Elephant Butte, NM

We left Marfa on June 19, wow that seems like a million years ago.

Marfa is three hours away from El Paso, which is right on the border with Mexico.


After a failed attempt to find a Smoothie King, we visited El Paso Saddleblanket, which is some sort of giant wholesaler of Southwestern swag.

As we drove outta there, we passed right by the border, where we could see the gigantic fence and straight into Juarez.

Soon, we were in New and not Old Mexico, when the van started shakin something fierce. What was it? The road? The suspension? The tires? I spent a bit driving big circles in a parking lot while Tim tried seeing which wheel was at fault. It was hard to discern, however, so we decided the best thing to do was drive towards Albuquerque and see a mechanic there.

It was getting late and we were near the Hot Springs. Seeing as it was 100 degrees outside, we had no desire to blast into the springs of hotness but instead, we chose to go to Elephant Butte, a giant man made reservoir of freezing mountain water.

I wish we had taken some pictures of the hot redneck mess we wandered into, but I will preface it by telling you that it was only 8 dollars to camp anywhere we wanted overnight. Anyways. It was so hot out and we had no a/c, since Vanpers likes to be finicky with it, so we were basically sand off roading to this giant lake. Everyone had their giant RVs parked and set up for probably a week or however they do it. We changed into our suits and started to blast into the water when we noticed that we were getting stared down like no other. Had we breached redneck etiquette by going into the water by other people's campers? There was literally no other way into the water. Still, we went in to the extremely cold water for about 5 minutes while getting death stares. We soon ran away, since it was obvious that we wouldn't be able to park there without some hatred.

We drove off and tried to explore the area, but soon got stuck when a hard packed road became soft sand without warning. We wandered the trailer park until we found someone with a giant truck to help us. We were barely stuck, so we didn't even need the winch this time. Our new drunk New Mexican friends told us to pay it forward, and we were glad to find kind hearted people in this strange place.

We went exploring in the other direction now, past the marina, and we found our great spot overlooking the lake.


We grabbed a late dinner at the only place open in town, a drive in burger joint and decided to order vegetables, fried of course. Our bodies hate us.

We went back to our extra special campsite and had a great night's sleep.

Freddie didn't want to leave in the morning, and protested by lying down in the sand far away from the van


And now, onwards and northwards