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North America

2006 - ??

It was an easy drive to San Carlos on a minor road whose numbers changed frequently and didn’t match anything the books said. We checked into Totonaka RV Park right next to Phil and Linda and 2 sites from Vicki and Gerry. All water was turned off in the town for the day. Luckily we had our own. We wondered what the people who came to stay in the little cabins did. The bathrooms and laundry were locked.

We set up and spoke to a Canadian couple who contacted us via our Datastorm site. We all want reassurance and to share others’ experiences, so I wrote to tell them how it went for us. They brought us extra horseradish to add to catsup for shrimp cocktail sauce, so we were able to share with Phil and Linda.

Soon we all went across the street to Charly’s Rock for beers and a glorious sunset. Phil and Linda took off the next morning and we didn’t see them again until February when we did a day trip to visit them in Teacapan. Gerry says Teacapan is so lovely he would have to kill us if he told us about it.

Vicki and I took a cooking class from Maria, the owner of the RV Park. She lived most of her years in California and Chicago and understood what we’d want to learn from her. She discussed dry and fresh chilies and showed us pretty pictures as she went. She had us all select a salsa type we’d like to make, then she told us what we’d need to make it .. and we reconvened at 9 the next morning to take the bus to the market at Guaymas. There she advised our purchases and took us to a tortorilla where she bought dough for tamales and chips for our afternoon salsa tasting. We all returned to our rigs and met again in the afternoon to sample each others concoctions. There was a variety of fresh and cooked salsas. She did not approve of the days’ tomatillos or mangos, so there were no green or fruit salsas that some wanted to make. Surprisingly ... all of us who went to the first class were free for the bus tour and next afternoon gathering.

I learned to make cooked salsa. It is rather like the red dipping sauce you get with the complimentary chips at most Mexican restaurants. We will never have to buy jars of salsa again. Yeahhhhh ….

Wanna know how to make cooked salsa?

Use a small saucepan .. about quart size. Wash 2-3 long dry red California chilies and snip off the ends. Cut the chilies into several pieces and put in saucepan. Wash and coarsely chop 4-5 plum tomatoes and about 2/3 of a medium onion. You can vary all of these amounts to your taste on the next batch. Remove the seeds for a milder salsa. Drop in several cloves of garlic and some salt. Add cilantro if desired, though she didn’t.

Cover with water and bring to a gentle boil. Simmer at medium 10 – 12 minutes. Turn off heat and let the mixture cool. Pour off most of the liquid and reserve to use it later for rice or couscous or soup.

Blend the salsa. One of those hand held immersible varieties works slick. Just rinse it with a drop of soap, dry and put it away. Store salsa in some sort of container and it lasts several weeks. A 10-oz (maybe?) plastic peanut butter jar gets filled up when I make it.

Try various dry chilies or add a chipotle pepper from a can before blending for a different taste. Try white and yellow onions. Perhaps even red??

Vicki and Gerry let us ride with them to Guaymas for the Wednesday market. There was a lot for sale in town .. bikes and games and clothes and such .. much more than we ever saw in Costa Rica. We bought a pump for our big 5-gallon water jug and Gerry directed us to some wonderful carnitas … cooked chopped seasoned beef … that came with salsa and tortillas. A kilo made us happy for 2 meals, though we don’t like the corn tortillas nearly as well as flour / harina. I got pretty Barbie dresses for Jaime and Emily.

After laundry and money and organizing and scoping everything out, we were ready to move on to our timeshare week. We left the rig at the El Mirador RV Park just up the road from the Premier Vacation Club for $8 per day. We piled the car high with stuff and checked in. The guys brought a big gray bin and we got everything up in one trip. Again .. a wonderful country.

We met some nice folks, enjoyed the erratic hot tub that was scalding hot some afternoons but tepid at dusk when the air was chilly, had dinner twice at La Manga … a little village past the end of the road that has no electricity .. just propane and generators and solar and such. Vicki and Gerry came the second time and we found a wonderful place up the hill overlooking the bay ... El Mirador … and it felt just like Italy. Wonderful garlic shrimp for $8. We brought our own beer. The weather was very cold that week so it wasn’t our perfect first timeshare week .. but who cares? We didn’t waste a week of work vacation getting here.

Vicki and Gerry travel with no TV, no computer, no cell phone .. but they enjoy a Sirius radio. They email with one of the mail stations you connect to a phone line. So we gave Vicki our 3rd computer to use for a few days and got her started using her web mail site. You remember how hard it is to learn to use a computer keyboard? Move the cursor, anchor the cursor, watch what GIGO you’re typing, etc. She thought I was very patient .. and she was doing quite well after a few days. That keyboard freezes up sometimes and the QWERTY line letters don’t always work. There’s some quirky press the right shift keys and it might come back. So add THAT to her learning and she did so well. Gerry promises they’ll buy a computer soon .. after their South Africa and Eastern Europe adventures if not before.

Here I learned to make Holy Guacamole:

It must be eaten fresh, doesn’t store well .. so this is a small serving Larry and I can get outside of in one Happy Hour and sometimes skip dinner afterwards.

One ripe avocado ... but not overripe. You’ll just have to learn .. should mush up but not be black inside. If it is too hard, they told us you can microwave it 1 min or boil 2 mins .. but I haven’t tried this yet. Avocados are always just right in Mexico.

Some white onion and plum tomato finely chopped. Cilantro and garlic finely chopped. Salt to taste. Some states squeeze some lime juice in. DD likes a touch of cumin and some sour cream. Mash avocado and blend in the rest. Enjoy with chips.

Phil and Linda wrote from Celestino RV Park, a new park about 50 miles north of Mazatlan. People were saying that most places south were fully reserved for the next months. So I tried to contact RV parks in Mazatlan. One was full, one had Spanish voicemail, 2 emails were returned from postmaster. Mar Rosa .. right on the beach and the one we’d prefer anyway .. had a few spots left and were not taking reservations for them. First come first served.

So we checked out of the timeshare the Friday before Christmas and headed toward Mazatlan. We spent Friday night at a tired old park in Los Mochis and on the next day to Mazatlan. There were hoards of California and Arizona and local Mexicans heading ‘home’ for Christmas. Cars and trucks were piled high with luggage, bicycles, wheelchairs and more. Lots of vendors at every tope and toll booth hawking their wares and collecting for charities or washing windows with dirty water and oily rags. I think we chose the Libre road .. at first to be cheap .. later because the turn to the Toll Road looked like an old dusty trail. So we limped thru Culiacan .. making the correct turns despite every sign missing the arrow bit that we needed. Just outside of town, we were stopped for over 90 minutes as something overturned or ??? around the bend. Every little while .. ALL the cars queued would zoom past us and somehow be able to continue. Even when traffic did restart, the truck in front of us didn’t move until all traffic cleared .. which was OK as I preferred them to be in front of us. Somewhere that day my rear blinky bike light disappeared.

Again it got dark on us and we got to Mazatlan after sunset. We backed into a spot that turned out to be beside a couple from Minneapolis, set up .. and caught a pulmonia / golf cart taxi to the driver’s favorite taco stand. The owner ran out somewhere for beers when we inquired. Great tacos.

Our neighbors were all out for the evening and returned later in several little trucks with bench seating along each side … arrigas .. same price as a pulmonia usually, but hold more people. We once saw 13 local wimmen get out of one. We learned the next day they were at a baseball game. Mazatlan was a big winner in this years finals.

Signs announced a ‘group’ dinner Christmas day at 4pm. I bemoaned to Mrs. Minneapolis that we hardly had time to organize a group .. so she caucused with the Canadian wimmen and they deigned to let us join them. They were cooking 3 turkeys they’d won in a golf tournament. We were assigned to bring dinner rolls. Dinner rolls in Mexico??? Hmmmmm …

Sunday we got brave and drove the car to Gigante. We got lots of stuff for escalloped corn, pasta salad, cheap vodka, but no dinner rolls. Off to Walmart .. now we’re talking the day before Christmas eve and we are chicken $h!t drivers in Mexico!!! Busy!!! They had big plastic containers of rolls .. crescent type .. and I got lots. No creamed corn or cornbread mix, so I improvised and turned out a heavy tasty escalloped corn that was hardly touched. Likewise my awesome Greek pasta salad with many veg, goat cheese, kalamate olives, basil, tarragon vinegar and oil. Yummm … But again we went home with it. I gave a bowl to one of the Canadians ..who gave it in turn to some newcomers. They liked their cucumber in vinegar, pierogies, cranberry sauce .. but they did enjoy the Brandy Alexander liquors we brought. It had been cold in the evenings, but the weather held nice for our dinner. I tried to buy wine and Baileys at Walmart but was denied .. it was after 4pm on a Sunday.

Young kids .. 8-12 or so .. or the elderly .. bag the groceries in markets here. They do it for tips. Also there are men in some semblance of a uniform with a whistle that assist you in the parking lot. They also ‘work’ for tips.

After Christmas we moved the rig and tried to find the satellite for internet. We ALMOST got it, so we moved to the second row from the beach without trees overhead. Pricier, but we liked the neighborhood better and we’d hear and see the ocean .. between the honking big class A’s in the front row.. Didn’t get the satellite, so phoned MotoSat and spent hours of 2 days on the cell phone trying to switch to 117. It wasn’t looking good, but by using the campground WiFi for $50 a month, we got advice from DataStorm Users Group and succeeded. It added $160 or so to the phone bill that month. Yipes!!! But SKYPE doesn’t allow you to ‘press 2 for Tech Support’ after you connect, so it was the cell phone or nothing. And we DID enjoy the dish internet. Found out you can’t ie. watch Craig Ferguson clips or download Stephanie Miller podcasts from Mexico .. or perhaps anywhere outside the US. Urngggggg? Happily we could with our dish. Some folks told us it takes them sometimes 8 days to change satellites so they park in Salt Lake City until they succeed. So our $160 was peanuts in a way.

Sheila from BC was staying for a month at the El Quijote Inn next door, so I checked it out and found we could rent a Jr Suite for a month for the same $$ I could get it on the internet for 2 weeks. Hmmmm …. So … I called and emailed Joel Torres many times saying we had no contract, I did not have a signed agreement that he said I needed and he’d send, yadda yadda and return my money. No response, so I booked the suite for a month and invited Betty and Joel Schliefer from Minneapolis area to come for a week, then Tracey and Roger Ellmers from Colorado Springs the final week. All set for some fun now!! I’m putting a bad word out on Joel everyplace I can .. TripAdvisor and the like. Someone on trip advisor suggested a link to a Mexican site for fraud, but since he is in the US, it didn’t cover. Will investigate Small Claims Court when we’re in Washington. He did write 11pm Sunday before our Wed date to tell me to call him to get directions to the Villa. He found time to write to me 10 or more times the next days .. always saying no refund, I knew the villa is waiting for me, HE has a signed contract, we are good to go. No Joel … I phoned and wrote many many times since October. Did they sound like I knew we were good to go? Why didn’t you find time to reply then?

We set about learning the city, buffing up our tans, enjoying the fresh shrimp sold each day right next to the rig, visiting both ends of the Cerritoes Juarez bus route … the Sunday flea market in the Juarez neighborhood and Playa Bruja, a surfing beach with a lovely palapa restaurant, at the other end in tiny Cerritoes .. and trying out restaurants.

Later in January, the Tighes and Ruth Kahl arrived. We brought just enough stuff to Pueblo Bonito for a party, then went back to the rig the next day and drove some stuff over and took the girls food shopping. It was the first time they’d stayed in Mazatlan for 2 weeks … and now they are hooked. We signed up (quite forcefully) to visit the new Pueblo Bonito Emerald Bay Resort for ‘an update’. Mary and Carl wound up buying a biennial week there when they promised to rent out their current week in town. By the end they know they’ll use both weeks themselves.

Our guide Fred gave us numbers to call for his favorite restaurant Topolo’s, and for a place to reserve to watch the Carnival Fireworks Saturday night. We had to get right to the Fireworks place to pay and choose a table, so we took the arriga, made the reservations and paid, enjoyed sunset from the roof of the Hotel Freeman, then had a wonderful meal at Topolo’s .. with live classical guitar, fine wine, fruit flambé for dessert. Hmmmm .. Thanks Fred.

We all took in a Fiesta at the Plaza Mazatlan in the Hotel Zone.. an evening of dancing and singing and Mexican buffet plus all you wanted to drink .. in a dinner theater setting. We dined at Casa Loma on the 27th anniversary of Mary and Carl’s engagement. We took the bus out to Cerritoes for shrimp and dancing entertainment. Shopping, the awesome 10:30 Carnival fireworks along the Malecón and the bands and masks and merriment, dinner and a Carnival Parade from the Hotel Hacienda platform, and more. We had fun and both Mary and Ruth went home with a few new baubles from their favorite beach vendor .. Leonardo.

They got us tickets on the airport shuttle bus for a Stone Island tour, so we scratched the cheapo route we’d investigated. For $20 each, an arriga picked us up at the hotel at 9am, took us to the boat which took us out into the ocean for a bit to see Bird Island and sealions .. then on to Stone Island where a Mexican limousine .. a wagon and tractor .. showed us the village and took us to our restaurant for the day. We had lunch, all we could drink … plus a horse ride along the beach or a wagon and horse ride for an extra $5. I hate horse riding, but I went with Carl and we enjoyed the pace. We reversed the trip around 2:30. Another great day!!

I got the tickets for the parade from Babe Scanlon. She is a hoot and I stayed in touch with her for awhile and we went to her house for a birthday party she had for an 83 year old neighbor lady. I used to be Jean Scanlan, so she felt like family.

She also had tickets to a Bull Fight! I thought they don’t do that in Mazatlan, since 2002 or so. Just for Carnival she said. And a midget bullfight in December where a troup of Mexican midgets frolic with baby bulls, but don’t kill them. And recently we heard about an Easter one. Well .. just a few. So we went, as the bull(s) would be killed with or without us there .. and she said it was special because the toreadors rode dancing horses. It was an intimate arena and heaps of locals enjoyed themselves. Little children cheering when a bull went down. Awwww … I cheered for the bull. In all, 4 bulls were ceremoniously killed .. I didn’t know. There were a few protesters outside afterwards … bull fighting is neither art/culture nor sport, they declared! We didn’t know .. what do you eat after a bullfight?? We both pictured chicken places on the walk back, but no. We were in time to watch the second fireworks and had a beer and hot dog on the street before walking home with some Panama Bakery purchases to have with coffee. What a day!!

Next we got ready for DD, Heidi, Jaime, Emily and Natanya’s arrival. We scoped out more restaurants for kid food and vegetarian for Nat. I investigated everything I could find about how they should come from the airport, then recommended that they hail a taxi, pay $26US, and get themselves to El Quijote, avoiding those that would give you a free ride in return for visiting a timeshare presentation. I cleaned out the bottom bunk for the girls .. not a mean feat .. and got their presents ready and the horsie lights we bought at Camping World .. and lots of books. Heidi says Jaime can READ!! And she can.

We had a fun week with them .. doing the Stone Island tour, Cerritoes which had Dancing Horses on the beach at dusk on Saturday, sent Heidi and Nat to climb the lighthouse path … the highest working lighthouse in the world, Arnoldo told us on the Stone Island tour .. to the Market to see the pigs heads and feet, and to the Juarez Flea Market. They had a ball. The girls enjoyed the two camp cats that adopted our site as home .. a lovely calico female named Poncha and a yellow male named Pancho. We were bushed everynight and after they left.

DD stayed an extra week, missing Murrey Seamus O’Reilly and checking often on his behavior at the Oh So Fun Dog Ranch Vacation Retreat. She got jealous that he’d rest his head on herself’s lap in the afternoon when she took him with her inside to do some office work. He also did some snapping at a dog or two, so perhaps she won’t be traveling for two weeks again.

Jaime LOVES horses, so when she got to ride all by herself TWICE on Stone Island .. she declared it the BEST DAY OF HER WHOLE LIFE!!!! She knows how to tickle Grandma and Grandpa. On the last day she rode again on the beach in front of El Quijote. We bought dresses, got their thread name bracelets made, had lots of chicken nuggets .. but mostly lots of chips. The chocolate milk was hit or miss .. often some thin icy concoction. When they left .. Jaime said ‘Grandma .. you’re WONDERFUL!!’ Awwww … By calling the tour company directly, we were able to get the same $20 tour deal that Carl got on the hotel bus for our Stone Island trips.

One day we drove to Copala with DD. It is an old colonial town with the best banana cream pie .. a few hours from Mazatlan and in the hills headed to Durango. It turned out to be a windy little village with a wonderful old church and the pie was good. Meant to go to El Quelite too, but DD preferred to stay at the beach. Next time.

We had one day between DDs departure and the arrival of Betty and Joel, so we drove several hours south and spent a few hours with Phil and Linda in Teacapan. We went into town to a little unmarked bakery and selected items by hand to carry on Linda’s pizza pan. We picked up their laundry at an obscure little place as well and had a great lunch at a little palapa restaurant on a cove, next to a little campground. If we knew, we’d have seen the little class B rig of Rob and Daph Breeze that we met at Celestino a few weeks later. They were in another little park to the right end of the cove. There are heaps of pepper plants in the area and we saw stacks of dried red serranos. Nice trip.

We had a nice visit with Betty and Joel and lots of great meals. We just visited them in August, but since then son Jon’s wedding took place, so we got all caught up. One evening we passed a FSIH building up the road and there were a lot of nationals hanging about. They kept being there and one day handed Joel a 2 page document declaring their plight at losing their homes when the new dam is completed. Soon they had banners, a lane of traffic blocked off, even a march to the Malecón. Then they were gone. Wonder at the outcome?? Our Stone Island tour with Betty and Joel had lots of spring break college students with us. The guys enjoyed the antics of the busty broads.

Tracey and Roger didn’t heed my airport taxi advice ... suckered in by the $150 cash, the restaurant voucher and the free taxi ride. The next morning they visited the Mayan Resort and bought into a 4-week Vacation Package that gives them 4 weeks a year at any of the Mayan Resorts, plus trade and travel pkgs, etc. and again the promise to rent out some weeks or parts of the suite for golf conventions. We spent a day at the Mayan and it was nice. Last year Mary and Carl took us to a newer Mayan in Puerto Vallarta and it was really nice!! Roger’s girls are now out of the house and they’ll enjoy the time away alone together.

Easter and Semana Santa were coming. We were paid until Holy Thursday, but we kept hearing about the hordes of nationals that throng the beach that week, even setting up lots of tents in the RV park between the rows. Lots of music and drinking and messy bathrooms. Most people had gone, so we traveled north to Celestino, recommended and enjoyed by our new friends. It was weird packing up and driving again after 3 months. We didn’t buy petrol for the rig for 3 months!! It was a nice 50 mile trek on the Toll Road .. we’re only going that way hence .. and interesting to become acquainted with the Toll Road exits. Luckily the Churches told us to take the dirt path just before the overhead. Wondering if we missed that feature on the way in from the border, as we didn’t get off the Toll Road until Hermosillo.

We found our way to Celestino RV. There are several RV Parks along that road. We fit in one of the spots closer to the ocean while the big rigs had to stay back toward the road. It is a new park .. deep and narrow. It took us awhile to adjust to the ‘nothing to do’ of it .. and stayed 2 weeks, reluctant to leave. Rob and Daph Breeze, British immigrants to Ontario, were our neighbors and we just love them. We all drove to Chonito’s in nearby Dimas for lunch one day, then on to the El Mirador restaurant that Phil and Linda wrote about. The dirt road road went on forever and nothing after the first sign. We were sure it was wrong, but there were no other choices to have wrongly chosen. Finally we got to a little town and after buzzing it, tried a palapa on a hill that we saw from the other end of the tiny town. What a find!! Beautiful view of the little village, a beautiful cove and a lighthouse on the hill over there. Phil neglected to tell us they didn’t serve cerveza .. an unexpected and unforgivable, really, oversight on his part … so we just had a soda. A crew was putting up new fancy signs as we turned back onto the dusty road. Wouldn’t ya know???

Another day we went north toward La Cruz and found the Turtle Sanctuary and visited La Cruz for lunch and potluck supplies. The coast has 40km of turtle hatching in the fall and January. Must come back for that sometime. They had the shell of a laud turtle and it was as tall and wide as Larry with his arms outstretched. They had a photo of its trail with a guy laying across it and filling the width. They also had a turtle in a tiny aquarium where it had to struggle constantly to keep its head out of the water to breathe. It was very hard to turn around and leave it struggling, but our limited Spanish didn’t provide for a recommended fix.

Vicki and Gerry told us how to do a Copper Canyon tour the cheap way, so we headed to El Fuerte after the Easter holidays ended. We read that there would be black flies .. and there were and they were nasty when we arrived. Larry doesn’t usually get bites, but his calves are speckled with bites. After a day buzzing El Fuerte and environs, we got picked up Monday morning to be taken to the train. The primero train hadn’t arrived yet. We probably spent a minute debating whether to take it when it arrived, but the throng looked pretty likely to fill it up. Plus it is twice the price of the secundo. 327 pesos cheap / double pricey. That’s $32.70 one way or double per person.

The secundo arrived an hour after the primero. There were LOTS of nationals getting on. We got on with a young British backpacker couple. She scouted this way and that and all seats looked full. Then a train guy sent us packing toward a front car. Mid-way another train guy sent us back again and on to the last car. I was pretty sure we would spend the whole trip trippsing back and forth with all our luggage banging everyone. But .. no . the last car had lots of room and we settled in. People used to take the train from Los Mochis, but as the terrain between Los Mochis and El Fuerte isn’t awesome, people now leave from El Fuerte. We met several people on personalized tours who flew into Los Mochis, then took a taxi 50 miles to El Fuerte. What must that have cost?? They didn’t know .. it was built into their pricey package.

The young couple got off at Posada Barraca. Soon the conductor said 15 minutes til Divisidero .. a spot where you get off for 15 minutes and choose from a spectacular lookout over one of the canyons, buy stuff from the many Tarahumara vendors .. or buy tacos from the many people cooking over oil barrel stoves. Nine minutes later we determined that this WAS the stop and everyone was off eating or viewing or buying. We dashed and caught the view and I snatched 2 quick tacos on the way back. The train guy said we had to eat in the Dining Car .. even though EVERYONE was eating at their seats the entire trip. So I tripped back to tell Larry and we tripped forward several cars to eat as directed .. with me again hitting everyone in the head with my bag.

The train goes from Los Mochis to Chihuahua. Creel is about halfway and the best bit is between El Fuerte and Creel. So Vicki and Gerry said to get off at Creel and find our way to Casa Margarita’s Hostel for our room. I knew it was closeby, but it was dark and the hustlers shouted at us immediately. They got us to a bus Margarita now provides. First they took some people to Plaza Margarita, a more upscale habitation, then took us back to the Casa … a short walk from the train station. We got an ensuite room for $35 total per day, including breakfast and dinner. We got settled and went right down for dinner as it was nearing the 8pm cutoff hour.

We sat with Sharon and Fred and Barbara and Walter. I’d chatted with Sharon at the El Fuerte station that morning. They signed up for a shuttle tour of an old church, a lake and some interesting rock formations the next day, but we chose to just sit and rest as Larry’s back was acting up for a week now. Some of the rocks are called Monk Rocks, but Maggie from Poland shared that they look like penis’s and used to be called Penis Rocks, but it just didn’t work with the gringos. Hmmmm …. So we rested and they saw the lake and visited a Tarahumara village I think, but the chapel was locked and they didn’t get to the Monks. A shame!!

The Tarahumara people live in the Copper Canyon area. They are an ancient native tribe that live in a stick hut in the winter and in a cave in the summer and live very primitively, cooking over wood fires, washing and bathing in the river and such. They are very fast runners and are known to run 100 miles in a day and carry on the next. I believe some are in the Olympics. The women wear very colorful skirts and jackets … bright yellow, orange, blue, reds .. with a bandana on their head and a shawl wrapped around them. The skirts have many ruffles and decoration between each ruffle. The jackets are very puffy and pleated and require lots of fabric. They are wonderful!! They make a lot of woven belts and bracelets and baskets and sell them to the gringos.

Many just sat around the town square or craft store all day. Some sewed, the children just sat with them and ate oranges and such. We wondered about their WC and determined that they used the underside of the bridge we saw from our room .. the bridge leading to the clinic.

After a day of rest, we caught the 9:30am ‘chicken bus’ to Batopilas, as directed by Vicki and Gerry. It was an old school bus painted white. It wasn’t quite full, so sometimes Larry and I could have our own seats, as he couldn’t fold himself up sufficiently to fit beside me. Barbara and Walter went too and took the front seat from the door. It had to have been much scarier and hairier from that viewpoint. A grandma from Vermont was on with her son and daughter-in-law and their 7 and 9 year old kids from New Mexico, where Mom and Dad teach high school and they live on an Indian reservation. Dad was good at pointing things out to the kids, so I got his experience too.

The road goes down into one of the 6 Copper Canyons .. this one Batopilas. The first hour and a half we descended mostly on a beautiful 2-lane paved highway .. up and down and around .. past Tarahumara dwellings and lots of desert. Then we turned right onto a narrow dirt road marked as the route to Batopilas .. a narrow rocky terrain that is being widened extensively. We got to use the baños … au natural for the men, a nasty two-seater for the girls. Did I say nasty, messy … but not stinky, so there was that. The seat was also about 12-16 inches from the floor, so I had to hang on to the bench for proper placement, if you get my drift. Thank goodness for anti-bacterial soap.

This road was the adventure. Down and down switchbacks .. you could see down there the windy route we’d follow. It was something .. especially when we’d meet or be passed by another vehicle. A busty national young woman with an unusual cleavage displaying black top sat behind the driver and chatted him up lustily the entire trip. We sure didn’t like it when he’d so often turn around to chat to her. Walter didn’t even want to take the bus back up as he felt it was dangerous .. but we think he had it under control. We arrived anyway … 5 hours after departure. The area had lots of silver mines back in the 1700s and forward. We had another baño stop at La Bufa, where there was a big stack of copper colored tailings from the silver mine. The baño there was a 3-sided affair with natural air conditioning and a great view into the canyon.

We arrived at the mile long village and the bus wound its way to the church. Arturo led us to Senora Monse’s Casa where we were the only tourists to select one of her $20 per night ensuite rooms, no meals included. It was fine, bigger than our Casa Margarita room. Others went next door to Juanita’s and enjoyed her $35 rooms with a view of the river. Senora Monse is also on the river, I had read, but when I walked to the back I saw a cow and a wall and not the bucolic scene I’d envisioned. Before I knew what hit me, I agreed to a tour to the Cathedral the next morning at 9am with Arturo. Senora Monse encouraged us to eat her chicken that evening .. for an added price .. but we begged off saying we were meeting friends, but asked for breakfast in the morning.

We rested a bit, then headed out and turned left. Batopilas has a huge rectangular square a block away from the church, most unusual for a Mexican square not to be across from the church directly. It is mostly empty with wonderful castiron bench seating around the edges and a big bandstand in the center. Our first stop was for beers at the Collegiate Bar and Restaurant .. in a pleasant little courtyard where the locals were getting hammered and the young girls could peek in at us and them and giggle. We saw a bridge over a dry arroyo / river bed and all manner of vehicles and people traveled it .. something that won’t be possible in the rains of July and August when it pours, we were told.

We stopped after 2 Tecates and went in search of Barbara and Walter, who said they would try to stay at the Copper Canyon Lodge with some new friends they’d met on the train Monday. Arturo and some locals went back and forth a bit, shaking their heads, then sent them off ‘beyond the church’. So we wandered a few blocks past and in from the church and didn’t find it. So we returned to sit in the square. Presently they came by with their new friends Richard, Jim and MaryJo .. looking for a bar with margaritas. There is no Copper Canyon Lodge and they were at Juanita’s. We went back to the Collegiate for 2 more beers with them, until they were off for a reserved dinner at Senor Donas I think. There are a few places where you make reservations for the plata del dia, then sit and eat whatever the chef decided to make that day. We stayed right at the Collegiate and had a great steak, baked potato, salad … and 2 more beers. Not the brightest idea having 6 beers!!!

We staggered back to Senora Monse’s and slept the sleep of the hammered dead. I had such a headache all the next day. Senora Monse asked … eggs or cereal. We chose cereal and she charged us $5 each for a bit of creamed rice gruel, a few slices of papaya and instant coffee that said DECAF!! An outrageous sum for what we got. But … it was quick and Arturo was soon there.

He escorted us in his Mexican limousine .. two car/van seats between the cab and the tailgate .. with a big spare tire inbetween. Luxury. All of our new friends plus some from Seattle set out to walk the 4 miles to the cathedral. We passed them close to the last curve where the cathedral became visible. They were hot and tired, but pressed on. The outside of the cathedral must have been recently restored and it was beautiful. The inside looked worse for the years. I read that the Tarahumara celebrate Easter there. The men do some sort of religious drugs and drink some awful alcohol and stumble around for days in a frenetic religious stupor. Many many people drive the narrow road Arturo took us on to witness the events .. then all try to get back to Batopilas at the same time in the dark. And I daresay they’ve been doing some imbibing too. Christianity has really screwed up the Taramuhara peoples!!

The others completed their tour in the Best Western tour shuttle with Pepe, who brought them down in cushy style from Creel the day before. Barbara and Walter had to join our tour, as there was no room in the inn for them. Two Tarahumara women and a small boy climbed into the truck with us. They are supposed to have their own language and are not comfortable speaking to outsiders, but Walter held the boy and tried to converse with the women in Spanish. One acknowledged him unwittingly, but averted her gaze from his. She was beautiful with clear shiny dark skin and beautiful white teeth.

Arturo took us to their winter shack .. a stick and thatch room with ‘patio’ about 8’ x 6’ total maybe. Then we visited the cave just over there where they spend the summer, out of the blazing heat and rain. There was much evidence of goat and cattle residue about .. lots of sharing here. Then we walked a bit further to a neighborhood where 4 families live. An old man was sitting on his haunches while 4 women took care of I think 7 small children. They live communally but each family lives by itself. The others brought gifts of big tins of sardines. I had some gum and candy for the kids. No tire basura we said. All Mexicans throw litter wherever. Adults opened the bus windows to toss soda cans and snack bags. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …. They had a cool grinder attached to a pole in the ground .. for corn and flour and what have you. Arturo pointed out a 2 month old baby asleep in a sling hanging from the rafter of a dwelling. It was the cutest thing. They all had cute puppies. There are lots of dogs in Mexico ... most not so cute .. most females not neutered. Sad.

We rested and bought water and such .. didn’t attempt the mile walk with the others around 4pm to the remains of the Shepard Mansion .. the owner of the silver mines. As we sat in the square, we saw lots of comings and goings. Our intention was to check out the bus that arrived that day, but we must have missed it. A group of mountain bikers went by often and we chatted. We saw them in Creel the day before as we headed to the bus. They got carted along the good road in their van, then road the windy dirt road to Batopilas. One of the guys told us that every other day they send a 9-passenger shuttle down instead of the bus, so if you’re not there at 4:15 am for the 5am bus, you may be out of luck. Happened to him once, so he had to return and crawl back into bed and wait another day. Hmmmmm …

We debated and wondered. We didn’t want to get up so early and not be able to go .. nor did we like being crammed in with 7 others side by side either. But if it was full on Saturday too, we were there until Monday and we really can’t tolerate that much peace and quiet.

I mentioned it to Senora Monse when we got back and she said she saw a big bus that day. I’d earlier bought 3 bottles of agua from a lady in a food stand parked near the church where the bus ends, so we approached her in our not good Spanish to see if she noticed what bus came. Mas agua senora? No … She sent us over to a nice gringa lady who runs a silver shop. She was abashed at our new information and mused that everyone else knows what’s going to happen but the people there. No .. a big bus did come in that day. We put a pint on whether Walter and Barbara would show up in the morning. We already knew the New Mexico peeps were going Saturday. Larry said yes, I said no show.

They all had dinner reservations at Casa Carolinas. We tried another bar and restaurant .. something like El Zagura just down the street next to the church, towards the river. It had a lovely courtyard, reminiscent of Italy. We enjoyed 2 beers and a lovely fried fish dinner. The electricity went off just before dark and it added to the allure. It returned just in time for our walk back to the Casa …

We packed and got to bed early. Up and out by 4:30. At 5am a big honking newish tourist bus comes lumbering in .. barely able to back in and turn around next to the church. AND .. there were 5 of us waiting for the bus .. two local old guys and an old woman and us. The woman carried only a small box from the grocery, tied with twine. We marveled at her pequeño Mexican luggage. But she just handed it to the driver as freight .. and 4 of us got on .. on this big 40+ passenger bus with real seats and headrests and curtains and everything. I win a pint of Guinness as soon as we find one across the border.

To our surprise there were several people already on the bus. How surprised we would have been to find the 9-passenger shuttle already full or nearly by our stop. We picked up another backpacker on the way out of town and another later in the middle of nowhere up on the ridge. How this big bus squeezed down the narrow village walls and onto the narrow bridges, some without any sides at all .. is a wonder. I’d read that it is a 5 hour trip down to Batopilas and 7 hours back up to Creel. Our buses made it in 5 hours each way. An amazing ride for $18 each. The ‘chicken bus’. Try it .. you’ll like it.

We made it back in time to choose the primero train if we wished .. and we thought we wished. But as the 11:30 arrival time approached and we saw all the gringo riders, including an Elderhostel birding group … we just couldn’t stand to ride with them 7 hours. So we returned to El Tungar .. the Hangover Hospital .. and had some wonderful burritos and cokes like we’d enjoyed Tuesday. Love the advice I find on TripAdvisor.

We caught the Segundo at 12:30 and I befriended a young Swiss woman traveler. She had on a very short sundress with a red sweater. ALL the national men loved looking at her, especially when she took the sweater off later. She spoke very fluent Spanish and when she wasn’t hobnobbing elsewhere, had 1 to 4 train guys chatting her up.

She was in Mexico for a wedding I guess. She took a bus from Chihuahua that morning, then was on the train to Los Mochis. Her plan was to catch a night bus to Tijuana (a 36 hour nonstop drive my haircut lady had told me), then on to Los Angeles for a Monday flight home to Switzerland. Can you do all that between Friday and Monday? Tight connections. Don’t know how she got her information. I could find very little. Even the Chepe website for the train gave a schedule that didn’t match reality on the return trip. I got all kinds of prices and times for the chicken bus too. It sure seemed like it only went down M, W, F and back up T, Th, Sat. Or it went down M, W, F but back up every day and on to Chihuahua every other day. Huh .. how would that work? We watched for the bus / van going down to Batopilas Friday but never saw one. The old school bus was sitting where we caught it when we arrived in Creel. Hmmm .. sure wondering what went down to bring Walter and Barb and the 5 New Mexico people up on Saturday???

Our driver Senor Piñas was not at the train station to collect us, so we piled into the nearest station wagon. The guy did not understand El Fuerte RV Park and we were worried .. but we worked it out. He kept pulling over as the car kept dying. Very happy to get ‘home’. Slept like babes. In the morning we packed up and moved north to Alamos .. quickly before the biting flies woke up.

We are all alone at our Dolisa Motel / Trailer Park. We had some problems finding the satellite, and at one point the dish shut itself down in a weird position and did some damage to itself. Larry with his bad but improving back and wonky hip crawled up and did some masking tape and WD-40 repairs, a few dish calibrations and got it back working. It found the satellite but was waiting for hours to complete the tests and connection for it all to work.

When we arrived, we got water from the water plant here. Carl from Colorado in the 4 Corners area chatted and gave us lots of info. Later we chose a patio restaurant on the square in town and he found us again. Lots of chat .. Barack Obama is a Muslim (OH NO HE ISN”T), he’ll get killed within months if he gets elected, lots of naturopath and healing chat, all about his uncle who had property in Los Mochis for decades, his son back from Afghanastan. Larry had a great burger plate and I had a battered shrimp plate. Both had good fries, I had rice and a salad.

Today we both have wonky stomachs and Larry has body hurts. What was it? The food, the new water from here? Too much jostling on the bus and train and crawling around on the roof on hand and knees? Whatever .. we didn’t do laundry as we set up with herself, we didn’t get to the Sunday morning market on the big empty gravel arroyo we turned onto last night .. following another vehicle … then quickly turned back to a real street. We didn’t enjoy the fish tacos Carl said are sold at the market. We missed the music on the square and the Sunday night $1 taco stands that the gringos flock to. Maybe we would have traveled out to La Aduana to see a great old church and enjoy a gourmet meal at the hotel there .. only open Wed – Sun the Alamos website tells me. We already missed the Saturday morning house and garden tour Linda said not to miss. We’ll have to come back. Now we know what to do!! Alamos is beautiful. It is now an historic city and Barbara said the government gave money for all the facades to be fixed up, though many have nothing but rubble behind them. Many expat Americans and Canadians call it home .. at least for the winter months .. and have invested money in the town. We didn’t even go back for photos.

Maybe another day or two here, a few days at El Mirador RV in San Carlos readying the rig for the border crossing. We already lost 2 lovely apples to the search team at the Sinaloa – Sonora state line crossing. We think we’ll cross at Nogales, spending the night before at Magdelina or Santa Ana. Phil and Linda only waited 45 minutes to cross there on a Monday morning. Rob and Daph chose Naco and had an easy crossing. Hmmm .. decisions. Naco doesn’t have a place to turn in the vehicle sticker from the car, so we’d still have to go to Douglas to return the sticker, and that’s tricky. So many decisions.

A few days in Tucson for supplies and such, then up to the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon and those parks we’ve never seen .. and on up to DDs in Washington sometime in May. Heidi and the girls will come for a week in July. We’ll go camping with DD and Murrey. He loves the ocean but herds us like cattle and sticks close to DD when she’s along.

We hope Sid and Ruth from Melbourne, Australia are well enough to travel and join us in Wisconsin after their 45+ year daughter’s Aug 8 wedding. We will try to visit Phil and Linda on Savary Island. Soon we’ll all return to Mexico and do it again. We’ll go further south next year .. Mazatlan was unseasonably cold this year. We like it here .. love that ocean roaring.
 

Heidi and the girls met us at the fairgrounds in Manitowoc where we were camped.  Heidi warned us that Emily was being bashful recently and it took her until the end of a visit to hug the Mohs.  So she had her face snuggled into Mom’s neck when they came from the car .. until I stepped out of the RV and handed her a big baggie of popcorn.  Then I had her .. and it was all over.  She was all smiles and hugs and not a moment more of bashfulness.  She loves popcorn and especially having her OWN big bag.

Jaime came in and looked around.  I asked her if she remembered the RV?  Yes.  Do you think you will sleep in it again this summer?  Yes.    Without Mom??  Yes.   Tonight??? YESSssssssss … Yippeeee

We went over to see Larry’s mom and visit awhile.  Then we all went to Late’s for burgers and on to a Kite Fly in Two Rivers. The weather was wonderful .. warm and windy.  Kites galore and Lake Michigan warm enough for splashing.  Later Heidi went home and we had a great night with our granddaughters.

It was perfect for the new blue bear and red moose pajamas we brought them from Alaska .. and they loved the silly furry bear and moose hats I couldn’t resist for them.  The next day we went to the Kite Fly again .. this time wearing new Alaska t-shirts that came in handy.  A repeat of the weather and the fun.  There were heaps of BIG kites hovering and lots of flags and all.  Fun fun fun.

We had to take them home that night.  Jaime needed a day to recuperate and get ready for her first day of kindergarten.  We went to Tighe’s in Janesville and enjoyed a great day with them in their pool and the sun.  Then a few days in Madison before we returned to Heidi’s for a few days.  Larry bought a new Olympus E-410 camera, we had our fix of Rocky Rococco’s pizza and met Mary Ellen Spoerke, Rita Benish and Ken and Sooz Boldt at the Ale Asylum Brewpub and later enjoyed Chinese at that Wong's Garden near the Barrymore.  Maggie Spoerke took time out from her college activities to join us.

Brian joined UW fans in Las Vegas for a weekend of frolic.  We asked if we could stay with Emily so Heidi could go to work and she was only too willing to save some vacation days.  My nephew Tom Schiesl and family live in Cedarburg and we had them over for dinner Friday night.  We had a nice visit with Tom and Meg and the girls loved playing with Callie and Colin. We went to the Milwaukee Mots Kite Festival Saturday and Sunday at Veteran’s Park on Lake Michigan.  Again .. great weather but not as windy .. so not so many big floaty kites.  Their friend Madison was with us Saturday and Heidi’s co-worker Elizabeth and husband and daughter Grace were there Sunday.  All the girls are good kite flyers.

After that fun, we returned to Madison for Dr. appointments.  Larry developed a pilonidal cyst, diagnosed by friends Mary and Susie in Puerto Vallarta.  It was pretty painful by this time and we anticipated some surgery and recuperation time.  But the Dr. didn’t see it as that bad and prescribed a weeks antibiotic treatment, after which there is no pain and the cyst is shrunken.  It’s still there, so perhaps another time .. hopefully not.

Brian brought the girls to Madison on one of his UW football weekends.  We had fun at Ella’s Deli .. food and riding the carousel, eating and watching planes at the Jet Room restaurant at Madison Aviation, and playing in the new children’s area and carousel at the Madison Zoo.  They love eating at Culvers because a kid’s meal includes an ice cream sundae with any toppings they choose.  They were exhausted by the time we returned them home on Sunday.  We carried on for a Craig Ferguson performance at the Pabst Theater in downtown Milwaukee.  Craig is the host of the Late Late Show on CBS following David Letterman.  He has a delightful Scottish accent and an impish humor, but at the Pabst he just looked like any poorly dressed comedian jumping around onstage.  He needs the nice suit and the camera close-ups to be the Craig we love.

We drove to Manitowoc that same night so we could take Larry’s Mom to an eye Dr appt the next day.  Then we spent a few quiet days camped at Norman.  We drove around my old home from childhood around Cooperstown and Denmark, had a Kroll’s hamburger in Green Bay, and stocked the freezer with sausages from Konop’s Meats in Stangelsville.  Somehow we missed knowing about them until Mary Ellen Spoerke said she had a Konop’s wiener for lunch one day.  Well .. were we missing out on something great.  Their wieners are just smoky links of heaven .. and they have a zillion interesting brat varieties.  We chose Cajun and jalapeño.  We got a big bag of luscious for $26 and saved most of them for Mexico.

What next?  Back to Madison for Mike Denu’s wedding .. youngest son of Jim and Jo Schulze Denu .. at the Inn On the Park. That’s Schulzie .. from college days.  Then sheepshead with Kim Braatz and the guys at the Union, beers at the Blue Moon and dinner with friends at Lulu’s, a trip to the Madison Farmers Market and the Food for Thought Festival with Sooz Boldt, beers with friends at Capital Brewery, beers at the Cannery in Sun Prairie with Rita Benish and Ken Boldt .. and more.

In October there were 2 Saturday’s when UW football had away games, so we were able to get Heidi and Brian to go away for a week so we could play Grandma and Grandpa at home with the girls.  But first they needed a newly installed laminate floor to be redone, so we got to take Emily away for 2 whole days.  We headed to Manitowoc and planned to park at the fairgrounds again, but water was already shut off for the season.  So we visited with Larry’s Mom briefly and made a Late’s run .. then headed to Two Rivers to a little campground we didn’t know about on the west twin river .. a Passport America savings.

Thursday we headed to Green Bay and met cousins and Aunt Peg at Kroll’s East .. a tradition we started a couple of years back.  Last year cousin Bernadine Kane VandeYacht bought lunch .. and called it her funeral lunch.  At first we gasped .. then agreed what a fun idea.  So this year we bought lunch and called it brother Pat’s funeral lunch .. since there were no public bereavement activities when he died in late August.  It was fun … Aunt Peg, Mary and Lynne Rasmussen, Doris and Amy Halbrook, Bernadine Kane VandeYacht, Terry and Mary Kane and Kathy Kane Konop.  The next day we had another funeral lunch for Pat at Kroll’s West where brother-in-law Donny and friend Mary came early from Eagle River in their motorhome for the Packer-Bear football game.  This time we dined with Aunt Peg and Amy Kane, niece Jody Schiesl Vandeurzen, Terry and Mary Kane, and Bill Kane.  Emily was such a good traveler.

At night we picked up Larry’s Mom and met Kathy Woija at the Pizza Garden in Manitowoc.  When I called her to set it up a few nights earlier, Kathy happened to be on the south beltline in Madison and we were just leaving the Grumpy Troll in Mt. Horeb after dinner with Jo and Jim Denu.  Kathy had some time, so we met at the T.J.Whitney Brewpub on Whitney Way and caught up on the year.

We brought Emily home Friday night so Heidi and Brian could spend time with her before their trip.  The next morning Diane Gerl Sedlacek came from Manitowoc and we visited Joy King in Milwaukee.  Joy is a dear senior friend Diane and I met 25 years ago at Women’s Week at Girl Scout Camp at Madison’s Camp Blackhawk outside Antigo.  Joy and Herald traveled every state and all provinces but Newfoundland.  She is such a delightful person and so happy and thrilled to hear about our adventures.  We get a chance to talk about us .. and we love that.  She had a hip replacement days after we visited her last year and recommends it.  She now lives in a brand new retirement complex near Columbia hospital.  She and Herald had just moved from Sycamore, IL to a wonderful apartment building overlooking Veteran’s Park on Prospect Street 5 years ago just before we retired.  We visited them when I stayed with Heidi and Jaime in the hospital when Heidi needed a skin graft from the burn she got during Jaime’s C-section birth a few weeks earlier.  Herald was very ill and died within 2 months.  I was diagnosed with hepatitis A about 9 days after visiting them and bringing and serving food to her.  I had to call and advise her to get a gamaglobulin shot.  Joy hesitated this time when I said we could go out for lunch, so we got some deli food and stuff from the RV and brought in a picnic that she just loved and enjoyed the leftovers.

That afternoon we sent Heidi and Brian off to casino night at Brady Corp, an honor for employees with 10+ years of service. The next day they flew to Phoenix / Tempe for a week without kids.  They considered going to Toronto but feared it might be cold.  Instead .. Tempe was 100 degrees and the hotel pool was under repair. They don’t think they made a good choice.
After the usual drama from Jaime we settled in for the week.  Larry got the dogs back OK when she opened the gate and they dashed out … she stopped crying and pouting eventually.  It was a busy week .. getting Jaime up and out for the school bus and back home later, cooking, shopping and all.  I took Emily to get her picture taken at Sears and they turned out adorable. The woman taking the pictures had absolutely no bedside manner and would tell her how to pose and to stand in the middle of the rug etc .. and being a 2.5 year child genius, she managed to pull it off.  I thought I might take them both in for a picture together, but never made that.

Cousin Mary Kay Halbrook Hudson lives near Heidi, so we arranged to meet her and 3 year old daughter Helen at the neighborhood park one day.  Cousin Dorothy Kane VanPatten and Van also came with their granddaughter.  We all went over to Heidi’s for some lunch after the girls played.  It was fun.  I hadn’t seen either cousin for lots of years and only ever saw Mary Kay when she and DD were little .. well over 30 years ago.

We had Pom class and Mactober fest at Jaime’s Macarthur School.  Loud awful music but did the girls have fun.  Jaime found a few classmates and they chased each other all around the gym.  Emily soon joined in and had so much fun.  Jaime’s teacher Mrs. Books had her kindergarten daughter Savannah with her.  I introduced Emily to Mrs. Books, she introduced us to Savannah .. then Emily took a reluctant Savannah by the hand, led her back into the gym and got her involved in the frolicking with Jaime and her friends.  It was such a neat thing for her to do.  They were so good we got ice cream later.

The next day we drove to Manitowoc and visited with Larry’s Mom and lunch at Late’s, back home to feed the dogs, then south to the Racine area for a nice dinner and evening with Brian’s sister and family and Brian’s mom and dad.  It was a long fun day and everyone slept in Sunday.  Then it was laundry, clean up because Heidi and Brian were coming home from Phoenix / Tempe AZ.

Brian called us Saturday night at Colleen’s.  They had packed up their bags, ready to fly Sunday, and gone out for the afternoon.  When they returned, their card key didn’t open the door.  A guy had asked at the front desk for a key to their room, some moron gave it to him no questions asked, and he proceeded to take all of their belongings except for the clothes they had out for return travel and their toiletries.  They were devastated and mad as he!! of course.  The Day’s Inn staff were not helpful, sympathetic, sorry .. nothing.  They called the police and spent 3 hours with them.  Days Inn said file an insurance claim.  Today .. 2 months later .. no detective is working on it as a case and Brian cannot make a phone connection with anyone at the hotel or the Days Inn chain.  The main losses were Heidi’s work computer, their digital camera and gifts for the girls. Heidi had a bad cough and went to a Dr. there.  Her prescribed meds were even stolen.  And Brian had his car keys in his backpack, so I brought them their spares.  Now they have to figure out what to do next to get some justice, as Days Inn is not cooperating in their mandate to ‘just file an insurance claim’.

We journeyed back to Madison and had a last meal with Rita Benish in Sun Prairie.  The next day we had the RV oil changed, etc. and bought our last minute victuals .. Woodman’s super sharp cheddar cheese, Johnsonville garlic summer sausage, Bagels Forever bagels, Rural Route 1 popcorn, Delatalia Porta salad topping and dressing.  A last night and meal with the Tighe’s in Janesville .. and we headed west .. with a stop for limburger cheese and braunschweiger sausage at Baumgartners in Monroe

We spent an evening with Ted and Mona Thieman and dog Snerzie in Petersburg, Nebraska.  We met them on South Padre Island last winter and had a great fun New Year’s Eve and more with them.  It was fun to see their hometown, their home in town and their farm outside of town where they keep their 5th wheel parked and have beef cattle grazing in the adjacent field. They took us to their Albion Country Club for a nice dinner and the next morning we had kolaches and coffee cake we brought from the Clarkson Bakery where we’d spent the previous night and Ted recommended we make a stop.  They will spend November and December in a condo on South Padre Island and travel to Haines, Alaska for 3 weeks late January to experience the snow and cold and northern lights.  What fun!!!!

We were hurrying to see the Haggerbaumers in Superior, CO.   Mary Ellen Spoerke, Carol’s sister, was visiting them from Madison and we all needed a little bonding.  Carol, Rick and Masha moved there this summer from the Memphis area.  If you look at last year’s log, you’ll see our visit with them there last October.  They can run but they can’t hide.  The Clampett’s will find them.  We were able to park and level the rig across the street without violating the neighborhood too much.  Carol is a super cook and just kept feeding us and we didn’t really complain.  We provided the sausage and cheese and lots of Trader Joe’s wine and they didn’t complain either.  Larry made his famous ham and egg sandwiches for them and Rick added great hash browns.  Carol and Mary Ellen Loberger are friends since I started 1st grade with Carol in Cooperstown.

We woke Sunday to snow covering the ground.  Brrrrrr … again it seems we started too late.  All we wanted to do was snuggle in and laze around a real house.  We should have met up with Jack at the Gordon Biersch Brewery .. but were too lazy .. and bypassed the best chance we had to meet him.  We met Linda and Howard at the Riviera RV Resort in Texas last year and Howard passed our website on to his sister Cindy Bruner in the Denver area.  She invited us for beers with her and husband Jack when we were in the area.  Unfortunately for us all, we picked the week she and later Jack were flying to New Jersey for Howard’s son’s wedding.  By the time they returned we had ourselves ensconced outside Colorado Springs and neither of us wanted to drive the distance on a weekday evening.  Next time… Jack is a beer connoisseur, says he, and has tales of lots of tasting in England and we want to hear more about a canal boat trip they all did in England using a timeshare exchange .. or some such.

Friend Tracey from Colorado Springs also left town that week .. so we found a nice Passport America campground out in the desert to wait for her return.  I started to get what I thought was sinus / lung stuff from smoke from the California fires .. but after weeks of hacking and snorting and Larry a week behind, we determined it was just some damn bug.  We rested, we enjoyed the warm days, we shopped getting ready for Mexico travel, and Larry designed redesigned reredesigned and finally bought the fittings to install another battery to store the solar panel energy to help us dry camp in more comfort.  The project was a success.

We were noticing that the braking system on the Kia was acting up since we got to Colorado.  It just kept running and pumping all the time, so we had to stop using it.  A guy at Camping World said some systems have a problem in higher altitudes.  Larry got the serial number and such, the guy called Roadmaster, a few more calls and they were sending a new one to the campground with a paid label to return ours.  Now that is excellent customer service.

When Tracey got back we had two luscious meals and pretty good beer with them at the Phantom Canyon Brewery.  The food was so good I wanted to go back and try everything on the menu.  It was great to finally meet Roger and to catch up with Tracey.  We last visited 12 years ago and the first time 19 years ago.  Tracey and I worked together at OSI in Madison before that and she is such a hoot.  We were both pretty excited Mary Kay consultants for a couple years and had much fun at the July seminars in Dallas .. and DD was a success there with us too.

By now it was Halloween.  We still hadn’t decided on Mexico insurance so we didn’t hurry.  We got out the Road Food book and let it determine our course into New Mexico.  We made our way towards Sugars in Embudo for brisket burritos.  The route was most beautiful and it was a good choice.  And the burrito was so good we almost camped nearby so we could come again.  Instead we carried on as planned and stayed the night outside Santa Fe so we could be nearby to San Marcos Café in Cerillos for breakfast.  It was a big rambling place with a feedmill and puppies and turkeys and peacocks peering in the windows at us.  The patrons were very 60’s and nicely aged yuppies.  The food was very nice, great coffee and interesting cinnamon rolls.  Good choice.

We holed up next for a few days at Lakeside RV in Elephant Butte, NM.  A lady at Mountaindale RV in CO Springs said it was another nice Passport America campground.  It was a good park, but no lake view.  Elephant Butte Lake is a reservoir formed behind a dam.   A Ted Turner ranch occupies the entire other side and the village side is all state park.  We moved to a remote state park campground for 5 nights and it was so peaceful and wonderful.  We heard coyotes one night and a roadrunner was spotted.  I finished up the Alaska report from there, rested, and we decided to go with the most expensive comprehensive Mexico insurance we found.  We decided a few hundred $$ wouldn’t seem so important if we didn’t have partial theft and plane tickets out in case of emergency.  Elephant Butte is next to Truth or Consequences, so we took that in too and got great haircuts and some shopping.  T or C, as the locals call it, is a spa town and friend Rita recommended a soak, but it was so bloody hot and lovely that we couldn’t fathom getting the bods into a hot tub at the time.

Next we traveled thru Gila National Forest to visit the Gila Cliff Dwellings.  It was a lovely drive and the longest mountain passes we’ve met yet.  We dry camped at Forks Campground 2 nights and visited the dwellings.  It is a lovely 1 mile loop hike to the dwellings.  We got a nice tour from a volunteer woman from South Carolina.  Archeological evidence suggests that many different groups of people have inhabited the area over thousands of years.  The Mogollon peoples built inside the caves between 1270 and 1300 .. determined by testing timbers used in the structures.  But there is evidence that earlier peoples used the caves first.  Weather was great and it was a nice visit.  We drove around, got the girls some treasures at the Trading Post, visited Gila Hot Springs and drove to the lookout we didn’t want to stop at with the RV.  Nina and Richard from Fairbanks were at Forks packing up their Bike Fridays when we returned to the RV.  They said they were behind us on the way in the day before and noticed our Bike Fridays.  We invited them for wine and starters and had an interesting visit.

We spent a few days in Silver City and enjoyed the Rose Valley Ranch RV park.  We enjoyed Mexican food, the college museum with more information on the Mogollons and pottery, shopped, enjoyed Silver City Brewery beer and pizza and toured Pinos Altos.   I started to feel better … Larry was peaking.

Our last days before Mexico we camped in Benson, AZ.  We stayed there earlier this year and liked the little town.  We got good haircuts there, but couldn’t hold out that long this time.  We looked for a Coast to Coast campground, but 5-6 campgrounds in the area left that affiliation this year, since the book was printed.  We are getting very disgruntled with CtoC. So we chose yet another Passport America offering .. Cochise Terrace RV Park.  It was a ways out of town, but is a wonderful park .. nice pool and hot tub … good choice we felt.  We sure got our Passport America membership value already.

We went into Tucson one day for Camping World, Big Lots and Trader Joe’s stops.  After much reading, we decided we would fill our holding tank with Mexico water, add bleach, then put a filter on the kitchen faucet to filter out the chlorine. When the new Brita filter is on the faucet, there remains no clearance to rinse anything.  So we needed a higher one.  It was hotter than all get out, but we did lots of shopping.  We used up all the refrigerator things so we could stock up on more Johnsonville brats and get a ham and fixings for a Thanksgiving dinner sometime.

We ordered a volume control module for the TV that should handle the LOUD commercials followed by the not as loud programming.  Two day shipping didn’t serve us well, so we postponed our Mexico entry until the day after Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving day we moved to Patagonia State Park so we would be in spitting distance of Nogales and the border for our assault the next morning.  The park was full of families enjoying the school break.  It still amazes our Wisconsin sensibilities to think of camping at Thanksgiving … instead of deer hunting and freezing.  We drove into Nogales hoping to get pesos and maps of Mexico, but found neither.  We did get more goodies at Big Lots … love their Bloody Mary mix.

The next morning we got up and out early, but after dumping and filling the water tank and stopping for pesos and petrol, we still didn’t cross the border until nearly 11am.  I hit our first tope .. big honking speed bump .. right at the border where we were funneled into a narrow lane and there were signs everywhere so I was looking up and not down.  Serious growling from esposo.  We were going slow, but it did toss a lot of carefully stacked stuff around and send 12 packs of soda sliding and spilled my oh-so-crowded closet.  I knew about them .. you must STOP completely, then ease each set of wheels over the bump gently.   I didn’t miss any more.

There was quite a queue at KM21 where you stop for visas and vehicle permits.  We were chatting with folks around us and the line wasn’t moving.  Some time later a guy found out they ran out of visa forms.  Here .. at immigration .. no visa forms??? No .. no .. say it isn’t so.  Soon a guy came by carrying a big box of forms.  We all cheered and clapped.  It went pretty quickly and easily from there.  They whisked us thru, no worries.  We had lots of copies of all our important documents plus originals and the vehicle permits were easy too.  Best of all, no one stopped us to ask any questions about our vehicles or contents and we were waved right on thru.  Would that have been so if we had brought a nice case of Trader Joe’s wine?

The toll road is OK but oh so narrow.  Semis and buses whizzing past all the time and a big 8-10” drop off to no shoulder. Scary stuff.  Three tolls later we drove around Hermosillo .. a pretty big city, lots of traffic .. we went thru on a Friday rush hour.  Everyone uses the book Mexican Camping by Mike and Terri Church and they give great directions for every turn.
We were headed to Bahia Kino, the first beach on the coast.  It is 65 miles from Hermosillo to Kino and it was close to dusk when we hit the road to Kino.  The road was lovely … wide, shoulders.  But we soon figured out that the best thing to do is to drive way to the right .. in the shoulder lane and a bit in the driving lane .. because everyone passes whether traffic is coming at you or not.  Gringos here say they call it a 3-lane road because everyone acts as if the middle of the road is a passing lane.
Soon the sun was blinding us, then sunset, then dusk, then dark .. but not real black dark.  You read often NEVER drive at night in Mexico.  Banditos, animals, vehicles without lights … We knew .. but carried on carefully so we could make it to Kino.  Phewww … we drove into Kino Bay RV about 7pm … weary and thankful to arrive unscathed.  This is another Passport America campground.  I was able to write a check for payment the next morning.  Imagine .. in Mexico!!  We planned to stay the 2 nights allowed .. although I don’t think they realized there is a limit here .. and look around and pick the best park for a longer stay.

We paid the next morning and on the way back to the RV we lingered at a most attractive permanent site we’d admired the night before.  Ivette from Reno came out and took over.  We toured her and Bob’s lovely winter home, she told us all about the park, the people, the water and the town, then we followed her to Club Deportivo for a tour.  The Club is THE social element of the town.  The winter tourists and year round locals are members and it offers golf, club dinners and breakfasts, dances, parties, happy hours, book club, library, etc as well as a First Response program for boaters and medical emergencies for the area.  It looks like a fun place and the members are very proud of it.  We came out with tickets to a steak fry that evening.

We biked and drove around checking out other RV parks.  The one that appealed to us … that had camping right on the beach .. has been bulldozed and fenced.  A new one on the beach looks like all permanent spots, each with a big fancy roof. Another facing the beach looked like pretty close quarters.  Islandia in Old Kino looked full and not quite right.  We best liked a tired little park next to Sta Gemma hotel.  Bruce from BC had just arrived in his truck camper and we chatted.  Larry had his meter along to check the electric.  The sewer fittings looked very suspect.  It is $15 a night.  The beach is right there .. there’s a Tacos Bar across the street … the rig is almost too long for the spots … but we like it.  Mañana we’ll move here.

The steak fry was much better than we expected.  How they grill 140 steaks all at once and they turn out good is a credit to them.  Each meal has sponsors who contribute $150-200 for the meal.  They might be involved in the preparation and serving or they might not, as they choose.  Member volunteers do all the buying, cooking and serving.  They hire a few locals to clean up.  The club has a local Mexican man running the place.  Moneys from ticket sales go toward running the club and to the many community projects the club supports, especially holiday gifts and parties for local school children.  It was a fun and interesting evening.  Myron is a good friend of Ivette and Bob’s and was at our table.  He is an 86 year old farmer from Iowa who drives down here every year with his motorhome and boat and goes fishing as often as he can.  Ivette says he has tales of his days in Normany in WWII.

The next morning we moved to Posada Sta Gemma RV Park.  Ivette and Bob were heading home to Reno for Christmas and we were sure hoping they’d be gone early so we could slip out.  But they were slower than we were, so we had to acknowledge our departure.  Bob warned us to ‘watch our stuff’ over here.

We invited Bruce and a new couple Cynthia and Richard from Oregon to Thanksgiving dinner that evening.  We cooked up the ham, sweet potatoes, roasted Brussels sprouts and rolls and had us a feast.  Bruce had been driving non-stop for a week and Cynthia and Richard had 2 Mexican Thanksgiving dinners already … but the ham hit the spot for all of us.  Cynthia made a wonderful huge green salad which fit in perfectly.  Only we wished we had that case of Trader Joe’s wine to fill out the meal.  Tecate beer did just fine.

We had two restful weeks there by the bay.  Most days dolphins would pass by grazing their way up and down the coast. Pelicans were plentiful and we put up our hummingbird feeder for the first time and had a few takers each day.
Vicki and Gerry Jacobs stopped by when they noticed our WA plates.  They are from Oregon and have been full timing 9 years with interludes of backpacking trips to places like Laos, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina and more.  Next year they’ll backpack South Africa and eastern Europe countries.  Their first adventure after retirement was to ship their Westfalia van to Germany and drive and camp Europe and Turkey for over a year.  What tales and information they have!!  Of course we invited them for beers.  And a guy came by selling tamales .. so I got a dozen and expanded the visit into happy hour.  We got the tamales twice, chili rellanos once and a kilo of big blue shrimp for $11.  What a great country!

Phil and Linda with pups Sage and Teddy moved in.  They retired from college teaching in Alberta to a home on Savary Island on the coast in British Columbia.  They must take a watertaxi to / from the mainland for groceries and appointments and all and keep a truck on the mainland to get to them.  They set up shrimp and crab pots and enjoy the fruits of the sea in the summer.  They use solar power and heat with wood and propane.  We had lots of fun with them, happy hour sharings and all .. and went to dinner with them and Vicki and Gerry one night.  There are a handful of restaurants in Neuvo Kino and each has a special one or more evenings a week.  We enjoyed a pork chop dinner with margarita for $6 at the Tacos Bar across the street, a Mexican plate with enchilada, tamale, chili rellanos and fixings and margarita at Jorge’s for $7, and a fried shrimp, oyster, scallop dinner for $7.50 at La Palapa another night.

Ivette and Bob told us the water there was not harmful but very salty.  They use it as is for all but drinking.  So our filter idea wouldn’t work here, as it would still be salty we thought.  So we stored our good AZ water in every container we could muster and lived off that for awhile, then went to the store and bought a 5 gallon bottle.

We were parked next to a house.  Dale came for a chat one day.  He is a Dr. from Colorado Springs and very friendly.  We offered him the use of our WiFI and he was appreciative.  He and Liz had us in for Happy Hour and we got to see their lovely winter home and learn more about the area and the gringo Winter Mexicans.

We are going to miss Kino Bay.  It is quiet and there is little to do or buy .. but our spot right above the sand beach and the sea views will be hard to find further south.  This area and our next destination of San Carlos are rare as they have both mountains and desert right by the sea.  It is a temptation to think about buying one of the few remaining empty spots along the sea and build an RV pad or a little stucco home … but we still have so much to see and do that we do just think about it.

Next we drive to Guaymas / San Carlos, spend a few days at Totonaka RV park before we ‘go on vacation’ for our timeshare week at Sea of Cortez Premiere Vacation Club in San Carlos.  We’ll meet up with Vicki and Gerry and Phil and Linda again for a quick visit before Phil and Linda continue south.

We must get to Mazatlan and figure out where the RV will be when we are at Pueblo Bonito with Mary and Carl Tighe and Ruth Kahl .. and at Villa Mazatlan at El Cid Resort with DD, Heidi, Jaime, Emily and friend Natanya.  We rented the Villa from Jole Torres, sent him the signed contract, deposited $2k in a Wells Fargo account .. and haven’t heard from him since.  His last promise was to email and mail the signed contract.  Stay tuned to see if we enjoy the villa .. or if we are scammed and must go to the Tourist Police.
 

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We had one last breakfast with Deirdre and Murrey at our favorite Testy Chef restaurant, packed the last bits and took off a few days before Memorial Day weekend.  We stopped for the 3rd and final part for our refrigerator, which should make it work on GAS setting at any temperature … and not tick tick tick tick and start or quit.  Next stop Camping World for a protector bag for the new tow bar on the back of the RV.  Stopped for two nights at one of our K/M Resorts to drink up our excess alcohol before crossing into Canada, as 2 liters is the limit .. one per person.  We biked around Blaine and enjoyed the pool.

We got advice from other campers on where to cross into Canada.  We hoped to avoid a search.  We crossed at Lyndon and it was quick and painless.  We scooted around Vancouver and took Hy 99 to Whistler.  What a beautiful drive and how lovely Whistler is.  Vancouver is preparing for the 2010 Winter Olympics, so lots of work on Hy 99 to Whistler.  It was nice to go slow and absorb the beauty.  Whistler is a lovely little town, like an Alp village .. all new and brick.  A few skiers were still riding up the tram and mountain bikers as well.  We might have stayed another day to bike around, but the rain the next morning dampened our enthusiasm.  We enjoyed beers at a brewpub and dinner and music at an Irish Pub.

We continued on to Prince George and to Dawson Creek, Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway.  For several days we’d see many of the same people each night and at stops during the day.  On thru Fort Nelson to Watson Lake and into the Yukon.  We saw about 10 black bears, a cinnamon bear or two and a variety of sheep and bison along the way.  The scenery was always good, except perhaps before Dawson Creek.  Fun stops were Whistler, Fraser Cove Campground and Dawson Creek.  Fun Yukon stops included Muncho Lake, Liard River Hot Springs, rhubarb pie at Dawson’s Peak, the George Johnson Museum, and dinner, free camping and free boat ride at Mukluk Annie’s Salmon Bake. There are plenty of services all along the way .. fuel, restaurants, groceries. The Milepost book starts at Dawson Creek and describes every mile of the way into and around Alaska. Very helpful. We also used Mike and Terri Church’s book Traveler’s Guide to Alaska Camping.

By June 4 we were in Whitehorse and had a lovely dinner with Janice and Pierre Germaine and son Cole at their home in the country. We met Janice and Pierre in Australia in 2003 but only knew their first names and that they live in Whitehorse. We had to stalk them down and found them thru the Whitehorse Tourism Department, leading us to meet Jeanette Bringsli and Oliver from the department. We enjoyed a lot of wings and pitchers of Chilkoot Lager from the Yukon Brewing Company with Oliver and his friends on the deck of the High Country Inn, then saw a wonderful local performance of Anne of Green Gables with Jeanette and her daughter.  It made Whitehorse the most memorable time of our Canadian adventure.

We next considered our route, and, on Janice’s recommendation, saved the Top of the World Highway route for the return trip.  We decided to go next to Haines, as we wouldn’t be crossing Haines Junction again.  Oliver was excited about the Kluane Bluegrass Festival coming up in Haines Junction over the weekend.  We considered it, but then were too cheap to pay a whole bunch of $$$, so we headed to Haines.  It is 150 miles from Haines Junction to Haines, with no services.  The road is beautiful, wide, lots of braided rivers and mountains .. but no food, fuel, nothing but a couple of primitive camp spots.  We soon found ourselves in the snowcapped peaks we just saw from back there.  We pulled into Haines on fumes, we thought, but only needed 30 gallons of fuel, so learned something about our gas tank that day.

Thanks to Mike and Terri’s book, we chose to park at Oceanside RV, right on the waters of Lynn Canal.  Joyce the owner said they sometimes see humpback whales right out there … but not on our watch.  That was Thursday.  Saturday when we got in the car to tour, the brakes were mushy.  We drove carefully and visited two repair shops Monday.  Either could check it out on Thursday.  We wound up spending two weeks at Oceanside while brake replacement parts came from Juneau and Anchorage and were installed.

to We enjoyed growlers of beer from the Haines Brewing Company, which is located inside the set of the original White Fang movie.  We drove and biked to Chilkoot State Park hoping to see bears and drove to Chilkat State Park to view Rainbow and Davidson Glaciers.  We flew over Glacier Bay with Drake in a small intimate plane and saw an energetic performance by The Wilders from Kansas City on their way to Anchorage from that bluegrass festival we passed up.  We loved every meal at the Chilkat Bakery, especially the special evening Thai meals.  We enjoyed a burger fry at the Legion and Father’s Day Brunch at the Elks Club.  We hiked the Battery Point Trail and enjoyed the many bald eagles around Haines and at the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve.   The American Bald Eagle Museum is a fun visit and is where we learned about cinnamon black bears and realized that’s what we’d seen along the road, not grizzlies as we had thought.  There are 3000 eagles in the Chilkoot Valley between October and January, they say, with a peak in mid-November.  Campground owners Joyce and Kerri had 2 crab leg pot lucks and cooked us up fresh-from-the-ocean crab.  Yummm … Paula and Rick Garrett from Minnesota were parked next to us most of the two weeks and we followed each other’s adventures in Alaska.  We had a really fun night with a German couple, Heidi and Sigfried somebody from British Columbia, who wanted us to visit them on our trip down the Cassiar Highway, then we never heard from them again.  Almost every night from 8:30 until 10pm up to 5 big cruise ships sailed across the canal from us, going from Skagway toward Juneau.  It was magic.

When we picked up the car $600 later, the key immediately got stuck in the ignition and stayed there until a nice mechanic in Homer extricated it 2 weeks later.  In the meantime we had to be very careful.  Once I left the lights on because the car always dinged from the key in the ignition and I didn’t check.  A lady in a gift store across the street was watching for us and gave Larry the keys to her SUV so we could jump the KIA.  Then we didn’t run it long enough after the jump and even though we drove it to the harbor the next morning, it was dead again in the evening when we returned from a glacier cruise.  This problem turned out to be the key.  The keys given us when we bought the car were duplicates made on the wrong key base.  A nice locksmith in Anchorage fixed that for us.  There was a good key tucked in with the spare tire that he could duplicate.

After Haines, we saw no sheep at Sheep Mountain, enjoyed a night on beautiful Kluane Lake, were disappointed by the dearth of good souvenirs at Beaver, Yukon, and crossed back into Alaska.  Everyone driving passes through Tok both in and out.  We stopped for lunch at a big restaurant and sat next to a couple from Australia traveling in a big 5th Wheeler they bought on Ebay from a Michigan dealer, pulled by a truck they bought on the internet from Georgia.  They plan to ship both home after their tour.  What an adventure.  Even signing up for a cell phone required creativity, as they said Verizon tracks by social security number.  Halfway across the country they had to organize car insurance, as it comes with vehicle registration in Australia and they never thought it would be otherwise here.  Luckily someone called to ask about it.

We headed to Valdez, as we had a great glacier tour from there in 1999.  We had an adventure that night at our campground at Kenny Lake.  Larry turned the circuit breaker off in the RV as he often does, then plugged into the electric box.  I stepped into the RV just then and heard arcing and sparking and smelled burning.  He pulled it back out immediately.  Turned out this was a new box and was wired wrong.  Luckily the surge protector saved us.  Larry warned another couple in a rental RV and they were grateful for it.  It took some convincing and some meter readings to convince management, but then they apologized, returned our camping fee, and I weaseled breakfast out of them too.  They will pay for any repairs we may need to the surge protector.

The trip to Valdez is beautiful. We stopped at Worthington Glacier and we ran into the Bob Tolly family from the Madison area.  I worked with Bob at SPC years ago and hadn’t seen him since the Madison office closed in 1994.  Isn’t that amazing? They were on a quick one week Alaska tour.  Soon we were driving alongside the oil pipeline.  Thomson Pass is beautiful.

On to Valdez and a great 9 hour boat tour with Stan Stephens Cruises to see the Mears and Colombia glaciers.  We saw great glacier calving, several humpback and orca whales, lots of seals, puffins, sea lions, sea otters and a huge occupied grass bald eagle’s nest.  A store in Valdez shows continuous videos of the building of the oil pipeline and another of the 1964 earthquake.  Both are wonderful.  Marcie and John who Larry warned about the electricity at Kenney Lake parked next to us along the shore.  Marcie forgot they were leaving in a few days and bought too many groceries.  We benefited from her mistake and took lots of milk, cereal, nuts, hot chocolate mix, lettuce, and best of all .. cans of smoked oysters.  Thanks Marcie. We hope to visit them in Santa Fe sometime.

On toward Anchorage along the Glenn Highway, with good views of the Matanuska Glacier.  Anchorage has way too few RV parks.  We were lucky to get into a better one, Golden Nugget.  We met Wisconsin friend Lynne Snifka at the Snow Goose Restaurant above the Sleeping Lady Brewpub and caught up on events since we last saw her in 1999.  Later we checked out some souvenir shops and I got the girls little jammies … one blue with black bears and one red with moose.  Nice long sleeved tops and bottoms that will keep them warm all winter.  The Alaska Scottish Highland Games in Eagle River made us nostalgic for our days in Scotland.

After a few days we headed to the Kenai Peninsula.  We thought heading south on a Sunday would be good, but there was lots of traffic in both directions.  We free camped on Peterson Lake to and from Homer and saw a small black bear one night. We reserved a spot in a pricey campground on the Homer Spit because we thought July 4 week would be a busy one.  Turned out there was lots of space in the $15 dry camping city campgrounds.  We enjoyed our $70 a night spot right on the water, in walking distance of spit fishing and services, like the Salty Dawg Saloon, and in biking and driving distance of town with museums and shopping.  Homer calls itself the halibut fishing capital of the world.  Homer Brewery calls it a quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem.

The newspapers advertised several activities for July 4th.  We chose to bike to a pig roast at the Down East Saloon, a rugged establishment south of town where we imbibed in 1999 when we biked up a very steep hill nearby to Brigitte’s Bavarian Bed and Breakfast.  Imagine our surprise when a sign on the door announced the roast as a pot luck.  We hung out with beers feeling stung, watching people eat for awhile.  Then Larry asked and the barmaid said .. just help yourself.  It was a very local event and locals knew to bring food.  So we enjoyed, and the price?  Free.  Yep … and we declined the horshoe competition following dinner.  Later we returned to ‘downtown’ for the parade.  No bands, but lots of floats, enthusiasm, candy, flags and a few horses.

We enjoyed visits to the Pratt Museum that we visited in 1999.  They had a birdcam then where you could watch nesting birds on a nearby island.  Now they have a bearcam as well.  With National Geographic, they have two cameras at the McNeil River State Brown Bear Sanctuary mid-July til September when the bears are fishing for chum salmon.  When the museum is open there is often a ranger operating the camera controls and zooming in on bear activity.  Off hours the cameras catch a wide zoomed view.  They capture some footage and you can view it year-round at the site.

Fun things we learned in Alaska concerned animal names.  Brown bears live in the interior and feed mostly on plants. Grizzlies are bigger brown bears that feed on salmon near the coast.  Kodiaks are even bigger brown bears found on Kodiak Island. Reindeer are farmed / domesticated caribou.  Who knew?

Thanks to recommendations on Trip Advisor, we had a wonderful dinner at Café Cups .. and enjoyed a few growlers from the Homer Brewery, once with brats at their little brat stand.  A nice guy gave us 3 packages of frozen halibut one day, and acted like we did HIM a favor.  Larry marinated them in olive oil, garlic and onions, grilled them and we had 3 scrumptious meals with them.  We drove up to Brigitte’s one evening and were amazed at the steep distance we biked in 1999.  Brigitte saw us stop and we had a chat with her and Willie.  She didn’t remember us, but seemed happy that we took time to check them out again.

We dry camped in a waterfront city campground in Seward and took a cruise.  In 1999, the harbor was full of cute little sea otters floating around on their backs with their cute little hands and feet sticking out.  We also saw our best whales on the Kenai Fiords National Parks cruise.  Now we saw one otter, one seal, no whales, and almost didn’t get to see the Aialik Glacier as the seas were rough.  A trip to the Alaska SeaLife Center shows a glimpse of the vast research being done to figure out why sealife distribution is changing.  The simple answer may be movement in the food supply.  The Center is a great place to see the sealife and get a close view of the elusive puffins that dart about so quickly that they’re hard to see and photograph from the boat cruise.

We drove to Exit Glacier, but were too lazy to hike it again.  Instead we drove toward Whittier and took the Portage Glacier boat tour.  Our tour guide was Cassie Bauer from Sheboygan.  She doesn’t know our Kampman friends from Sheboygan.  We didn’t pay to drive the new tunnel to Whittier, as the town was not much to visit in 1999 when we trained there from Anchorage to take the car ferry to Valdez, and current descriptions don’t indicate much improvement.

After a brief stop in Anchorage to get safe working keys for the Kia on the correct key base, we carried on to Talkeetna.  Were we surprised to find it was the weekend for the Moose Dropping Festival .. and the RV Park was full.  Luckily they were allowing free camping at the middle school nearby, convenient to the pancake breakfasts and Moose Drop Dropping raffle at the VFW and to downtown for the parade, music, booths and food.  The event included an auction of moose decorated by local artists for the Moose on Parade, much like the cow or other animal decorating cities sponsor.  For the VFW raffle, shellacked and numbered moose poop is hauled up in the air in a net and then dropped on a huge bullseye covering the VFW parking lot. Raffle numbers correspond to numbers on moose poop.  Winners include the closest and farthest from the bullseye.

Some tourist in Valdez asked if we had the Great Alaskan TourSaver 2 for 1 coupon book?  You can get them at Safeway Food stores for $99 and they contain a variety of coupons for tourist services all over Alaska.  We decided we didn’t need one, but when we started looking at prices for flights to /over Denali, we decided it was time to get one.  We hoped to catch a flight in Talkeetna like we did in 1999 that lands on a glacier /snow field with a base camp and mountain climbers.  We found that without a reservation, it would take up to a week to book the flight and redeem our coupon.  The one we wanted was only good on the 6pm flights and bad weather kept reservations backed up for days.  After one day of the Moose Dropping Festival, with 2 pancake breakfasts under our widening belt, we packed up and headed toward Denali.

We wanted to dry camp yet needed cell coverage so we could arrange our next rendezvous with Lynne Snifka.  There were several good possibilities along the way at Denali State Park sites where we might glimpse Denali if weather cleared, but no cell coverage.  The sky was cloudy and threatening and you could only imagine where Denali would pop out.  We had such great views of the mountain in 1999 and sure hoped we’d be as lucky again.  Only 20% of visitors ever glimpse the great one, mostly because they flit in and out and don’t have the luxury of waiting out the weather.  Eventually we chose a nice big roadside pullout without ‘No Camping’ signs, faced the rig toward Denali and settled in.  Around 11pm the mountain ‘came out’.  It is a magnificent sight with the two peaks rising so majestically.  Larry was in heaven and barely slept all night.  With our charged battery and inverter, he could shoot all kinds of pictures, then come back to the waiting computer and delete and save.  The next morning every bus, RV and car that went by stopped to marvel at the view.

We had a day before our bus tour into Denali National Park, so we drove north, past Healy, and found another pullout that looked promising for the satellite dish to find the satellite.  We’d been in the shadow of mountains and trees for days now and were getting internet withdrawal.  We decided to stay if there was cell coverage, else check internet and look elsewhere.  I checked the phone when we stopped and it indicated No Service.  Within minutes however, it rang and friend Betty Schleifer from Minneapolis area called.  We were so happy to hear from her and even more to find out we did have cell coverage.  It was amazing, we were in such wilderness!!  We stayed there again a few days later and were witness to participants of the 2007 Sadler’s Ultra Challenge Handcycle & Wheelchair Race, which has 30 disabled international athletes head to Alaska to race hand powered cycles for 7 days over 267 miles on roads connecting Fairbanks to Anchorage.  Each rider went by soundlessly, followed by a car or truck protecting the driver and supporters shouting encouragement.  We saw them again the next morning from our bus in Denali Park.  What courage and determination!

We reserved seats on a 12 hour green shuttle bus ride to Kantishna and back.  You bring your own food and water for the day. Luckily the bus was empty enough that we didn’t all have to share seats.  We could spread out some which made it easier to jump up when someone spotted wildlife.  It sounds like a long day, but passed very quickly and pleasantly.  There are stops every little while for potty stops and a lunch stop and a souvenir shop.  Although the brochures offer two interpretive bus tour options: the Tundra Wilderness Tour and the Denali Natural History Tour, both offering a formally narrated tour experience by a certified interpretive driver and lunch, our green shuttle bus driver was an excellent wildlife spotter and identified everything he spotted.  The fancy tourists ride on old school buses just like we did but paid many more $$$.  We learned a lot that day and from my scribblings I can decipher that Denali National Park covers 6 million acres and is larger than Israel.  It is home to 39 species of mammal and 168 bird varieties.  From a distance, we saw a wolf, 4 grizzlies, dall sheep, ptarmigan, caribou, red fox, a golden eagle, and lots of duck varieties.  No moose, but we saw a cow and calf in a pond just outside the park twice, but the road was too busy to stop for photos.

When we returned to the RV, Lynne and puppy Bailey were waiting for us.  We got Subway subs, poured drinks and caught up again.  Bailey is a fun funny Jack Russell terrier who needed a home and Lynne couldn’t resist.  He went crazy when I moved my big exercise ball to clear out Lynne’s bed.  We let him jump at it and he looked just like a seal bouncing it around on his nose.  The next morning Lynne and Bailey headed for Anchorage and we visited the sled dogs in Denali.  One female had 8 new pups, yet she jumped and howled like the rest when they were choosing a team to demonstrate a sled race.