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Wednesday, October 24, 2001 - Along the Rio Grande
88 miles. El Paso, TX to town park in
Sierra Blanca, TX
We left El Paso early and finished off east El Paso
on T-20. It was still windy and the night low was just 68*. The road
left the small towns east of El Paso, Socorro (pop. 22,995), San Elizario (pop.
4,385), Fabens (pop.5,599) and Tornillo (pop.650) passing truly vast fields of
cotton, many thousands of acres irrigated by the Rio Grande.
It is interesting to see the intricate network of canals and the careful grading
of the fields to take the life giving water. It is all done with gravity
when ever possible, pumps being used just to sometimes flood certain fields.
This has to be some of the most valuable farmland in our nation and cotton
is the crop of choice. The fiber is used in clothing of course, and the
oil is a valuable food with the pressed seed meal used as animal feed. A large
field of cotton also has a distinctive odor which Joan and I are now familiar
with.
For most of the ride we had an excellent straight
tailwind from the west. With level terrain we were able to maintain about
15 MPH for several hours with ease. We are now truly in "touring
shape." The only way to really get there is to travel with packs for
several weeks and we are now at that peak.
As we rode amongst the cotton fields one field caught
our eye, a field of peppers that must have been at least 1,000 acres. It
was being picked by machine as was the cotton and periodically we would pass
giant loaf of bread bales of cotton awaiting transport to the mill.
Eventually, after Esperanza, we climbed away from
the river to ride the last 20 miles up to Sierra Blanca (pop. 900) and the
landscape became desert immediately without irrigation's water. We
had to climb about 1,500 feet after already riding over 65 miles but we can
handle that now. The last few miles were a well earned descent into Sierra
Blanca where we are camping for free in the town park, there being no place else
to pitch a tent. Sierra Blanca is the county seat of this poor county and
despite being 70 miles from El Paso it seems very remote. There is real grass
and soft earth, a rarity here. Some of the town's children came over to
talk to us as we ate our poor supper of tortillas, cheese, chipotle peppers and
canned pears for dessert. Trains came by on the hour for the Union Pacific
RR. They usually are loaded with containers.
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