El Paso (09-29-13)

The last week has been a flurry of activity while Paul and I visited his mom.  We started our visit with dinner at the local country club- what a view!

Paul spent a few days helping his mom with some projects around the house, and also took advantage of her workshop to refinish a couple of our cabinet doors.  As in most homes, the doors in front of the sink take a bit of a beating so he added a coat or two of polyurethane before they showed any wear.  






Of course, we don’t call his mom the energizer bunny for nothing ( if you ever wondered where Paul gets his energy and his intelligence, look no further!). She is extremely busy with her many philanthropic endeavors so we took some time to do some hiking.

  The nearby Franklin Mountains provide plenty of hiking  trails, so we set out on the Ron Coleman Trail. 

We were supposed to get to the peak of the mountain, but after almost 3 hours of hiking, we turned back.  We’ll get to the peak some other (cooler) day. The views from the trail were still spectacular, including this one, where we could see not only the City of El Paso, but into New Mexico and Juarez Mexico.

The week flew by and pretty soon it was our last night in town.  We spent it attending the first of a month long series of events celebrating the city of El Paso.  We heard two famous El Pasoans tell the story of “their” El Paso.  The first was Ginger Kerrick (who attended via video), a flight director with NASA, and the second was astronaut Danny Olivas.  It was interesting hearing what it was like for them growing up in El Paso, and the influence their childhood here had on their success.

We are now on our way to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  We’ve had to adjust our plans and our campground reservations because of the government shutdown.  For us, its just a minor inconvenience.  Others have been much more adversely affected by the shutdown.