Leg 6 - Journey In

March 27, 2012

Got up sort of early but laid around the house and watched television until Kurt was ready to go. Again, it was nice to be able to relax and enjoy my time off. I headed out around 11:00am and began my drive to El Paso, TX where I was to meet one of Dominic's army buddies, who was nice enough to allow me to stay at his place for the night. I drive wasn't very exciting. the most annoying part was the broken cruise control. My foot, leg, and hip began to ache or became numb after a couple of hours. I only had two positions I could put my foot in and still feel comfortable with the my driving. I made it to the El Paso outer suburbs around 5:00pm. I planned to do a hike up a trail and then meet up with the army buddy. To my surprise, the park the trail was in closed at 4:00pm. I was perturbed since there were still at least 2 more hours of daylight, but apparently it always closes at 4:00pm. I was upset with myself for not checking this information out beforehand, but who would have thought of something like that anyways? My experience from parks is that they close at dusk or sunset, so why should I have thought of anything should be different out West? O well. While Dominic was trying to get a hold of his friend, I decided to kill some time and walk around the outlet store that was close by. I found out from Dominic about 20 minutes or so later his buddy was called out to the field for a last second training exercise. Apparently there is a term for this, I forget it, but it happens every so often. You have to be ready to go on a moment's notice. Just my luck.

Now, I was in a bit of a pickle on what to do. I needed to be in Houston the next day in the evening to catch up with Jim and go to trivia with him and his friends. I wanted to stop in San Antonio to check out the Alamo in the morning. Looking at the amount of time I had and the amount of land between me and San Antonio and Houston, the only choice was to continue driving through El Paso and make my way towards San Antonio. I hit the tail end of El Paso traffic when traveling through downtown. I figured I would drive to the next town and find a hotel to stay for the night. As I kept driving, I didn't see the point in wasting money on a hotel room, so I drove until I was about 2 hours away from San Antonio and slept in the car. Quite an unexpected turn in the trip taken in stride along with everything else.

Side Note: Along the route, I ran into a border patrol checkpoint. I started to freak a little because I didn't have my passport with me. Also, I didn't quite understand why there was a checkpoint in the middle of Texas instead of along the border. I drove up to the patrol officer and showed him my license. He asked if I was a US citizen, I said "yes", and on my way I went. No biggie, just sort of odd.

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