Day 44 Friday February 21

all I have from

chatty tour group at Tanks

A day of fails: discovered that van has no brake lights whatsoever and at some point after that S found that the fridge had stopped fridging. Off for a return to Hueco Tanks of yore for the guided tour which also turned out to be a fail or a waste of time for our guy Carlos, a nice young man, knew little about much that would have made the walk interesting and the 10 others on the tour included too many chatters. So into El Paso to the swank Mercedes dealer for a diagnosis of van issue but that was not worth much as the diagnosis was a short in the wiring and unless we wanted to spend days in El Paso they couldn't do squat for which we paid $80 which I am sure was the least that place made on a service, ever. While all this was going on we had a nice lunch at Johnny Carina's Italian Restaurant across a killing field of an expressway. One good thing about the non-repair was that the guy who actually worked on the van and I bonded a little because B became his buddy while he worked in the van and he had a 14 year chihuahua. Anyway took out of there with an eye on the following traffic of which there was plenty and shot west on hwy 9, another lonely two-laner, to Pancho Villa State Park. On the way I developed a substitute brake light which involved turning on the lights as I hit the brake. At the strangely full camp we found that we were also missing the right turn signal. Had a nice shower and a terrific BLT however.