Jan. 17, 2019 - El Paso–Jct 20 & 192, Texas

Day 17 Cross Country Bike Ride

We spent last night in El Paso at a Walmart. Ugh. It was pretty noisy, but the flip side was we didn’t have far to go this morning to stock up on some supplies.

We got gas last night and paid $1.79/gallon, which we thought was good. Today, I saw several stations for as low as $1.71/gallon - much cheaper than the $3.85 we paid in California.

Because there is so much road construction going on in El Paso, several of the roads on Tobey’s route were closed! He spent some time refiguring a good starting point and we headed off in the RV to downtown El Paso. We were on I-10 for about 8 miles and it was under construction, as well!
If you look just behind the train and two white buildings with green shutters you can see the border fence between the US and Mexico. I love the colorful houses on the Mexico side!

Just before getting ready to leave on his bike, Tobey said, “We’re not in Kansas anymore!" I looked up and finally noticed that we were at the corner of 3rd and Kansas. In my defense, it was morning and I didn’t sleep well!

Shortly after taking off on 3rd Street, he detoured over to Delta then had to detour again to Alameda because of more road work! Most of the way through town had two lanes and were signed that bikes had full use of the outside lane. Even with traffic, Tobey did okay getting through town. We met about 20 miles down the road in Clint, Texas when I stopped to get propane. It was getting warmer, so he shed his long pants.

We finally were on Texas Hwy. 20 heading east. Tobey spotted a few herons as he was riding and I saw a few roadrunners!

We went through large agricultural areas, passing miles of pecan trees and cotton fields, both of which have been harvested.

Near Fabens, where we stopped to have lunch, we saw several bee hives and businesses advertising honey. By now, the temperature was in the low 60s and Tobey got rid of his jacket, too!

Today’s ride was 58.3 miles. It was mostly sunny with a slight tailwind to start the day and a slight headwind to end it. Hwy. 20 is not heavily traveled, but it is a chip seal road, so the surface was rough, making it more difficult pedaling.

We stopped about 3:30 pm just south of Hwy. 20 on Hwy. 192 for the night which is about 1/2 mile from I-10.

This is the link to his ride from today. https://ridewithgps.com/trips/31004733

This is a link that will show Tobey’s route. https://ridewithgps.com/events/71165-tobey-s-coast-to-coast-ride-2018-2019

On the left side of the map, it shows day by day stop and start points so you can look at each day’s route.
One of the weird things about the map is it lists days 10, 11, etc. after Day 1. Strange thing about Google numbering I guess!
OR you can scroll to the bottom of the day-to-day and there is a box that says “Show all on Map”. If you click that, it will change the map view to show all days traveled so far.

Tobey gets onto I-10 for about 17 miles to start his day tomorrow enroute to Van Horn.

The picture is for our granddaughter, Charlotte. If you look closely, you can see the moon is awake.

And the sun is setting in the west!