To finish out my time in Scottsdale, I was invited to a rock concert. It is becoming obvious to me that I am really getting old because we were wimps.

Yep, Hinder. We were determined to be ROCKERS that night! They have some decent songs (I know 3 total) so we figured it would be an ‘outside the box’ experience for us. We started out with a bang – pastys and cocktails for dinner, and we arrived during the warm-up band – perfect, right? Nope. There was 1-2-3 warm-up bands and they were all so loud! I should have got a clue that bands named ‘Kingdom Collapse’ and ‘Saliva’ probably weren’t my cup of tea. Anyway, sad to say, but this is where we ended up

Hanging out with the smokers on the patio, playing Euchre on our phones while we waited 2 hours for Hinder to come on. They finally came out about 10:00, and I left right after I heard the first song I knew. I’m sticking with country from now on.

Cliff and I got back on the road determined to Bee Line it back to Dallas, but we got a wee bit off track and that’s how we got the Landman experience. By the way, Arizona gets an A+ on communication about when the next rest area is coming up! 25 miles ahead, 50 miles, 100? It was very handy.

I try to find interesting campgrounds when I can, and decided to stay at Hueco Tanks State Park outside of El Paso, where ‘visitors are surrounded by the vestiges of thousands of years of human history and millions of years of natural history’. Once again I only had a few hours to explore, but it was pretty cool.

The hike was more like rock climbing than hiking, but I liked it.

There were petroglyphs and I had a decent campsite. It was definitely worth a stop, but I think I would’ve seen many more detailed petroglyphs if I had taken a guided tour.

The only problem I had was that this location took me off the main thoroughfare back to Dallas and Cliff decided that the best route would be to take the smaller highway heading toward Carlsbad and veer off at some point before going that far. OK, I’m up for adventure and 3/4 of a gas tank should have been plenty to get me to the next services 120 miles away. That is, until I had to go up what felt like a 20% grade against heavy wind!!!

There was going to be NO veering off! Carlsbad was 50 miles out of my way, but the closest gas station, so I rolled my way to town just in time. Oh well. Poor planning on my part – I can’t even blame Cliff – but I took advantage of the opportunity to go to the gym. It was getting cold outside and I was in no hurry to drive 2 more hours to freeze at my next campsite, and it was SO cold!!!!

Getting back to Landman, our altered route took us through the back roads NW of Odessa and Midland. If you have seen that show, it is desolate out there with oil mines everywhere – very accurate. If you are a fan of this show and think you might want to visit this filming site, save the trip. It is nothing like seeing the Lord of the Rings film site in New Zealand (beautiful country btw). Just trust me when I say it is the dirty desert, with thousands of oil fields and trucks that look just like Billy Bob’s. Plus the traffic is horrible!

I made it to my next site as the sun was going down with the temperature. I made a quick dinner and crawled back in my camper to watch TV and stay warm. I was at Monahans Sandhills State Park, and I took absolutely NO time to explore.

The next stop was Midlothian. On the way, I did go through checkpoint #5. They didn’t bother me but I did see some action out in the desert down the road from the checkpoint – complete with officers and a helicopter. I don’t know if it was drugs or people they were looking for.

Not much has happened since my last post, but I’m here for another week, so anything could happen in that time!

Looking this post over, I see Elaine is right. I can get a little wordy. My apologies, but you can just look at the pictures if that is all you have time for. This is turning into a journal of sorts for me too and I can’t wait to read it all when my year is up!

Tip: I could’ve wrote this above, but I am stretched thin for a tip today, and I don’t think any of you want me to start giving you ‘life’ advice ;-). If you decide to visit Hueco Tanks, you will need a permit. For people who just show up, there is a waiting line to get in. Now the tip – if you want to camp, don’t let the reservation people on the phone force you into getting a permit. I couldn’t get one because I didn’t know when I would get there and decided to take my chances. Turns out, a permit is included in your camping fee and I was able to hike for hours! Jeepers.