchards.



But there is even more emphasis on dairy cattle. There are miles of dairy farms along I-10 as you drive from the west side toward El Paso. I thought Wisconsin and California had the corner on the milk and cheese market, but maybe not. I'm not sure these photos will really show you the extent of the diary farms.







We also saw several trucks loaded with feed for the cows.



As we drove into town, we passed a very colorful outlet mall.



We think these houses are in Mexico, just to the south of I-10.



There is obviously a lot of oil refining in the El Paso area.



We continued east to the town of Balmorhea, TX, where we stopped at Saddle Mountain RV, a Passport America park right along I-10. The landscaping is very attractive, the electric hook-up good, and the Verizon internet signal very adequate.