So much for "far from the madding crowd". Right after I posted that comment about avoiding the Black Friday crush and enjoying a quiet morning, the ATV's started cruising by. Fortunately, most of them are considerate and pass slowly and at a distance. This dust cloud didn't reach us.
We traveled fairly quickly after Llano, intent on getting far enough west to avoid the capricious Texas "Northers" that can drop the temperature a good 40F in less than an hour. The Texas hill country is lovely: hills and woods, 
fine picnic areas where one can stop for a night or three (we stayed only one night),
and - for better or worse, freeways when one wishes to use them. With apologies to anyone from the area who might be reading, this is my sole impression of El Paso: a spaghetti tangle of freeways to be got through as expeditiously as possible. This doesn't show the traffic snarls we encountered.
On the other hand, the bilingual signage can be entertaining. I was especially amused by this Chick-Fil-A sign:
It's unfortunately blurry, but it continues the motif of cows encouraging people to "Eat Mor Chikun". In this case, the cows' plea is in wildly misspelled Spanish.
Columbus, New Mexico was a good place to stop, reprovision, take advantage of a few days' worth of paid electricity. They also have stunning skies.
Breakfasts were typically more of what I've already shown you: in this case the labneh balls on crackers, with avocado:
I made more yogurt in the Instant Pot.
I fired up the Joule to sous-vide some chicken thighs I'd packed with Hatch hot chiles.
Those, combined with leftover pinto beans from Cooper's in Llano, became the basis of burritos one night. That sous vide experiment had a happy outcome: the chicken juices, combined with the chile bits, cooked down in the skillet into a very nice sauce. I'll be doing that again. We also used a container of lovely green chile sauce from a cooking class I'd taken in Duluth last October. Another container gone!
We didn't eat out as much as we usually do there, but I dropped in on The Borderland Cafe to see how they were doing, and to bring home some burgers one night. The place looks clean and they say business is hopping. I caught them just before closing, and I hope that's the reason it was empty except for me. I suspect most of the town rolls up between 6 and 7 p.m. The burgers and fries were good, but suffered a bit from being taken home to the park instead of being eaten there.
It took me two morning visits to get a couple of their burritos for road food; those sell out quickly as quick portable lunches. The Borderland Cafe folks really know how to wrap a burrito tightly so that it doesn't slop all over. I haven't figured the trick out yet; I suspect it involves much less stuffing than I usually do, and drier stuffing at that.
Columbus is a nice place for walks, and I was somewhat sorry that we didn't stay longer, but we were On A Mission to get farther west. We left behind some souvenirs found along the path, and hit the road again.
