Almost got ripped off

Twice, in a span of about 10 minutes!

First, it was a gas station attendant trying to rip us off.

We were leaving Hermosillo at about 8:30am yesterday morning. We were on the eastern ring road that avoids most of the city, but it's still a fairly busy industrial area.

I thought I had enough gas to get us to the border. The goal of course was to arrive at Nogales, Arizona with an empty tank so that we could then fill up with some cheap American fuel.

Almost to the border!

I don't envy those who have to do this drive every winter to get to their favorite sun destination in Mexico. What a terrible drive.

But, in all of our Mexico travels we had never done the route between Mazatlan and Hermosillo. And we'll probably never do it again.

Wandering around Alamos, Mexico

Alamos, Mexico was a colonial silver mining town from 1685 until it's gradual decline in the early 1900's. At one point, there were 30,000 people living here, and in the 1920's there were only several hundred left.

Many of the mansions and haciendas from the colonial period were left vacant and in disrepair until the 1940's when wealthy people from Canada and the U.S. began buying up property and restoring these old buildings, a process which continues today. Now, there are about 24,000 people living here.

It wouldn't be like us to take the easy route.

A long driving day for us yesterday.

Made even longer, by a decision I chose to make towards the end of the drive! Of course there was some logic to that decision, it simply didn't work out quite as well as we would have liked. Oh well. It wouldn't be like us to take the easy route, would it?

Still...I told Ruth when we got married that she would never be bored!

Sometimes, it makes sense to take the toll road!

Another good day. And, another good overnight spot.

With 323 kms (200 miles) ahead of us we were on the road by 8:30am in keeping with our goal of arriving at our destination before 2:00pm. Again, for this journey up the west coast we're staying off the toll roads unless it makes sense to do otherwise. The tolls are quite expensive for Sherman!

Not one of our better decisions...

Yesterday, the original plan was to ride the bikes the 10 kms (6 miles) into the town of Teacapan. But speaking to the manager here at Color Marino Hotel and Trailer Park made us change our minds. He said that the road is busy on a Sunday, and there are no shoulders so to be very careful. So we asked about taking the bus. Yes, we could walk the 2 kms to the main road and flag the bus when it comes along.

In typical Kevin and Ruth fashion, we decided to walk all the way to Teacapan along the beach, and then take the bus back. We only made one mistake.

You take the toll road, and I'll take the free road

Or something like that. Or is it the high road and the low road? Anyhow, they both get you to the same place.

Some people suggest that you always travel on the toll roads while in Mexico. But we've learned that's often not the best idea. I guess people have some kind of misguided notion that the toll roads are somehow "safer", although we don't really subscribe to that.

No charge, and with a smile too!

We had a good day yesterday, just relaxing and going for a bike ride. We even slept in! Didn't wake up until almost 7:30am. Man, that doesn't happen very often!

In the morning, Larry came over because his Telcel cellular data plan ran out on his iPad, and we tried to get it recharged again. Turns out that it's not easy for an iPad to do SMS messaging through the installed SIM card, and so we decided to go into town.

Not a bad place to spend a couple of days...

We've been in Mexico since October 19th of last year. Five full months, other than our six week jaunt to Colombia. And this is the first time we've been to the beach!

Most people come to Mexico specifically for it's beaches and warmth. And if we were on a one or two week vacation to get out of the cold, that's probably what we would do too.

Well that was a fun five hours!

One of the fun things here at Rancho Altarose RV Park is that Garry runs an ATV tour business. Yesterday, he asked if we wanted to come along as he was taking a group up to an out of the way hot springs pool at Aguas Termales Nuevo Ixtlán.

Sure...let's go!

Next time, we'll do this in a week instead of a day!

We did a long, slow, and beautiful drive yesterday on a secondary two lane road through the mountains. We've done this route before, but never all in one day!

And what we realized was that we could easily spend a week or more doing this route, and just finding places to park the motorhome overnight and explore along the way.

Another good day in Mexico

Just a nice day. That's what we had today!

Got all our internet stuff done before 11:00am thanks to the fast wifi here at Delia's Trailer Park in Etzatlan. And more...I even downloaded some old TV shows for watching later. Boy, when you don't have decent internet for a while it sure is nice to have that good connection.

Back on the road. A terrible road...

We were on the road by 9:30am yesterday morning. Only 195 kms (121 miles), but that can be a four hour drive in the motorhome in Mexico. As always, the goal is to be parked up at our next location by 2:00pm. That gives us lots of daylight hours to fix a problem, should we happen to have one.

Fortunately, we didn't have any problems. Other than one bad road!

We're hitting the road...

Yesterday was market day, and then I had my final dentist appointment at 1:00pm. I wanted to have some lunch before my appointment, and of course brush my teeth before going, so that meant two trips into town. But we haven't had much exercise this week, so two trips walking into town was fine with us.

We left around 10:15am on the first trip. It's about two kms (1.3 miles) each way.

Something didn't look quite right...

We had invited our friends over for dinner, and so Ruth spent much of the day getting ready. Me? Not so much. Unfortunately the kitchen in the motorhome is kind of a one person operation. Better that way anyhow. Ruth is a much better cook than me!

However, I did manage to keep busy.