VIP

We had a VIP come to visit this week. Sara's mother Debra flew into El Paso on Tuesday and flew out on Saturday. Wednesday morning the desert welcomed Debra with a stunning orange sunrise.

Since we only had a couple of full days to show her around, we tried to pack in as much as we could. First stop had to be the Big Bend National Park. The national park was beautiful and almost every plant was blooming, thanks to recent and copious rain. But a lot of the roads we wanted to travel were closed due to washouts.

Despite that setback, we managed to see a number of great spots,including the Chisos basin, the Ross Maxwell scenic drive, Castolon, the Rio, and Santa Elena canyon. Debby got to take a photo of her first wild tarantula and discovered that she loves ocotillo plants, despite having trouble remembering the name.

The next day we gave her the two-dollar tour of Terlingua ghost-town, took a stroll through the graveyard, and tried to find something worth buying at the Terlingua Trading Company. Unfortunately, we were treated very rudely by the man behind the counter and did not buy anything.

Just a few miles down the road, we had a completely opposite experience at the Lajitas resort. The posh resort, which basically is its own town, sits right on the Rio Grande and boasts many amenities and luxuries for its guests. After checking out the wares at Christina's World, we were strolling down the boardwalk when an employee came out to greet us. We thought that he was going to ask us to take the dogs away, but instead he enthusiastically greeted the dogs first and suggested we take them over to the amphitheater where they could play off-leash.

He gave us a mini-tour of the resort while guiding us to the amphitheater  and told us we were welcome to eat at the restaurant with the dogs if we didn't mind sitting outside. With a veranda like this, who could mind?

But we had already planned to eat at the Starlight Theater, so when we were done exploring the resort we all piled back into the truck and had a very nice meal accompanied by live music.

All in all, I think we did OK as far as giving the whirlwind-tour. Let us know if we missed any of your favorites -- we'll add them to the list for next time.