February 15, 2018 - Tepic to Pemex near MEX15D and MEX 120

We camped by the shopping mall last night and it was pretty quiet. One thing about traveling in Mexico is there aren’t many RV campgrounds – especially along the route we are traveling. We are utilizing an app called “ioverlander” which shows locations where other travelers have stayed. Because our little “casa roadante” (RV) is small and self-contained with a generator and solar, we are able to stop just about anyplace that allows parking.

This morning we were up and on the road just after 7 am on our way to Lake Chapala. We again were traveling on the “cuota” (toll) roads, however, they were in much better shape than our first two days. Today we passed sugar cane fields, as well as agave fields. We gained elevation and made our way through some curvy roads as we worked our way into the Central time zone at Chapala.After arriving at Chapala, we parked the RV and walked along the malecon into town. There is a large ex-pat community here and in Ajijic, about 8km to the east. We did notice quite a few “gringos” in town, but not too an overwhelming presence.

There was a walkway out to a small island on which was a statue of Jesu Pescador (Jesus the Fisherman). We walked out and had a look back at the town.The lake is huge and has a large pelican population. Some of them looked like they wanted to take one of the lake tours and were crowded into the boats!In town, we stopped in to see the church. It was beautiful inside and out.Before leaving town, we had lunch at the Cozumel Restaurant which a local man, Carlos, recommended. Tobey had the shrimp ceviche and I had shrimp quesadillas. Both were delicious and their pico de gallo and chips were excellent!

After lunch we were on our way. We passed a housing development along the cuota which actually reminded us of some of the Mexican cemeteries. The houses were very tiny and crowded together.We passed several trucks throughout the day but there were a couple I found interesting. This was a triple-decker pig transport and the other was LOADED with furniture!I gave Tobey a break at the end of the day and drove the last two hours. We are parked at a Pemex gas station truck stop along the 15D toll  road. While it isn’t our first choice for parking, it will work for the night. We drove 362 miles and paid $1503 pesos in tolls ($81.17 USD)

We did, at least, get a beautiful sunset! Tomorrow will be a shorter day. We are traveling to a butterfly sanctuary and taking a tour there. Until tomorrow – hasta manana!

February 14, 2018 - Navajoa to Tepic, Mexico

Happy Valentine’s Day! We hope you are having a sweet day!

We were up early and on the road by 7am today. It was cloudy and a bit hazy as we left town, passing through an industrial area. The sculptures and sign for Navajoa were visible on our way out of town, but still fun to see. The sun was just coming up over the mountains, giving the sky a pinkish glow.It was another day of road construction and toll booths. In many areas the traffic was quite congested and moved very slowly. One interesting thing here in Mexico, however, is that the solid yellow lines on the highway do not necessarily mean “no passing.” If there is room, slower vehicles drive closer to the edge of the road and you can pass. The slower lead vehicle will usually put their left turn signal on indicating to the passing car that it is clear in front of them and they can pass. Many times you see (or are) one of three vehicles side-by-side on a 2 lane road!Here are a couple of the interesting signs we saw today. The first one painted on the rocks on the side of the hill letting you know that Jesus Christ is the path to peace. A little further down the road was 3-D looking sign for a farm equipment sales place. Several hawks and parrots were perched on the power lines as we passed through many different agricultural areas. So much of the farm work is manual labor and these people are hard workers!I’m not sure what the crop below is, but there were silver streamers throughout the field, I assume to keep the birds away. It’s hard to tell, but the entire field glistened in the sun!As we got closer to Mazatlán we caught our first glimpse of the ocean. Because it was only 1:30 when we arrived there, we decided to fill the gas tank and keep going to Tepic. As we moved inland, we also gained elevation and passed through some hills.The tolls were expensive today – $1804 pesos – $97.25 USD over the 521 mile drive. We paid $370 pesos at one stop because we are considered a “camion” (truck with 2 axles). I guess that is the price you pay for the convenience of faster roads.Tonight we are in Tepic, Mexico, arriving about 5:30 pm. We had dinner at a small restaurant, Julio Cesar Meza Tapia near the Plaza Forum Tepic Mall. Tobey had the garlic shrimp and I had empapelado which was fish, shrimp, and mushrooms baked in foil with onions, garlic and cheese. It was fantastic! Dinner, drinks, and tip was $310 pesos – about $16.75 USD. After dinner we walked around the mall and looked in some of the stores before heading back to our RV for the night.

We mixed up our horchata for dessert – it was delicious and just enough sweet to top off the evening. Tomorrow will be another long day, so goodnight!

February 13, 2018 - Nogales, AZ to Navajoa, Mexico

We were up early – 6am – and on our way to Mexico by 6:15 this morning. It was still dark, but we managed to cross the border and get to the Mexican immigration station at KM21 with no problems. It was beautiful looking up and seeing the crescent moon as we drove.

We took the Mariposa truck crossing into Mexico which put us on the toll road which we had planned. We didn’t have any pesos, but the first toll booth did take US dollars, thank goodness, and they gave us a good conversion rate!

After filling out our paperwork for our tourist visas we proceeded to get our permits for the RV and motorcycle. I forgot to make copies of our RV and motorcycle registrations, so that slowed us down a couple minutes and cost $2 USD for the four copies. Then, with all the copies we needed in hand, we got everything taken care of and paid for with a credit card. 45 minutes later, we were on our way. Next stop, the ATM to get pesos. The machine at the OXXO store next to immigration declined my card. Yikes! A phone call back to the US to check on my account and it turns out that the ATM was out of money and no problems with my card. The next little town was the same story! Four stops later, success! With pesos in hand, we could continue on the toll road.

The toll road from Nogales south (15D) has lots of construction. Sometimes we were on 4-lane divided road, other times it was 2-lanes and was not in great shape. I only drove about an hour today, but that gave Tobey a small break. I was lucky, most of my driving was on 4-lane roads! He estimates that we probably drove at least 250 miles of road construction out of the 378 we went today!We passed several greenhouses in the northern part of Sonora, then miles of vineyards. Our neighbor, Dante, would be jealous of the miles of grapes! I just want to try the wine!This statue was just outside the city of Obregon, by what looked like will be a park or rest area.  We could see it for a long way off.When we got into town, we both thought their city sign was pretty cool.When we travel, it is always interesting when we spot trucks from companies based in the US. It is even more interesting when we saw this xpedx truck because it is the company from which Tobey retired!We made it to Navajoa around 4pm and filled up with gas. Yikes! We are spoiled at home. - gas is over $3.60 USD/gallon here. Next stop was the Tel-Cel office to get a “banda ancha” which is a laptop modem that we will use for internet. Between my poor Spanish, I-translate on my phone, and the little English they spoke, we got our purchase completed in about an hour! It was $469 pesos (about $25USD) for a new chip and 2 gigs of data for one month. A pretty good bargain.

After dinner we went into the Sam’s Club to look around and comparison shop. We bought a horchata concentrate. It sounded good so we will mix some up and have it tomorrow. Hopefully, it will be delicious! With the help of our young clerk, Carlos, we received permission from the manager to park in their lot overnight since the RV park here has closed down. Carlos spoke excellent English and was patient with my Spanish!   He told us his grandfather was an English teacher, so he learned from him. We had fun chatting with him for a while before leaving the store.

Today we drove 378 miles and paid $33.67 USD in tolls. Tomorrow we will get an early start and hope to make it to Mazatlán.

February 12, 2018 - Scottsdale, AZ to Nogales, AZ

Tobey and I have been hanging out in Scottsdale with our moms since mid-December. (They live 3 houses apart!)

Tobey’s mom, Ruthellen, had surgery on February 1 and we were thankful we were able to be there to help with doctor appointments and at-home care afterwards. Her recovery was remarkable and she is going gang-busters at 92 years old!

Yesterday, my siblings - Bette and Larry, and I threw a big birthday celebration for our mom, Beverly, who turned 90. It was a great time with about 100 folks turning out for her birthday lunch. Seeing relatives and long-time friends was fun for us, as well. We wish it could have lasted longer!!

However, with the party behind us, we are now on our way south. We finished loading the RV and motorcycle and were on the road about 3pm. We stopped in Tucson and had dinner with our friend, Roger. We decided on Seis Kitchen for dinner, but got our meals to go since the seating was all outdoors and it was pretty chilly and windy. We came back to our “house” and enjoyed our fish tacos, steak burrito, and horchata – a good way to get in the mood for travel to Mexico! After visiting a while, we said our goodbyes and we headed further south to Nogales, Arizona where we are spending the night at the Walmart before crossing the border in the morning.

We are planning to be on the road about 6am so good night!

January 21-22, 2018 - Quartzsite, Arizona

Remember yesterday? We did the same stuff today! It was windier, so we wore our heavier coats and gloves when we went into town to look at more market stuff. We walked around and saw more treasures we could live without!

Back at the RV we listened to the end of the Jaguars/Patriots game and were disappointed with the outcome. We hope the Eagles are able to triumph in the Super Bowl!

Monday morning.

We are getting things packed up and ready to head back to Scottsdale. Tobey will hang out there and I will be going back to Colorado on Wednesday for a week. Nothing else to report, so until later!

January 20, 2018 - Quartzsite, Arizona

We had a quiet evening last night watching a movie, The Perfect Game, before turning in. It was a fun movie based on a true story of the first Little League team in Monterey, Mexico. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend you do!

It was fairly warm overnight – our furnace never came on – Yeah!!! It did get windy and shook our little house, but not too bad.

Today we woke to blue skies and headed into town to go to the RV show and expo. We spent several hours going through the big tent looking at all vendors selling everything you could possibly need (or not) for your RV or home! We did come away with a mini vacuum for the RV in hopes of getting rid of the big one we have. We hope we can fit our new Inflatable kayak into that closet instead!

For lunch we split a pulled pork sandwich and curly fries. I didn’t think to take the picture until we had eaten about one quarter of the fries!!! It was $6.00 for the plate and we watched as they made them – 3 potatoes – peeled and cut using a drill driven peeler!As you can see, it was a popular place!After our lunch, we finished up the inside booths and decided we better head back to the RV since the rain clouds were moving in. We got a little wet on our way back and the wind was brisk, so it was good to get back.

Tobey got into practice for Mexico and took a siesta while I did some hand sewing. The sky had cleared, but because it was still quite windy, I cooked dinner inside rather than grilling this evening. The forecast for tomorrow is sunny, so we will head back to the RV show and look through several of the outside vendors and see what other goodies we can’t live without!

January 19, 2018 - Quartzsite, Arizona

It has been three years since Tobey and I have been to Quartzsite, so we decided to take off from Scottsdale and come over for the weekend. We left around noon and had an uneventful drive over – that is a good thing!

We headed north out of town on Highway 95 and are camping on BLM land at the Hi Jolly camping area. After leveling the RV, we took our motorcycle off the rack to go into town and had our first mishap! SOMEHOW, it got away from us on the ramp and crashed over, with Tobey under it. Fortunately, he only got a small scrap on his leg and the motorcycle only got a broken turn signal lamp. Our neighbor came over very quickly and helped pull the motorcycle off Tobey and get it righted. It reminded me of the first time we loaded our old scooter into a trailer to pull it before we got the rack on the RV. It was a fiasco and the scooter had its first crash! We will get used to this loading/unloading process again.

We headed back into to town and got a new lightbulb and Tobey was able to repair the cycle  for 95 cents. Not bad!

From the auto parts store we headed west on Main Street to see the Hi Jolly Tomb Memorial. Back in 1856, Jefferson Davis was the War Secretary and had the idea to use camels to transport freight and goods in the southwest. He imported 70 camels and a Syrian caretaker, Hadji Ali, to carryout  the program. His American masters called him Hi Jolly. The Civil War began and Jefferson Davis went on to become the President of the Confederacy and abandoned the project. The 70 camels were set free to fend for themselves near Quartzsite. Hi Jolly remained and lived to be in his 70s. He was well-liked by the locals and they built the memorial of petrified wood and quartz in his honor.

Later, the Arizona Highway Department added a bronze plaque to the site. It is located in the Quartzsite cemetery.

We stopped at one of the flea markets and walked around for a little while. Because it  was after 4 pm, many of the vendors were closing up so we headed back to the RV.

We enjoyed some sparkling wine that our friend, Susan, gave us before Tobey started the grill for dinner. We had a beautiful sunset while we ate dinner and we are settling in for the night. No internet out here, so we will post when we can! Enjoy your evening!