
On our way out of the park, we passed Border Patrol, there to make sure that no illegal immigrants had crossed via the Rio Grande.

We passed through the small towns that made up the road from Big Bend to El Paso rather uneventfully, seeing much of the same scenery we'd become accustomed to in the park.







After about 25 minutes wandering the streets of Juarez (and getting a few stares because Asian tourists are probably pretty rare there), we decided to head back across to US soil. We paid $0.30 cents to cross back.
Then we hit the border patrol line. It took an hour - possibly more - of waiting in the heat in line with a bunch of Mexicans to get back into Texas.
Then we tried to look for a highly rated restaurant on Yelp. Google Maps drew a blank and led us into a sketchy alleyway.
With that last disappointment, we decided to hightail it out of El Paso and head off to Albuquerque. Our original destination was Santa Fe, but Albuquerque happened to be about an hour closer, so we figured we'd just check it out and spend the night.
Along the way, we passed a town with an odd name.

Albuquerque turned out to be a delightful city. It's quite lively, clean, and neat, and the sizeable student population has made it so that there are plenty of restaurants, convenience stores, and other places of interest open late at night. We went to Frontier for some late-night Tex-Mex.


Now, we're holed up in what is one of Albuquerque's best hotel deals: Sandia Peak Inn.
We're thinking about skipping Santa Fe altogether tomorrow; rumor has it that it's kind of artsy-fartsy and neither of us are that type. So we may hang out in "ABQ" for the morning, and then head straight to Mesa Verde National Park to camp for the night.
You're lucky nothing bad happened to you while you were in Juarez. It's the most dangerous city on the border! And I totally agree with your assessment of El Paso; there are a few really good restaurants there, but we found out about them through word-of-mouth and consider ourselves lucky.
ReplyDeleteMesa Verde is awesome and the drive through the park and up the mountain is fantastic. Have fun!
hey, have you got an address yet for LA? when should i start weighing boxes/labeling things/sending stuff over? feel free to call me and leave a voicemail.
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