First day in Mexico... went pretty smoothly!

Well, lets start at the beginning! We got up at 5:30am Sunday morning, in order to be able to leave with the RV caravan group at 6:45am. No problem getting up that early, because I wasn't sleeping anyhow. Ruth said that she slept okay, but I didn't. Too many things racing through my mind.

Everybody was ready to go at 6:45. We all pulled out on the quiet street out in front of the RV park, and got lined up in the order that I had assigned them.

I counted all the rigs. Eleven.

Huh? There are supposed to be twelve of us!

Last blog post before Mexico!

Most of our regular readers know that we write up a new blog post for you every day. And it's normally published before 10:00am, depending on what time zone you're in. But that schedule could deviate a little over the next three months!

For example, tomorrow we will be up before the sun in order to make it to our border crossing at 7:00am!

Meeting our Mexico RV caravan group

We had a couple of stops to make yesterday morning before heading to Mission West RV Resort in Palmview, Texas.

We were looking for an old steel cookie sheet. Yes, we could have gone to Walmart to buy a new one, but for what we were using it for, it didn't make sense to buy new. I found a goodwill store along our route, and we stopped in there to see what there was.

Minor propane problem

We knew we weren't driving very far yesterday, so we waited for a couple of hours in the morning before heading out from Falcon State Park down to past McAllen, Texas.

At Falcon State Park, they have a propane truck that comes through and if you put your name on the sign up list, he'll stop at your site and fill you up. We were just getting ready to leave when the propane truck pulled up.

As much as we love dogs... we don't want another one right now!

I was deleting some photos from my phone, when I came across one that I forgot to tell you about. When we were boondocking at the country park near here last Saturday, we had walked a mile and a half to a store to buy some milk and eggs.

On the way back, we noticed a little black dog following us. Just like she was coming for a walk with us. We never touched her or tried to make friends with her. We just kept on walking.

It was kind of funny to watch

Our almost 8 year old Trojan T-105 batteries are apparently still doing pretty well. We haven't seen the sun since Christmas Day. And we had been parked up boondocking at the free county park near Falcon Heights, here at the Texas/Mexico border for three nights.

But by day four, with our batteries at 12.2 volts we knew that they needed charging. Solar panels work great, except when there is no sun!

Our frugal travel 2017 year in review... and expenses

Looking back at 2017, we had a fantastic year!

On this day a year ago, we were flying to Spain to tour Spain and Portugal for two months in a little motorhome. Then we flew to Italy where we rented a car and explored for three weeks. Then the tiny countries of San Marino and Monaco, and a couple of days in Nice, France. And on to interesting Morocco for two weeks before heading back to Barcelona for our return to Canada in April.

Getting Sherman ready for three months in Mexico

The sun never appeared like the weather forecast said it would, but at least they got the temperature right and it turned out to be a decent day despite the lack of sunshine. So I spent most of it outside giving Sherman a sponge bath and puttering around on a few fixer upper type of projects.

While I was doing that, Ruth was cleaning the inside of the windows and frames in our bedroom. Took all the screens out and cleaned them properly too. Sherman had sat for a full year prior to November 15th, and it has been so cold for the past six weeks of this trip that we've never been able to properly clean things.

This is a great free camping spot!

I first read about this spot on the Free Campsites website. It's also listed on the Ultimate Campgrounds app.

The reviews were mixed. Some people didn't think it was very good, but others thought it was fantastic. So we had a backup plan of staying at the nearby Falcon State Park if this didn't work out.

But, for a free campsite, we're not really sure how much more you could ask for. It's great!

Made it to the border!

And if we had our way, we would be crossing that border this coming Sunday, instead of having to wait until the next Sunday. But, we signed up to lead this RV caravan throughout Mexico (which we are really looking forward to doing, by the way) and the schedule says we don't depart until January 7th.

Speaking of the RV caravan, everything is coming together as we get closer to the departure date. There are lots of emails flying back and forth as the participants get prepared for a three month adventure... and what an adventure it will be!

We can't wait to get to Mexico!

A totally overcast day yesterday. Never saw the sun, but it never rained either so at least we were able to get outside and get some exercise.

I noticed that Al and Kelly over at The Bayfield Bunch got hit with a freak snowstorm while making their way through Texas to Arizona. Abnormally cold winter so far in the entire state of Texas. That's the problem with wintering in the southern U.S.. You never know from one year to the next if it's going to be Texas, Arizona, or Florida that gets hit with the cold. Always seems to be one of them.

Common sense prevails!

Woke up to a cool, windy, overcast day yesterday so we decided that we were better off driving. We're not really beach people to begin with, and the beach on a dreary day just doesn't seem worth it to us.

And the forecast for Magnolia Beach looked terrible for the next week, and not much better all across Texas. But the better weather is definitely closer to the Mexico border, so we started heading that way.

Not many RVs here at the beach

Not a very exciting Christmas Day here at the beach. Despite the morning sunshine it wasn't very warm outside and the wind continued throughout the day. It was 11:00am before we decided it was warm enough to go out for a walk.

We did about 2.5 miles (4 kms) along Magnolia Beach. It's a public park, and there is a washroom building with 4 showers. One of them was unlocked, and it looked usable enough.

Christmas Eve at the beach!

We didn't have far to go yesterday, only 48 miles. As soon as we got to Port Lavaca, we stopped at the Walmart to do a little last minute grocery shopping and buy an emergency supply of beer. Wouldn't want to run out of beer during Christmas at the beach!

Got up to the cash, and the beer wouldn't go through. The cashier couldn't figure it out, until she remembered that you can't buy beer here until after noon on a Sunday. Who thinks up these ridiculous laws?

But, it was almost 11:30am, so we went and sat in Sherman for a half an hour and I went back to get the beer at noon.

Bit of a long driving day for us...

We were still on a bit of a mission to get some inexpensive propane, so after we said goodbye to Annette and Raymond, we made a quick detour to the U-Haul in College Station to fill up the tank.

We got there, and parked nicely beside the fill station and I went in to get the guy. He was already coming out because he saw us pull in.

He got the hose and everything ready, and I remembered to ask him the price. "$3.39 a gallon" he says. Yikes. That's not cheap!