Michael Bergeron
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Tips for driving through Sierra Blanca

Tips for driving through Sierra Blanca
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Sierra Blanca is hardly even a town, although they evidently have a jail. On a map it’s a pinprick, not even as big as Ozona or other West Texas towns along Interstate-10. Sierra Blanca is a border patrol stop point and it’s known for its dogs trained to sniff and find the scent of Mary. These canines are never going to win a Dickin Medal.

It’s fairly well known that Fiona Apple was arrested for hash and marijuana at the Sierra Blanca border patrol rest stop last Wednesday on her way to perform in Austin. (She did make the Houston show Friday night.) Willie Nelson was also busted at that spot but that’s hardly news considering Willie’s penchant for pot. Back in the ‘90s Nelson was popped for a roach in his car ashtray when a state trooper found Nelson napping in his car. But Willie was looking good though at last summer’s FPSF, he’s lost a couple of ounces.

I talked to a member of a band from Austin Thursday night and asked him about the Sierra Blanca rest stop and recreation area knowing that his group travels in a large white van pulling a medium sized white trailer. Without naming said band, he acknowledged that they had recently passed through said border patrol stop and had had their van and equipment trailer completely emptied in a vain search for drugs. He readily admitted that outside of El Paso they had smoked up the last of their stash in anticipation of the border patrol point but the acute senses of the drug dogs detected the sweet aroma that persisted in the van despite their best efforts to air out long before the stop.

Sierra Blanca is a little over an hour east of El Paso on I-10, still in Mountain Time and with signs warning of its arrival a few miles beforehand. (There’s also a border patrol stop point in New Mexico west of Las Cruces, which is north of El Paso.) The border patrol agents look you in the eye and ask one of two questions: Where are you from? or Are you an American citizen? To which you should reply in your best Dragnet voice without missing a beat, say if your name was John Smith, “John Smith, American citizen.”

If you wanted to circumvent Sierra Blanca while traveling into New Mexico you could cut up on state highway 285 in Fort Stockton, which takes you through Pecos (talk about barren landscape) and Carlsbad and then Roswell, where you can cut across the Smoky Mountains (state highway 380) to I-25.

Bottom line, when you’re driving east on I-10 in West Texas keep your shit food sealed, at least until you hit Van Horn.

— Michael Bergeron

  • Screamin_Jay

    I have another suggestion; On I-10, just before the checkpoint is the last turn-off at Lasca Road. (It is also the rest stop with the little tee-pees.) As you drive east, take the exit and turn left. Go under the bridge and on your immediate right is the access road that will take you past the assholes at the checkpoint, into Sierra Blanca, about 3 miles away, where you can resume to I-10 none the worse for wear.

    If you want to play it safer, after you go under the I-10 bridge, turn right onto the access road, go down to the first dirt road on your left, called Love Road. Turn left here, go down across the RR tracks and make an immediate right. Take the road hugging the RR tracks east, crossing “The Boulevard” and into Sierra Blanca, where you can turn back on to the I-10 access road at the abandoned truck stop. Just continue east and you’ll see the on-ramps to the east-bound freeway in Sierra Blanca.

    • Luke Lyddon

      How accurate is this? 100% chance of passing right by without going through the checkpoint? You’d think the BP would know about this and not let it happen?