A Mural Celebrating Strength

The Road to Van Horn, Texas

The wings mural in Van Horn, Texas was an unexpected addition to the string of murals along our journey.

The end of March found us in a significantly different world than at the beginning. We were in Central Texas and everything was shutting down. We saw our first case of empty shelves, felt that strange ‘avoid everyone’ feeling.

We had already planned to stop through Van Horn, Texas. Now it was starting to look like a contender for a safe haven we could hunker down in. Our friend, Ted Jec, owns Garden’s Oasis, a rustic retreat in the desert outside Van Horn. He’d been inviting us there since the days of the bus conversion. We saw it as a lucky piece of fate that we had a piece of remote desert waiting for us, right when we needed it.

When we arrived in Van Horn, we took five days to do a much-needed overhaul on the bus. See, when we left Florida in August, there were many things still left undone. We thought we’d have time to finish those bits of the conversion on the road. Ha!

When we were doing the overhaul, Jesus Ramirez stopped by. Jesus owns El Tomate Pizza Shop in Van Horn. When he learned about the project and saw some of our murals, he proposed the idea of us doing a mural for El Tomate. We said ‘absolutely!’, and planned to start the next week after we returned from Garden’s Oasis.

What better way to stay socially isolated than with a paintbrush in hand? As the mural went up, many people from town drove by in their cars and shouted out compliments. It was a great week.