We got a gate!

I was up early this morning even though this area gets really really quiet at night. Rudee likes to sleep longer than me so I make a pot of coffee and catch up on blogs while she snoozes.

After we took our showers I decided to take a walk around the storage yard and check out the flat bed trailers with the "gate supplies". I checked out one the trailers with a big diesel generator on it and my new boss, Roger, drove up in his pick up truck. He told me that he had a gate for me if I wanted it. Heck ya I want it! That's what I came here for :-)

We will be moving out tomorrow morning to a gate near Cotulla, Texas. Roger will be meet us here at the lot and lead us over there and help us get set up.

We are a little nervous since this is all so new to us but I'm sure we will do fine.

I have followed Kit and Jerry Bertlesen's blog http://www.kitandjerry.com/index.htm for a few years now. They are gate guards too and are deployed at a gate about 10 miles from here. They have been keeping track of our progress and gave us directions to their place so we could finally spend some face to face time together.

We made the short trip in the Dakota and pulled into the drive to their gate. The company provides an alarm bell that is activated by a hose pulled across the drive. Remember those bells that dinged in the gas stations when you ran over the hose? Same thing here.

Jerry came out of their motorhome and opened the gate for us showing us where to park. Kit joined us outside and it was hugs all around!

Before we left Carrizo Springs we stopped into McDonalds and bought 2 large diet cokes. By reading their blog I knew they loved their diet fountain cokes and didn't want to show up empty handed :-)

We talked for quite awhile and they showed us the ropes as well as giving us some great advice of things they have learned along the way. Rudee took lots of notes! :-)

Before we knew it we were having to say "see ya later". We had some things we wanted to pick up at the store before before being "tied to a gate".

Thanks guys for a great visit and helping out a couple of rookies!

Corrizo Springs has a small Wal Mart but what we needed was a super center. The nearest one is in Eagle Pass about 40 miles away so we headed over.

Thus area of Texas is really not very scenic. Lots of short scrub trees, sand and cactus. The good thing is the speed limit in most of the rural areas is 75 mph so you can make good time between towns :-)

Eagle Pass is a boarder town right on the Rio Grande. We drove down to the boarder to take a look. There was no good place to park so we just did a drive-by and headed to the store.

Wal Mart was a total zoo! I guess Sunday afternoon is "shopping day" for people from both sides of the boarder.

We wound our way down the aisles and found most of what we needed and got the heck outta there!

They had a gas station there so we filled up using our shopping card so we could save an additional .10 per gallon. With our tank full and our card empty we headed back to Carrizo.

Before arriving in Texas I expected to see a lot of the border patrol out looking for illegals. Today was our first contact with these fine folks. There is an inspection station/road block set up between Eagle Pass and Carrizo Springs. I was not sure what to expect but when I stopped and rolled my window down the young officer just made small talk while another officer with a K9 did a quick walk around our truck and that was it. Guess we don't fit the profile of human smugglers :-)

Back at the 5th wheel we put the groceries away and will probably go to bed early since tomorrow is a work day! I'll keep you posted.