Our time here in El Paso has gone by so quickly. I was surprised to see it has been 12 days.
The Saturday morning after we arrived, we tried to get our post office box. Since we will be here for at least 3 months, we held our mail at home and will have it temporarily forwarded to the PO Box. We had applied online for a box and understood we needed to bring the paperwork and identification to the branch to get access. They were not able to find us in the system, even though our paperwork was printed from their site. The person that handles the boxes was not there and we were told to come back on Monday when he would be in.
On Monday morning we showed up at the branch again and worked with a different postal clerk. He was also not able to pull up our information for the box we reserved. He suggested that we cancel that box and apply in person for a box at the branch. He also let us know there was a branch closer to where we are staying, if we would rather have a box there.
We went to the other branch and rented our PO Box. We also completed the forward request for our mail. We were told to cancel the other box online. (That is another story as it took several emails to get that done. Refund still pending.) That errand done, we decided to do some exploring on base. Ft. Bliss Army Base has its headquarters in El Paso and we wanted to explore the PX and commissary. We were pleasantly surprised when we found them.
Ft. Bliss is home to Freedom Crossing, the first-ever open air shopping, dining and entertainment marketplace to be located on a U.S. Military Installation. Freedom Crossing is a great place to shop, eat or just walk around. We ate lunch, walked around and explored the PX and other shops. We will be checking out the commissary on another trip.
Tuesday was Andy’s first day at work. I did the laundry – exciting stuff, right? The laundry facilities at the RV Park are very nice and reasonable. I was able to pick up the free Wi-Fi while there and pull photos from my phone to Google Photo. They also have a Family Room here at the park where there is free Wi-Fi, cable TV and kitchen facilities. There are currently 3 tiny houses staying here at the park. First time we have seen them in an RV park. Overall, this is a great place to stay. The only drawback is the highway noise. However, we are towards the back and it is not as loud as it is for other sites.
The designated dog area is at the front of the park. Several time a day, the dogs are walked up there to do their business. You can view the Franklin Mountains while the dogs sniff every blade of grass.
We are getting used to the weather and really like it. The days are warm and the nights are cool. There have been a few hotter days, with temperatures in the high 80’s, but overall it has been in the 70’s and low 80’s. We have used the air conditioner only a couple times. The air is dry with low humidity. In the last 12 days, it has rained only once.
Saturday was a little cooler and perfect weather to do more exploring. We drove to McKelligon Canyon in the Franklin Mountains. It is about 5 miles from the RV Park. We did a little walking up the Ron Coleman Trail, but were not prepared to take the full trail. We went just far enough to get a few photos.
After we left the canyon, we drove the short distance to Scenic Drive and took it up to the Scenic Overlook. It is a great view of El Paso, the Rio Grande, Juarez and the mountains.
You can see a few more photos on our Photos by Andreas Facebook page.
After leaving the overlook, we had a quick lunch at a Whataburger and went back to the park. We needed to get our Halloween decorations set up for the evening festivities.
We were told by one of the our neighbors that they were having Trick or Treat on Saturday night instead of the 31st. Sounded good to us!
We set up our canopy, strung lights around it and put our scary Halloween music in the CD player. And dumped bags of candy into a large bowl.
A few pictures of our decorations.
We had quite a few of the families living in the park stop by. It was a lot of fun to see the costumes and really made us feel at home. Halloween has been one of our favorite times and we missed the trick or treaters last year. It was the first Halloween at our new house and we were prepared with candy. Other than our grandkids, no one came by. In our previous home, we had close to a hundred each year.
We are settling in and learning our way around El Paso. The people are friendly and the weather is definitely something we could get used to. Until it gets too hot.
