Back into our routine

We got home from Tucson Wednesday afternoon after a good drive from Van Horn, Texas.
On Tuesday, when we left Tucson, we left a little later than we had planned because there were some things we just wanted to do before we left.  Once on our way at around 9am or so, as we were headed to I-10 on Houghton Rd., we could see to the east a HUGE plume of black smoke rising into the air.  We figured it was maybe a structure fire or a grass fire or something.  As we got closer to the plume, we noticed that there were no cars at all on the other side of the highway.  And we started to see that the smoke was coming from somewhere down the line of the highway.  It was hard to see due to little hills in the median, but as we passed the scene, we were able to get a glimpse of a big rig on its side and totally burned.  Something somewhere in that scene was still burning because the smoke kept going from black to white to black again - that happened about 4 times.  Maybe there were explosions or something.  So, we first saw that smoke plume from about 40 miles away which means that the cars behind that accident had been sitting there, just sitting, for a LONG time.  We stopped in Benson to have breakfast and even sitting in that cafe, we saw police and fire engines continuing to race to the scene.  We felt so sorry for whoever was in the accident and for all the people in those cars waiting for that accident to clear.  And very grateful that the accident hadn't happened on our side of the highway.

Our breakfast was good and filling so we didn't need to stop to eat again until we got to Van Horn at around 7pm.  We entertained the thought of going on to Fort Stockton, but that's an additional 2 hour drive and we thought we may as well just take it easy and get a hotel for the night there in Van Horn.  We had dinner at Chuy's Restaurant, which was very tasty!

The next day (Wednesday) was relaxed and easy.  We had a good drive back to San Antonio, getting home around 3:15pm or so.  Everything looked good at the house except for a few plants that just couldn't make it through the heat but all in all, our friends took good care of things while we were gone.

On Thursday, we had dinner with the friends who took care of our house.  They enjoyed staying at our place and are looking forward to doing it again when we go to Japan.  Yay!