FLORIDA: TAMPA

June 9-18 2017

The only benefit I can see of being grounded from travel because of COVID -19 is that I can catch up on posting about some of my previous travels that I have never gotten around to writing about. This adventure happened three years ago--a trip to Tampa Florida to score AP English Composition exams.

I've posted before about the experience of scoring AP exams for the College Board, so I won't go into that very much this time. My focus will be on Tampa, a city of about 400,000 people on the western/Gulf of Mexico side of Florida.

I shouldn't have been too surprised by all the lakes/ponds, but I was!

The College Board always books nice rooms for us, usually in a Sheraton or Hilton or Marriott.  I can't remember which hotel I was in, but I had a nice view from various hotel windows.

The hotel was within a few blocks of the Tampa Convention Center, where I spent eight hours/day for the next seven days.

WEST TEXAS: EL PASO MISSION TRAIL

December 31, 2018

The last thing we did on our West Texas Adventure was visit three missions on El Paso's El Camino Real (AKA The Royal Road or the Mission Trail). Within less than 10 miles, there are three missions, which makes for a great tourist adventure.

I am used to applying the term "El Camino Real" to the 600-mile-road that connects California's 21 Spanish missions. However, there is a different "Camino Real" that runs from Mexico City through Paso del Norte (now Juarez, Mexico) and the El Paso area, and ending in Santa Fe.

1. Ysleta Mission
Our first stop was at the Ysleta Mission, the oldest continuously operated parish in Texas. It was founded in 1682, but flooding of the Rio Grande destroyed the mission in 1742 and then again in 1829. It was rebuilt for a third time in 1851, and it looked like the third time was the charm (and building it on higher ground didn't hurt either) until a fire wiped out much of the historic mission in 1907. No worries--it was rebuilt the next year.

Unfortunately, the little chapel was closed on the day we were there, so we could only walk around the outside.

The bell tower was empty but there was a bell on the ground. It's sure easier to ring that way!

WEST TEXAS, EL PASO: THE WALL, THE ZOO, AND ST. PATRICK'S CHURCH

December 30, 2018

We spent our last day-and-a-half in West Texas in El Paso, population 681,728, the 22nd largest city in the United States. It is just across the border from Ciudad Juárez, which is about twice its size.

We returned to El Paso from the wilderness (aka Big Bend National Park and Marfa) in the early afternoon with just enough time to squeeze in a few sights before the night fell.

BORDER WALL

With El Paso and Ciudad Juárez separated by what is not much more than a creek, the border wall is a prominent feature in the city. Some kind of wall has been here for decades. We had a great view of the El Paso border wall from the freeway that runs alongside it. It was interesting to look at this and think of all the political turmoil it has caused over the years, and then to think back on the open border in Big Bend National Park.

EL PASO ZOO
Our first stop was the El Paso Zoo, a small operation that covers just 35 acres and includes 220 species. In spite of its small size, however, we were impressed with its animal collection and enclosures.

Here are a few of my favorites. The Mexican gray wolf, which is extinct in the wild:

WEST TEXAS: MARFA

December 28-29, 2018

Before this trip I had never heard of Marfa, Texas. Why would I have? The population is less than 2,000. The nearest big city is Odessa, 170 miles away, and El Paso is almost 200 miles away.

Little did I know that Marfa is the Funky Heart of Texas.

Presidio County Courthouse

MARFA BURRITOS
Our first introduction to Marfa was a hole-in-the-wall burrito joint with a cult-like following.

There isn't anything fancy about Marfa Burrito, including the signage.

WEST TEXAS: CHISOS MOUNTAINS IN BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK

December 29, 2018

We were surprised to wake up in our hotel in Marathon, Texas (population 500), to below freezing temperatures, ice on the parking lot, and a heavy layer of frost on the windshield.

I checked the temperatures at home and in places where family members live around the US and discovered that the warmest of those places was New York City, the place furthest north (by far). Crazy!

Bob drove carefully (for Bob) on the icy roads.

We loved the tiny towns we passed through. They had a lot of personality. 

We were headed to the eastern end of the same park we had explored the western end of the previous day.

WEST TEXAS: BIG BEND RANCH STATE PARK AND BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK

December 28, 2018

We had originally tried to make this a trip without a ton of driving. Bob loves to drive, but our son and I are not quite as fond of being passengers. Unfortunately, the trip turned out to be mostly driving, with some short to medium-long stops along the way.  Luckily, we had a couple of good books to listen to.  We had finished When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanthi on the long drive from Phoenix to El Paso (#1) and then on to Alpine (#2), and we started Educated by Tara Westover on our second day of driving from Alpine to Big Bend Ranch State Park (#3) and Big Bend National Park (#4)

We began the day having breakfast in Marfa (#5), a little town with a big spirit that I'll write about in another post. Then we headed south towards the Rio Grande River through a rather barren but still interesting desert landscape.

WEST TEXAS: A SURPRISE DETOUR THROUGH ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO

December 27, 2019

One of our sons was home for Christmas, and we thought it would be a good opportunity to have an adventure together. We wanted to go somewhere we hadn't been, but we didn't have a lot of time and it was winter, so our options were limited.  We chose the exciting destination of El Paso. One of my friends has a sister who has lived in El Paso for years, and when she heard we had chosen it as our destination, she was flabbergasted. "Why would you go to EL PASO, of all places?" she said. "There is nothing to do there."

Well, not to give away too much, but (post-trip) we would disagree.

However, on the first day of our adventure, we thought the trip might turn out to be a colossal failure. We had booked an early flight on Southwest Airlines from Ontario to El Paso with a one-hour layover in Phoenix, arriving in El Paso at 9:55 AM, which would give us almost a full day. At 3:15 AM when we were in the car on our way to the Ontario Airport, I got a text letting us know that the flight from Phoenix to El Paso had been cancelled because of a lightning storm in El Paso. Southwest would put us on on an 11:00 PM flight, but that would mean sitting around all day in the Phoenix airport and arriving very late at night in El Paso. We had a non-refundable hotel room 80 miles from El Paso in Alpine, Texas, and we would not get there until the wee hours of the morning.  We had activities  planned that clearly were not going to happen, including dinner at a restaurant in El Paso that Bob had his heart set on.

While waiting for our first fight, however, my crazy husband hatched a plot. We would give up the second leg of the flight, rent a care in Phoenix, and drive 430 miles through Arizona and New Mexico, reaching El Paso in time for our dinner reservation and with plenty of time to make it to our hotel in Alpine. We were able to reserve a car in Phoenix that we would drive to the El Paso Airport, drop it off, pick up the other rental we had scheduled there and eat at the restaurant where we had reservations, and then drive three more hours to Alpine.  Fun, fun, fun!

One of the benefits is that we would be able to stop for a meal along the way that would far surpass the airport food we would have been stuck with in Phoenix. We had a delicious breakfast at Five Points Market and Restaurant in Tucson.

We were hungry, as you might deduce from the FIVE entrees we ordered for the three of us.  The hot chocolate was amazing, just like everything else.