Well, we made it to the Tucson area, making the trip from San Carlos with little trouble other than the rough roads. First Big-Mac yesterday! We’ll be busy for the next few days taking care of business and service.
Our Mexico reports are not complete. Over the next week or so additional reports will be issued. We’ve had a ball, but are glad to be back in the old U. S. of A.
Last night we stayed in a RV Park about 20 miles to the border.
The RV park was very unique. There was a plaque on the wall that said it was a Greyhound Dog Track started in 1963. There was a huge parking lot in front of the main building and grandstand. They have turned the parking lot into about 80 RV lots. I thought it was ironic to see adds about financing an RV there, since well everyone already had one. Then again, the features do keep getting more and more luxurious The main building now serves as the office, meeting rooms, kitchen and tables, game room and more. The grandstand was turned into an indoor pool, shuffleboard and other entertainment. Really a neat place for people to stay the winter.
A caravan stayed at the same RV Park we stayed in last night.
A caravan is a group of RVs traveling together with experienced drivers leading and another in the back of the line. They are the same as tour guides so it cost money to join a caravan. We have read tons of books on
We had no problem stopping at the immigration office which was located about 15 miles inside Mexico. There were not a lot of people there when we arrived. Apparently they have large groups of people at one time because there were lots of chairs to sit in while waiting your turn. It took us about 45 minutes to an hour to tend to the paper work.
The majority of the people were norteamericanos (us). The Canadians were flying their little antenna flags on their RVs. Since 9/11 it is a little scary to fly a
Passing customs with paperwork.
We had read that the toll roads to Hermosillo, where we would spend the first night, were just like in the states. The authors must not have driven in Texas where the roads are smooth. They must have been driving in
A 3-mile row of northbound trucks waiting for an inspection point.
Our stop this evening is at the Sonora RV Park on the north side (Hwy 15, KM 7) of Hermosillo. The park is nearly empty, probably because it is new. We found the park to be extremely clean. Each of the 10 spots has 30 amp connections. We picked one with a 50 amp connection; however, it was only capable of 30 amps.
We definitely are in a different country. There are lots of cars that would not pass an emission inspection. We were driving around Hermosillo and a train was passing by and lo and behold there were people on top of the cars hitching a ride!!!!! We went into Wal Mart and it pretty much looks just like all Wal Marts except everything is written in Spanish. They even had a McDonalds.
Lifes a journey and we are on one!!!
Here’s an odd, and seemingly out of place spot, just east of Tucson. It’s called Texas Canyon. Fortunately there is a rest area at this point with about a 2000 foot drop to the west.
The rocks are similar to those found in southern California. (See May blog regarding the formation)
Here you can see the tremendous size of the rocks with the trucks in the foreground.
This unique area is seen for only a few miles and then disappears as quickly as it appeared.
Quite a sight in the middle of the desert.
Life’s a journey, and we’re on one!
I am sure you guessed we are not in the
We stayed at Mission RV Park in El Paso which is the closest RV park near Tinkas long time friend, Sherri. We enjoyed ourselves as usual by laughing, visiting, laughing, eating and laughing some more. Had a great time and then it was time to move on down the road.
We arrived in Tucson,
What kind of documents do you need? You need a passport, drivers license, original titles to your vehicles and rig. We are in the process of getting Mexican insurance on both vehicles. Plus, we are taking our US insurance papers along with us.
We are also reading about what to take with us to Mexico. They do have Sams Club and Wal Mart at the larger towns. How familiar will the merchandise and food be to us? It says to take peanut butter (and that is a must for Rick), canned tomatoes and dill pickles. We also need to take car and rig things that they do not have down in
To backtrack a little and then try to catch up to date. We stayed in Tucson from the 4th of June until the 10th of June visiting our friends Roland and Karen and visiting the area. On Sunday, June 10, we drove from Tucson to El Paso, TX. We stayed in the Mission RV Park which was located close to our friends house, Sherri. We all went out to eat and then over to see her son and his family. Mainly, we had to see her granddaughter, Ava, who is one year old. She is a cutie!!!!!!!!! Plus, she is going to have a baby sister soon.
When we left AZ and about the time we entered NM, the landscape was greener than we had ever seen it. All through NM and then all through Texas it is so green and beautiful. Unbelievable!!!!! Remember we had just driven through the same area 3 months ago heading to CA.
Monday, we got up and drove to Midland. Between Pecos and Midland I could not get over the green landscape. But they have had lots of rain just like Dallas has. We visited with 2 aunts and 2 uncles. Patricia, a cousin was in town. It was a good surprise to see her. We went out to a favorite Mexican restaurant and then over to my aunts house to visit. It was good to see everyone again.
This was our view out our window in Midland. Of course, oil wells!!!!
On Tuesday, June 12, we arrived in Weatherford and set up camp at our old stomping grounds, Cowtown RV. We spent our time getting our truck checked out and getting things put in storage. Do we really need 12 bath towels, plus 6 beach towels with us? We DO have a washer and dryer! We have 5 dining room chairs that are very heavy. One is a desk chair that we just sit in the corner because it is too heavy to move in and out of our desk. We use a folding chair instead. So we put 3 chairs in storage and now we have only 2 dining room chairs, more room and less weight. We ran out of time and didnt empty all the clothes we had with us that we do not wear. We tend to wear about 3 or 4 sets of clothes over and over and that is all. So if we post pictures and you keep seeing the same outfits on us youll know the reason why.
We had been losing power steering fluid and thought it was the power steering gearbox that we had replaced last year. Alas, no such luck. It turned out to be the hydrobooster. I didn’t know either. But that controls all of the hydraulics such as brakes and steering. It turns out that the new replacement was also defective and when you turned the steering wheel far to one side or the other, the brakes would engage. Not good. So back again for another replacement. All seems well now.
Wednesday we went to one of our favorite places to eat in Weatherford (Boo Rays) with some friends, David and Carla. Thursday was a busy day. Rick went back to his old company to have lunch with the regular gang and Tinka met up with a friend, Brandy, at the mall to eat and visit. Thursday night, Lance drove over after work with Ayden, the granddaughter, to visit and eat. This is the first time in 3 months that Tinka had seen Ayden. She sure does miss that little girl while we are traveling the country!!!!!!!!!! We went to Wal-Mart to pick up our favorite pizza. Wal-Mart has a Papa Murphys Pizza in the Weatherford store. While we were gone we didnt see them in any of the Wal-Marts. You order your pizza, they put it together while you watch, then you take it home and cook it. Delicious!!!!!
We cant stay in one spot too long so we packed up and moved on Friday. Actually, we decided that instead of driving all over the Dallas area every day to visit people we would take our RV to whatever area of Dallas we were going to be visiting. We had reservations at Cedar Hill State Park for Friday and Saturday. This was several firsts for us. It was the first time to take our RV in a state park and first time to ever go to Cedar Hill State Park. Cedar Hill SP is gorgeous with lots of trees and trails. A lot of RVers would rather stay in State or National Parks than commercial RV Parks because the sites are usually spread out, you are not crammed in with neighbors right beside you and the scenery is usually better. Friday night we went over to our friends, Jerry and Danas and they prepared us a delicious dinner. On Sat. afternoon we had a pool party to attend in the area. Now a pool party in the Dallas area during the month of June this year means RAIN. Yes, it rained a while and then it would stop a while (and on and on and on). We enjoyed seeing old friends even if it did rain.
Now we are up to Fathers Day. That means we have to pack up and move again closer to Ricks sons. I will post about what we did and where we moved for Fathers Day later.