Two states down! With a trip to Mexico in the mix...

Okay, so... last you left the two remaining members of Team Ontario, they were in Alpine. But, for the sake of this amazing picture let us backtrack a bit. This is Eve's Garden in Marathon, where we stayed just before Alpine. The space was a very cool maze of paper crete construction including greenhouses, fountains and more beautiful vegetation than you could shake a fist at...especially in the middle of the Chihuahuan desert.







And now, we must stop in order to be in awe at a truly amazing woman. This is Liz Rogers with Marianne and I. You may remember hearing mention of Liz and thinking: "Wow, how cool that she let the girls stay at her place in Sanderson." Well, the story certainly did not end there. We crossed paths with Liz again in Alpine where she basically paved the way out of Texas with some of the coolest experiences we would have. During a 30 minute meeting in her office, Liz set us up with friends and family allong our way.

Happy Birthday Liz and thanks for all your help... You truly are a force of nature!





Our next stop from Alpine was Marfa. While we were scheduled to ride all the way to Valentine from Alpine, ridiculous winds and a cool scene in Marfa had us stopping to smell the falafel. By chance, we ran into Gary Oliver at the public library and he kindly invited us to stay in his very cool guest house...

This man who shared his home with a handful of cats and dogs cooked us a delicious vegan dinner and treated us to some of his original music in the morning, he plays both the accordion and guitar. He sent us off with a handful of cartoons and a wealth of knowledge about Texas and Mexico.

Our next stop: Valentine, Texas. For Valentine's day no less! This town recieves thousands of Valentines a year which are hand-postmarked on the 14th with Valentine's official stamp!

While in Valentine, Team Ontario stayed with Maralea and Albert Miller. Here, we got to accomplish one of our very important Texas goals... to visit a ranch. Not just any ranch, but a 33 000 acre cattle operation which has been in our hosts family for over 80 years. Maralea drove us over to her in-laws house in the afternoon where Albert's father told us all about the history of the fort which is located up in the mountains on the ranch. Later, Albert and Maralea took us over there so we could check out the fort and walk down to the creek that runs on their land. It was really really really cool! We left Valentine beaming and very excited about what we had experienced.

All that energy, some window shopping at Prada's west Texas location and the delicious brownies which Maralea baked us made the 71 mile ride into Sierra Blanca seem like a walk in the park. Okay, the tail wind for the first 38 miles into Van Horn did help as well. We wondered why the two cyclists coming the other way were moving so slowly.

After Sierra Blanca, we rode downhill to Fort Hancock where we stayed with Street and Melloy Rogers, Liz's brother and sister in-law. We toured around their cotton farm with Street and their dog Rags, met Melloy's mother and brothers and crossed a tiny foot bridge over the Rio Grande into Mexico!

After a lovely lunch in El Paso with Street and Melloy, we were delivered to the stunning old home of Chris Kelso, Liz's longtime friend. Our time in El Paso was fun filled and exciting. We both got to see our first basketball game, the UTEP Miners woman's team beating the RICE Owls. Yee haw! We also crossed into Mexico for the second time for a slightly more extended visit in Juarez. We toured a market and had drinks with Chris at the Kentucky Club. Later that evening, we cooked Chris dinner and took off the next morning for Las Cruces.

Stay tuned for tales of New Mexico, land of enchantment and the Emery Pass. Yikes! Hopefully it won't snow...