Day 8, Friday, 01/04/08

Today we drove 200 miles to Hueco Tanks State Park just 35 miles East of El Paso.

There is a lot of Early American history here and hundreds of pictographs, so we wanted to hike the trails and see them. This area used to get thousands of visitors on any given day, especially weekends, but due to over-use damage and pictograph damage by “ass-holes”, the park service began a policy of limiting daily visitors and requiring a guide to be present.. Currently 70 people “on the rocks” are allowed at any one time. So access is very limited. Look it up on the internet if you want more history

They were “full” for today and this weekend as well, so we could not get a permit to hike on our own. We did get to sign up for a guided tour tomorrow (Saturday) morning to see the sights. The campground has 24 sites and we had no problem signing up for two nights. But we feel like we are incarcerated here as they lock the gates at 6:00 pm! We are not allowed anywhere other than the paved roads without a permit. But it must be worthwhile to be so hard to get in even this time of year.

No phone service here and therefore no internet as well. We will already be in Las Cruces by the time I can post this. We do have water and electric hook-ups so the DirecTv dish is out and working. We can’t make a phone call, but we can watch TV!

All the other campers here are young kids in tents who have come to rock climb. The real rock climbing without ropes. Evidently, climbers come here from around the world for the first class rocks. Anyway, we are a little obvious here with our motor home and DirecTv dish.