I made it to the Escapees RV Park in Deming New Mexico this morning about 8 o'clock and am now happily ensconced in their boondocking area until next weekend.

My cunning plan to make it through El Paso Texas early Sunday morning, avoiding any traffic and stress in the process, worked great. I went straight through town on I-10 about 6 AM without even kicking off the cruise control, it was fantastic.

I stayed at an RV Park last night in Van Horn Texas, partially because Van Horn has a city ordinance against staying overnight anywhere without permission, and frankly the whole area doesn't look all that safe to me.

But as much as I dislike staying in RV parks this one was fairly interesting. When I pulled in just glancing around it looked full, but I went into the office anyway and the Park manager guy said that somebody left this morning so I could get his space.

I asked the guy why was the place so full, was it all the oil workers in the area that stay full time? And he said no it's the people that work at Blue Origin. I made the mistake of asking him what the heck was that, and he spent the next half hour telling me.

It seems that Blue Origin, which was founded by Jeff Bezos, squillionare Amazon owner, has one of their launch facilities 20 miles north of Van Horn and since there out in the middle of absolute nowhere, for obvious reasons, they live and eat in Van Horn and kind of fill up most of the RV parks in town.

I noticed when I pulled in it was a higher class clientele than I'm used to, very nice fifth wheels and motorhomes, with new cars and trucks parked next to them. Which makes sense because basically these are people that design and build rockets, they are in effect rocket scientist.

I figure this is great, I'm going to get to talk to some neighbors that are on the bleeding edge of building rockets for future space exploration. Unfortunately that didn't work out the way I'd hoped. About half the RVs in the park didn't have a vehicle parked anywhere near them, so I assumed they were at work. And the other RVs looked like they were occupied at the moment, but I never saw a single soul outside in that RV Park.

I walked around some, took out the trash things like that, but never saw anyone outside, maybe they saw me walking around and figured a homeless bum had wandered into the park looking for a handout, not that I would've turned down a handout if someone had given me one, but I guess everyone was afraid to come outside.

I was only there a few hours before I had to get on the road to beat the El Paso traffic by dawn this morning, so I never got a chance to talk to a rocket scientist. But what they're accomplishing in that remote area of Texas is really spectacular and I think it shows what can be done when you get government out of the way and let entrepreneurs develop rockets for the future.

                                   theboondork

Even though I'm spending the night in Van Horn Texas right now, killing time until my final 220 mile sprint through El Paso Texas and on to Deming New Mexico Sunday morning, I'm still posting what I wrote while staying in Junction. Hopefully soon I can get the blog caught up with my present life because I find it confusing be posting things I did days ago.

I moseyed on down to the library this morning with my 13 inch Asus laptop, same one I used yesterday, laying in the passenger seat, and got the same chair in the library that I had yesterday. Started up the laptop, scanned my fingerprint to get it to open, and nothing happened. Half an hour before at home I had opened up this laptop and put my blog for the day on the desktop, and now after driving all this way, the computer won't let me in.

I did everything I know how to do, I wiped off my finger, I cleaned my finger with the hand cleaner at the library, and I went to the restroom and washed my hands, still won't open. I wiped off the fingerprint reader on the computer, I rebooted the laptop a dozen times, until I finally gave up, admitted defeat, and cruised on back home.

Figuring it worked at home an hour ago I went through the same washing, cleaning, and wiping both my finger and the fingerprint scanner on the laptop to no avail. And yes I'm using the right finger, it's my trigger finger so I'm very familiar with it. I figure I'll get it to open someday, somehow, but I think I'll wait till I get to a place where I have Internet to deal with it because right now I feel like frisbeeing the laptop into the middle of the Llano River.

Despite that morning setback I still got the truck hitched up to the Arctic Fox, everything put away, and about the only thing left to do in the morning is put in the slide.

 I'll miss junction Texas, and especially the folks in it, their my kind of people. I just wish there was more Internet.

                                theboondork

I'm actually boondocking in the Walmart parking lot at Fort Stockton Texas right now. But step back in time with me and Imagine I'm still in Junction Texas boondocking at the city Park, and pretend this blog post is what's going on in my life at the moment and not two days ago.

I'm not sure why there's no Internet available in this town except at the library, but I've driven from one end to the other and I can't find an Internet signal anywhere except in the library. And at the library the Internet signal is so weak I can't even pick it up in my truck parked 20 feet from the front door. Even in the library I haven't had to deal with Internet that slow since the days of dial-up.

I've learned from the time I've spent in the junction town library, that nobody under the age of 100 uses libraries anymore. And I guess that makes sense because in this age of the Internet, other than school kids that are forced to go, who uses libraries anymore?

But other than Internet problems Junction is the size of town that I could live with, it's pretty small, but everybody I've met has been just as nice as can be. It looks to me like every business in town is owned by a local, you're definitely not dealing with a multinational conglomerate when you walk in the door of any business on Main Street in Junction Texas,

I got some barbecue in town for breakfast this morning, and it sure was good. I've been eating my own cooking for a while, and I use the term cooking loosely, it actually means opening a can and heating it up. So getting some Texas barbecue was a real treat.

When I leave here I'll be heading West slow enough to hopefully hit El Paso Sunday morning when the traffic's light. At least that's the plan as It sits right now it's.

                 theboondork