【Travel Side Story】A Little Pause in El Paso ✨

【Travel Side Story】A Little Pause in El Paso ✨🚗 After the high-intensity national park journeys from earlier posts, this day finally offered a bit of rest—mostly spent on the road… Switching from majestic natural wonders to the laid-back rhythm of a border town felt like a gentle interlude, letting both body and mind catch their breath 🌿💤. 6⃣️ Sixth Stop: El Paso Setting out from Big Bend National Park, we passed through Marfa and saw that famous Prada Marfa installation 🏠. It stands alone by the desolate highway, like a surreal art piece—displaying handbags and high heels inside, yet never open for business. Perhaps this is “lonely fashion.” In the endless desert, this tiny structure seems to converse with emptiness and existence; art can be both willful and poetic 👜👠🎨. 🌆 An Afternoon Stroll in a Border Town Then we headed straight to El Paso. Lunch was at a Mexican restaurant called Ambar 🥘🌮. The servers were warmly smiling, portions generous, though the flavor leaned salty—maybe border-seasoning is as intense as the sunlight here. After the meal, we wandered casually through town. The streets were quiet, not many people, but early Christmas decorations already hung from streetlights and shop windows, adding touches of warmth to this grey-toned city ✨🎄. 🎨 The Giant “Cat” Mural: Rebirth from Scraps The biggest delight was stumbling upon that giant cat mural downtown! To be precise, it’s not a painting but a lion sculpture assembled from discarded materials 🦁📍, mounted on the west wall of One San Jacinto Plaza. Metal sheets, plastic bottles, old tires… transformed by the artist into a vibrant, bold lion, glittering under the sun. Standing before it, you feel the city’s creativity and resilience—even discarded fragments can be reborn into breathtaking beauty. 🇲🇽 One Street Apart, Two Worlds From here, the distant red “X” marker on the mountain is clearly visible—that’s already Mexico. The border wall stands silent in the desert, dividing one land into two countries, yet the sunset shines equally on both sides, illuminating the same sand, stones, and dreams 🌇❤️. 🏞️ Journey Continues: Toward the Cactus Kingdom El Paso was just a brief pause; the final stop of our trip is Saguaro National Park 🌵. In the evening, we set out from here and drove four to five hours toward Tucson. Heading west, the sunset outside the window was unreal—the sky fading from orange-red to lavender-pink, clouds like ignited cotton, the wilderness draped in golden gauze 🌄. That night, we stayed at the Graduate by Hilton on the University of Arizona campus. On the hotel bar’s balcony, with a cocktail in hand, we watched Tucson’s nightscape gradually light up—distant mountain shadows hazy, nearby campus lights warm. Tomorrow, we’ll meet those millennia-old saguaro cacti—just thinking about it fills me with anticipation 🌵✨. #NewMexico#Arizona#ElPaso#Mexico#UniversityOfArizona#USNationalParks#SaguaroNationalPark#Cactus#NorthAmericaTravel