El Paso is Great!

I had a different view, in my mind, from El Paso before going there. It immediately was changed after we entered the city! It's a modern city like any other major American city that one might have in mind. It certainly is not L. A. (not that I have been to L. A.!) but it's far from a small town I thought it would be near Mexican border. El Poso (Meaning the Passage in Spanish) is laying on the border where at the other side, the city of Juarez rests. The area was shown in the movie Secario. However due to shortage of time and lack of interest from Alphonse, we neither got a chance to discover the city, entirely, nor the border side and the Mexican town. We first went to our hotel and check in. It was a nice and new building by I-10, named Palace Inn. However I had a concern from the beginning: Too close to a busy highway and difficult for me to sleep. We found a good buffet at the other side of the highway and ate there. It seemed Hispanics comprise a big population in the city. Everywhere you go you can hear people speak Spanish and at time it's difficult to say whether it is their first or second language. The restaurant, called Furr's Fresh Buffet, was full of obese people, mostly(!), either young or mid-aged, Hispanic, mostly. It also looked like the majority of the staff where Hispanic as well. This is how I interpret the situation and I'm not being racists: My assumption is all these Latinos were born and grew up in poor countries and barely had anything to eat. Coming to the US, the land of plenty were food is generally cheap, gives them the opportunity to fill themselves up with everything they find!

Palace Inn is a very nice hotel. If you don't have any problem sleeping next to a noisy highway, I highly recommend it but forget about the breakfast and watch the couple who run the place

Nevertheless The food is good for the price you pay and dinner is a few dollar more expensive than lunch due to its more popularity. I realized here, but not only here(!), why Alphonse was so overweight and had problems coming down and going down a trail: He eats way too much! He takes several trips between the table and different serving tables and fills his plate with everything that you can imagine including lots of starch! Anyways we enjoyed our meal and headed back to the hotel to sleep but I didn't have a good sleep the whole night because of the noise from highway.

Part of Furr's Buffet where, I guess, Mexican food is served. That's be corn, beans and some other stuff. Unlike what's seen in this photo, the place is busy and frequented by the staff and customers

One might question why we selected El Paso as a place in Texas to visit. My original plan, which I shared with Alphonse and he agreed to that, was to do the hike of Guadeloupe Peak, the highest point in the state of Texas. He, however, underestimated the difficulty of Flatiron Peak. He said that he would not be able to go on the hike and added that he would start and then would descend. He wanted me to go though. I was in a better shape but had sever pain on my right foot as well as both knees and tendons. We cancelled the plan and decided to replace that with something easier. In addition to Guadeloupe Mountains National Park, which was closed, partially, due to the Government of the US partial downtown, the city of El Paso also is close to Hueco Tanks State Park, Franklin Mountains State Park and the city of Juarez in Mexico. So many activities could be planned when going to this part of the US. We changed the original plan and I kind of regretted that but at that time there was not much we could do. I had told Alphonse that we needed to leave two days off between the two hikes as both were challenging but he wanted to go back to California and back to work. Now I have to plan for another trip to do Guadeloupe Peak. Next time I will approach from east and there will be no Alphonse! I will go all the way to the summit!
(Photo, top: This carriage statue might mean something but being alongside an impatient parson such as Alphonse I couldn't see whether there was any plaque or not. This is erected in a shopping plaza in the city)