Thunderstorms, Camp Chairs and Missiles! Oh My!

It's been a wild and wacky couple of weeks for us as we settle into life in the desert. First, we've FINALLY found and "moved into" an apartment on the west side of town. It will serve as our base for the next few months as we go on the house-hunt. Unfortunately, it's going to be another week and a half before any of the stuff the Army moved for us gets delivered to our apartment. Until then, we're "camping" with sleeping bags, an air mattress, plastic dishes and reclining camp chairs! Here are couple of pictures of our redneck set-up ... until all our furniture is delivered.

Check out our AWESOME TV base!

Hanging out in our new camp chairs

We also got to experience our first couple of thunderstorms, complete with big lightning strikes, really loud thunder and hail the size of Atomic Fireballs. Thankfully, there has been no flash-flooding yet, but we must be close to the 8 inches of average rainfall for the area! However, rain here is nothing like we're used to. It rains for about 5 minutes and then it's gorgeous and sunny!

Finally, the first week we were here, Cam was invited out to the missile range to watch a small demonstration of Patriot Missiles. Check out the video below that Cam shot and produced (with theme music and everything!) First, there's a shot of the Patriot Missile launching platform truck, the first missile shot, the second missile shot, and (if you look closely) the small puff of smoke showing that the target was hit.

"Down in the west Texas town of El Paso ..."

... We DID NOT fall in love with a Mexican girl, like the old Marty Robbins song. In fact, after our first full 24 hours here, we hardly fell even in "slightly like" with El Paso. It definitely a change of pace from the Pacific Northwest, with desert landscape and temperatures reaching the high 80s! At least it's a "dry" heat...

The area does have some interesting topography. As you can see in the photo below, the Franklin Mountains sit right in the middle of the landscape and city. El Paso has grown on the east and west sides and meet around the southern edge of the hills.

Another "interesting" feature of the area: Juárez, Mexico is thisssssss close. As you drive through on Interstate-10, the city of El Paso is on the north side of the freeway and Juárez is directly south. El Paso and Juárez comprise one of the largest binational metropolitan areas in the world with a combined population of 2.5 million people. This little tidbit, however, does not entice us to cross over the border into one of the hotbeds of the Mexican drug wars. In fact, all military personnel are forbidden from visiting the city.

We are still in the process of getting all of the Army paperwork in order and trying to find a place to live. We are currently holed up in the Ft. Bliss Inn (converted barracks) and are frantically searching for an apartment or duplex around town. Thankfully, the inn has air conditioning which will come in handy when the temperatures spike in the 100s later this week. Good thing I packed some 1000 spf sunscreen (O.K. only 75 spf) to protect our lily-white Washington skin.

Journey to El Paso

It's been a long couple of days on the road for us, but we've finally made it to TX! We've been in 6 states (WA, OR, ID, UT, NM, TX) and watched the scenery change from desert to forest to mountain and back to desert. We've driven through clouds of bugs in ID and a tremendous thunderstorm outside of Moab, UT. We've eaten waaaaaaaaaaaay too much junk/fast food AND we're very thankful we have satellite radio!!! We've also nearly finished reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone!

On Friday, after starting out with a nourishing Sputnut and goodbye hugs from Mom, we spent the day traveling through OR, ID and UT. We were able to stop by and see Cam's old BofA manager on our way through Boise and made it to Salt Lake City for our first night. It was interesting to see how this large metropolitan city had closed up shop so early on a Friday night. It was kind of difficult to find a place for dinner!

On Saturday, we made it to Albuquerque for our second night's stop. We saw the beautiful painted deserts of southern Utah/northern New Mexico. We passed the Arches National Park north of Moab, UT and would have stopped had it not been for the HUGE thunderstorm rolling through the area. We also bypassed the 4-corners site (even though it doesn't mark the "actual" 4-corners of the states) on our trek. We'll have to stop by and catch both of those again some other trip.

This morning, after a leisurely start, we made our way past interesting rock features in the desert of NM and finally crossed the state line into TX. On first blush, El Paso isn't as flat as people had promised me. There's a huge mountain/tall hill range running right through the middle of town. However, it is the desert, so there isn't a lot of color to be seen. I've also noticed that the roofs on all the houses are either flat or hardly sloped at all. Must not get a lot of snow around here???

For now, we're checked into an on-base hotel and will be staying until we find suitable accommodations (apartment/duplex/house) off post. We have a post office box on reserve and will email everyone our new address as soon as we get the number (hopefully tomorrow!)

One last Spudnut until our next visit to Richland, WA

A cool arch alongside the highway

Chimney Rock in northern NM

A sign we thought was hilarious! Too cooped up in the car, perhaps?