Old Texas 20--The Makings of a Travel Itinerary

I thought it was time to take you all to work. This was my Thursday morning, scouting out possibilities for a driving itinerary to put on our website. Eventually I'll weave this altogether in a culinary/mission church themed travel itinerary. There are other sites I'll probably add--a great steak restaurant on a ranch used by Hollywood, a couple more missions, some other good Mexican restaurants (with exquisite chicken mole!) and some pick-your-own or corn maze ag-tourism places on farms.

First stop, the Chile Store in Fort Hancock, the retail outlet for the only U.S.-based chipotle processor, still a family operation. Good dried chiles, spice mixes and smoked salt! And next to Angie's, a Mexican restaurant still using cone sugar in their pecan pies.
In addition to chile fields, there are pecan orchards, alfalfa fields, and here...cotton.

A stop in Fabens, a small town on old Texas 20. Here it becomes apparent I'm not really in the United States any longer, but I'm spending the morning driving through a place that is probably more Mexico than the U.S.

On to Socorro and the Mission Church there. Recently restored, the beams are from the original mission church near the current location. Those beams still have remnants of original paint from the late 1500s.

A sign of creative grave decoration, see the echoing of the church silhouette on the marker?

After a couple of meetings in El Paso, it was time to drive home in the waning sunlight.