Jan 31 - Alpine to Deming

Got the rig running and on the road by 10am... which today is really 9am as we'll cross into the Mountain Time Zone before we get to El Paso. It's an agreeable day for driving, and the plan is to make it through the El Paso metro area, into New Mexico, and to one of our usual stops in Deming.

From Alpine US-90 (our favorite through this part of the world) took us to Van Horn and I-10. Instead of our usual white-knuckled run through the middle of downtown El Paso we tried a different route around the east and north side of the city (TX-375/Joe Battle Blvd and the Woodrow Bean Transmountain Drive). This route takes us through the middle of Fort Bliss and then up and over the Franklin Mountains before connecting back up to I-10. A good portion of this route is being improved and reconstructed, but I still preferred it to the downtown alternative. It probably added 20 minutes to our day but was more relaxing and we saw a portion of the El Paso area we hadn't seen before.

Once back on I-10 it was only a little over an hour and we were in Deming. Miles for the day were 326. Didn't take long to get settled and pull the top off an "arrival ale" and settle in for the night. Since the weather was looking good for the next few days we think we'll stick here for an extra day or so and see what we can find to explore.

Addendum:  During the drive today we turned over 50,000 miles on the bus-house odometer. We were on I-10 just a short ways from my favorite town (not)... El Paso.