We were headed up to Mineral del Chico National Park.
Mexico's state and national parks aren't well visited by RV'ers. Partly because there are no facilities for RV's and the parks are normally not as well developed as they are in U.S. or Canada. So it's a bit of a challenge to arrive with a group of eight rigs not knowing if you will find somewhere suitable to overnight.
Josue leading us out in his car.
He had his four way flashers going to warn any vehicles coming in the opposite direction.
Mexican drivers love their four way flashers!
Rig numbers 2 and 3 coming up behind us.
It wasn't long and we got ourselves onto the toll road heading north. Again, reasonable toll fees. Even though the planned driving day wasn't very long, because I didn't know exactly where we were going to be staying I didn't want to waste a lot of time doing the drive itself.
Scenery along the way.
Overall nice roads with very little traffic.
There was more traffic on the main road that runs between Mexico City and the gulf coast, but we weren't on it for very long. Then at the city of Pachuca we had to deal with a bit of construction and traffic that slowed us down before we headed up into the mountains behind the city.
We planned a stop at a Pemex gas station only 6 kms from the entrance to the park. The rest of the group waited there while I hopped in with Sue and Roy and we went on a scouting trip. We found a great spot at 9,600' altitude!
Got ourselves parked up at GPS 20.179377, -98.71277 in a private recreation area on a small lake.
Yep, this will do!
No cell service here, but they do have WiFi! You put 10 pesos ($0.70 CAD, $0.50 USD) in an automatic box and it gives you a code for a half an hour use. It actually works well!
Ruth and I set off on a walk... there are a ton of trails here. We could spend a week exploring!
Walking through the pine forest.
Mom with a new foal.
Maguey plants.
This little guy was cute!
Nice views.
If it weren't for the smog you could probably see Mexico City from here.
Maguey plant blooming.
We walked down to a pretty lake.
This would be a great campsite!
But the road leading to it is a little narrow!
We ended up doing a beautiful 8 km (5 mile) hike. And along the way we found an even better grou campsite! We will be moving there this morning.
Might not be any blog or FB activity from us for the next day or two... likely no internet at the next spot.
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Record low deal on Men's Gillette 5 Razor Blade Refills.
And in Canada...
Beautiful park with great views. The have some very nice roads which is nice. Enjoy.
ReplyDeleteWe are really enjoying this area. We will definitely have to come back another time and spend four or five days here. This is definitely our happy spot. We really love all the hiking that is available here and the scenery is fantastic.
DeleteSome roads are better than others. This particular stretch on the toll road was in decent shape but they aren't always. Once we got off the toll road and headed through the edge of the city and up the highway towards the National Park the surface of the road was terrible.
Gorgeous! And the lack of traffic on the toll road is just amazing. Can't even imagine a road like that in the US.
ReplyDeleteYep, it is definitely a gorgeous area. :-)
DeleteThe lack of traffic on the toll road is because most of the locals will just use the free road and save their money. On this particular drive we would have loved to have stayed on the free road but Kevin and checked the road out on Google street view and found that a couple of the small towns that we would have to go through we going to be pretty tight so it just made more sense to that the toll road, especially because it wasn't a particularly expensive one compared to some of the toll roads.