Day 27 - Van Horn, TX - Fort Hancock, TX

 Today was a fast day. That is really the best way to describe it.

We had a hot breakfast at the hotel this morning. I stepped outside my comfort zone and had a waffle and some scrabbled eggs. It tasted really good. We were able to leave straight from our hotel this morning so we didn't have to load up and drive anywhere. Like I mentioned last night we shaved 36 miles off our ride today so we were all in good spirits this morning.

We headed out on I-10 again and it was nice and smooth, there were a lot of trucks out and we even had a few blow the air horn for us as they cruised by. Most of them move over to give us extra room, so that make the ride a little less stressful. We had a few little passes we ride through, but the nice thing about the interstate is the grade is not to steep and then the descents are really long and you can carry your speed for miles.

After 3-1/2 hours we reached our exit and finish spot for the day. From this spot we would have to get in the RV and drive 14 miles to our hotel for the night, then in the morning we would drive back and then ride right back down the road and past the hotel in the morning. Since it was so early in the day we all agreed to put the 14 miles in right now, then we would just start from the hotel in the morning and have 14 miles less on tomorrow ride.

We also crossed into a new time zone - our clock turned back 1 hour and we had an extra hour in our day. So we were able to get all our miles in, plus 14 extra before 11:30 am MST.

Even better news is we are 74 miles away from the state line!

Tomorrow is a big day. We enter another state, we say goodbye to our RV driver (Les) and our SAG driver (Bill) and welcome a new RV driver. We already picked up our new SAG driver 2 days ago now, he drove the SAG today with Bill riding shotgun and as always they did great. Tomorrow also welcomes back POPs to the crew. Jerry Stutzman flies into El Paso and will be with us to the end of the trip. So as you can see this is a big day for us. We have 85 or so miles to ride tomorrow and if the weather is like tomorrow everything should go smooth. The temperatures are getting up there and we can feel the heat rising out here in the desert.

Everybody is resting this afternoon. I think I am going to finish a movie I started last week and then take a nap.

Have a great weekend!