Interesting day after our lay day of rain in Alpine, Texas. Determined to get back on the road and with the Doppler radar showing no rain in the immediate vicinity, we headed out shortly before light on the pooled and puddled town streets. You could feel, but not see, the water coming up off the tires, as west Texas towns don’t have storm drainage or even grading for run-off. Guess they just wait for it to evaporate.

Just as the natural light turned up,so did the clouds come down. We must have ridden in wet misty clouds for a couple of hours. If we’d been driving at higher speeds you’d have to call it a dense fog. It was actually okay, because we soon picked up a strong tail-wind that gusted to more than 15 knots. This old highway used to be the main highway between El Paso and San Antonio, but since they built I- 10 traffic, as well as the towns has virtually disappeared. We probably saw less than four vehicles in the first couple of hours. One of those was a local Sheriff making his patrol some 30 miles from our start. Only reason I mention him was that I was doing about 36 MPH down the middle of the south bound lane in a tuck, just to see how fast the wind would let me go on that flat deserted highway. No indication from him I was a bother, then or either of the two times he passed us in the next hour.

The other notable milestone was that we passed the 1,000 mile mark on our Southern Tier tour, but who’s counting. I took this panorama photo (new iOS 6 photo feature) when Ivan’s cycle computer turned 1,000 miles.

We’ve bivouacked in a highway junction town of Sanderson, where almost everything has moved on. Most every store front has a Closed sign posted and we’re lucky there are still two motels and a Cuba, New Mexico style gas and convenience store for food. Dinner and provisioning for the next 90+ mile day takes imagination.