Day Three: We've arrived in El Paso!

Grandpa Jones and I got a very early start this morning, 7:15 Amarillo time. We had a lot on our travel agenda for the day and wanted to make sure we were able to fit everything in and still arrive in El Paso between 3:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon. Let me remind you that uploading pictures on a blog at Ft. Bliss is a tedious process which may or may not happen! We took SO many pictures today. I'm going to try to post just a few ... if I have the patience to go through that process via the internet on base!

It turns out that Amarillo is about 100 miles from Tucumcari. As we headed in that direction, we drove past one ranch after another, wind farms, old abandoned mills and junk yards ... all throughout the very flat terrain of the Texas panhandle.

The mountains sneak up on me every time we drive this route! It's just that you drive on this endlessly flat road mile after mile ... and then suddenly ... there they are ~ right in front of you, all along the horizon, those plateau-topped mountains, all jagged, harsh and forbidding. My instant response to them is: I want to go to the top! I want to see the view! Most of them, however, do not have roads to satisfy that desire.

If you look at a map of how we get to El Paso from Michigan, there are many possible routes. We happen to enjoy the one that takes us into New Mexico through Tucumcari and then on down 54 and south. Grandpa Jones was interested in making a trainspotting stop in a little two-bit place in New Mexico by the name of Vaughn. We've driven through the place on prior trips and noticed a lot of rail activity, but we got even more than we bargained for today. We actually saw and photographed nine different trains in about a 35-minute time frame. It was crazy! I took some beautiful pictures of them coming around the bend out in the middle of nowhere.

These beautiful yellow wildflowers have been EVERYWHERE
practically since entering Oklahoma yesterday ...
I was finally able to get a picture of them today
while we were in Vaughn watching trains ...

This is one of the nine trains that came by
within about a 35-minute period of time
(Vaughn, NEW MEXICO)

And since the road we traveled was right next to tracks for most of our day, we also saw another half dozen trains coming and going across the desert. Grandpa Jones was very pleased.

I saw my very first roadrunner today ... running across the ... road! In Austin, Sabrina has tried to show me roadrunners by their house, but I've always missed actually seeing one myself. We saw two of them running across the road near Corona, New Mexico. They look exactly like the cartoon roadrunner!

I enjoyed watching the changing mountains all throughout our day. I'm fascinated by them. The clouds and shadows play such interesting color games with them. We saw rain develop over them and watched as sheets of rain dropped down over the side of the mountain. I tried to photograph it, but I doubt that those pictures will do the beauty of it justice. The dark rain clouds practically erased the mountains from view. To the east of us, we could see the Sacremento mountains. To our west were the San Andres mountains, and farther in the distance were the Organ mountains.

Can you see the "sheet of rain" that we are approaching
on the highway?

As we got close to El Paso, we drove into a rain storm. We checked the computer in the van and it read 92 degrees outside. As we drove through the rain, we watched the outside temperature drop all the way down to 65 degrees in a ten-minute time period! And then once we were beyond the rain, the temperature spiked back up to 95 degrees in less than fifteen minutes!

We arrived at the gate of Ft. Bliss at 4:05 p.m., went through the usual procedure to get a pass that would allow us to enter, and drove on over to Jes and Di's. We were welcomed by a bunch of happy faces. I can't begin to express the pure joy of it! Jesse's knee recovery is going well. It was wonderful to be able to give him a big hug.

Hasn't Christopher gotten SO big?
He was so happy to see us!

This is Emma opening up her birthday presents
from Grandpa Jones and I ~
we got her a whole bunch of art supplies
and I painted butterflies and Emma's name
all over a nice plastic container that she can use for storage.

These are darling pictures of the boys!

We had four hours together this evening enjoying dinner, puzzles, games, art work, tons and tons of hugs and a whole bunch of love.

This is Emma showing me her pierced earrings
she picked out for her birthday ...
She is telling me HOW they pierced her ears
and I am wincing as I listen ... I'm a pathetic baby
when it comes to needles, etc.

And here is Emma showing us her pretty pink sparkly
pierced earrings ...

This is Matthew working on a sticker picture ...

I have so many other pictures, but it has taken almost 30 minutes just to upload those 10 ... so other photos will just have to be shown at a later date! I need to sign off for the night so that I'm fresh for another day tomorrow. I'm looking forward to more playtime with the kiddos after they get home from school. We'll spend the earlier part of our day visiting with Jesse because he has one more week of recovery time before he has to report back to his Army duties. I'll try to post more at the end of our day tomorrow.