Christmas Day and following days

December 17th was not only the day of the Santa Claus parade in town but the day our first grandson was born.  We came home from the parade to find a message from our son and his wife that their little boy had arrived at 3:30 pm.  They were already back home from the hospital within 3 hours of his birth!  We called them via Skype with our web cam and got a chance to visit with them and see our new grandson!  Thank goodness for Skype to keep in touch and see our family on a frequent basis!

The days after the Santa Claus parade leading up to Christmas day were filled with local festivities.  One evening the town put up a large screen in the town square for the children to watch a movie.  The children were served bags of popcorn and a glass of juice.  What a treat for them!  Several of the women in town were busy creating pinatas.  The pinatas first appeared in town strung across the street to decorate the main road for the Santa Parade.  During the following week, one evening a pinata was strung up on a side street and raised and lowered as the children each had three attempts to swat at the pinata to break it and retrieve the candies hidden inside.  It was so delightful to see and hear the excitement of the children as they participated in this event!

One evening we sat out to watch the meteor shower from 9:30 to 10 pm.  We are spoiled here as there are no street lights so we see so many more stars than we do at home in Ontario.

On Christmas day we enjoyed a traditional Christmas dinner for 6 of us.  Turkey (from Costco), potatoes, yams, broccoli, and carrots.  Dessert was rice pudding.

Pat, Mavis, Mike, John and Bev toast a Merry Christmas

The day after Christmas Vic had a chance to fly his kites (a garage sale find) down at the waterfront.  Unfortunately, the winds were not strong enough to fly the tri-plane kite, but they were good enough for our lighter dragon kite.

Vic on the beach flying the kites

Tri-plane kite

Dragon kite

One day we walked along an overgrown trail.  We spotted a large pileated woodpecker which is unusual here as we normally see the small Gila Woodpeckers which have yellow heads.  We also spotted a monarch butterfly and a beautiful orchid-like flower along the side of the path.

Pileated woodpecker

Not a Monarch butterfly -- may be an  Isabella's Heliconian

The evenings are starting to cool off with overnight lows of 18C or 19C.

The ocean temperature has come down to 80F or 27C.

The beach is currently crowded during the day with Mexican families that have come down from Guadalajara for their Christmas vacation week.

typical beach scene

Christmas Activities

Our town of Lo de Marcos had a Santa Claus parade on December 17th.  The parade was also in celebration of the 7th anniversary of Casa de los Ninos.
 http://www.jaltembabaylife.com/community/la-casa-de-los-ninos

Marching Band?

There were floats from several of the RV parks.  Our buddy Mike decorated his car as a bumble bee as the contribution from our Savage RV Park.

Prancing horses

Tuby

Fairy Princess

Santa in RV

 

Santa finally arrives at the end

Traffic Police at the rear

December 7th

Friday started with a bang. Well...actually a big crash as the fridge door came crashing down onto the floor when Bev opened the door. We had just finished breakfast and were settling down for our morning coffees. Everything on the inside of the door came crashing to the floor. I was amazed that nothing broke and there wasn't a big mess to clean up.

The culprit was a broken hinge on the bottom of the fridge door. What a piece of crap! Whoever designed this and approved it should be fired. There was no way this plastic hinge could ever hold up to common use. On our previous fridge, this hinge piece was made of metal and could endure the weight of the door and contents.

Thanks to a copious amount of JB Weld epoxy, I was able to re-construct the hinge but was not satisfied that it would be a long-term solution. John came over with a piece off his satellite dish mount that he did not need. I cut a piece and formed it into a new hinge point that now supports the original hinge. This is a good fix that should last a long time.

Christmas is coming!

Despite missing the white snows of winter (just kidding), we do try to get into the spirit of Christmas by decorating the palapa shelter where we meet for happy hour. Then we do up our rigs.

VandB's rig with happy snowman.

Walter and Carol's rig with a "tree" as its focal point.

V and B's rig showing rope light on ground, snow flakes on windshield.

Seen from the street, the campground looks really great. Not shown is Mike and Mavis's rig with their dazzling light show, making three rigs plus the palapa on display. People passing by must be envious. Or maybe not. Regardless we are all having fun!

December already

Monday, December 3rd

It is hard to believe it has been over a month since we left home!

Now that most of the snowbirds have arrived, our social calendar is getting busy.  Zumba classes, hula classes, stretch classes for the gals on various mornings of the week.

Most of the restaurants opened the beginning of December.  Fund raising events are scheduled for December 5th and December 9th. December 12th is the first dinner/dance of the season with the band "Sons of the Beach".  December 13th will be an evening in Rincon de Guayabitos to celebrate the birthdays of 2 our of friends.  December 15th, the owner of our RV park is hosting a dinner for those of us staying in the park for the winter.

We've started to put up our Christmas decorations on our RVs and the palapa where we meet for Happy Hour.  We just do a little each day.

The firecrackers from the church go off at odd hours of the night for the celebration of the first 12 days of December for the Festival of the Virgin of Guadalupe.  The noise is bad enough for humans but our neighbours' dogs are terrified by the sound! 

The waves have been great the past couple of days and given us a chance to go for our first boogie boarding for the season.  Lots of relaxing afternoons on the beach!

Not many people on the beach on a week day

Vic about to set out to boogie with the others

Thursday, December 6th

We went for a drive to Sayulita, then along the coast to Punta de Mita  with a stop afterwards for lunch at Anna Banana's in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle.  These towns are busier with tourists than Lo de Marcos, especially Sayulita which is popular for surfing. 

 
The following photos were taken on the beach in Sayulita:

We've reached our winter home

Tuesday, November 27th

We left Mazatlan about 8 am Saturday November 24th.  It was a good day to travel as the roads were relatively empty of traffic.  We took a different route than normal as our friends had experienced poor road conditions on the San Blas route which resulted in them arriving 3 hours later than usual with a little damage to their motorhome.

The route we took was longer and  toll road most of the way. Hwy 15D to Hwy 68D to Hwy 200.  It cost us an additional $1402 pesos but the road conditions were good and we arrived at our destination by 3:30 pm after stops for fuel, lunch and propane.

Our journey from Thornhill to Lo de Marcos was 3,643 miles.

The cost of tolls on the Mexican Cuota was $3,324 pesos ($254 CAD).

Our camping fees from October 31st to November 24th for the trip south were $406.72 USD.

The gas price as we traveled through the US ranged from $2.91/gal to $3.45/gal.  Here in Mexico the gas is $10.72 pesos/litre  (82 cents CAD). Our total fuel bill to reach here was $1565.45 CAD.

We are now settled into Savage RV Park in Lo de Marcos.  There are double the number of motorhomes here this winter and oddly, all the diesel motorhomes are parked on one side of the park and the gas motorhomes on the other!!  But we're all Canadians representing BC, Alberta and Ontario.

The diesel rigs of Carol and Walter, Lloyd and Marilyn and Keeble and Carol

The gas rigs of John and Pat, Vic and Bev, Mike and Mavis

The weather here is hot and humid.  So far the lowest overnight temperature has been 73F (22.7C) with humidity of 80%.  Last year at this time the overnight temperature was 60F (15C) with little humidity.  We hope it will cool off soon!  The power is poor so you can't run air conditioners, just fans!!!

The ocean is also warm 85F (29C) so you don't really cool off but it is relaxing to float in the water.  No waves for boogie boarding as yet.

Lazy Days in Mazatlan

Thursday, November 22nd

It is still humid here. The locals tell us it is most unusual for this late in November.  We walk or putter with small jobs in the morning and cool off in the pool about 2 pm.

Yesterday while relaxing in the shade of our awning, we spotted a green iguana climbing the palm tree at the back of our motorhome.

Curious hummingbirds have come close to check us out but we haven't put our feeders out here.  We will wait until we reach Lo de Marcos.

About 11:30 am the veggie truck came in.  He was also selling heated tamales so we purchased come for a quick lunch. 

Last night we went out to Panchos Restaurant.  The food was delicious!  We enjoyed Veracruz Fish, Fettucini Alfredo with Shrimp, Chicken Molcajete and Panchos Huarache.

This photo shows a molcajete with chicken strips, beef, onions, cactus strips, cheese, salsa sauce.  Our serving was minus the beef.

Panchos Huarache (tender beef, cactus, refried beans, etc)

The restaurant is located on the waterfront. From our second floor seat we had a beautiful view of the waves lapping on the shore and a view of the lights of the south end of the city in the distance.  Another clear starry night.

Fresh Seafood in Mazatlan

Monday November 19th

We're getting spoiled with the vendors that appear here in the RV park.  Yesterday we purchased fresh Durado (mahi mahi) for $120 peso per kilo.  We had some of it for dinner last night -- so nice and tender!

This morning we purchased 1/2 kilo of jumbo shrimp (head off) for $95 pesos from Rico.  He offered to clean them for us but we declined.  We'll have some for tonight's menu. 

Then 30 minutes later, in comes a vendor selling large rock lobster.  A bag of 10 lobsters for $450 pesos so we split a bag with our friends.  We'll have some tomorrow night and freeze the rest as we only saw lobster for sale twice in Lo de Marcos last winter and they were much smaller in size.  Here are some photos of the vendor cutting and cleaning the lobster for us.

A few of the lobster already cut and cleaned

Mazatlan

Wednesday, November 14th

We are now traveling in a caravan of 3 RVs. (Mike and Mavis of BC, John & Pat of Penetanguishene ON and ourselves).  We left Tucson AZ about 8 am (temp 60F), gassed up at $3.21/gallon and drove south to the border by 9:50 am.  We had pre-purchased our vehicle temporary import permits before we left home so we only had to purchase our tourist visa cards.  This was a great move as we only spent 1 hour for the visa cards as to opposed to 2 1/2 hours the year before in line to purchase visa and vehicle permits.

We were in Totonaka RV Resort in San Carlos, Sonora, MX by 4 pm with a balmy temperature of 82F. San Carlos is near Guayamus on the Bay of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez).  We enjoyed dinner at our favorite restaurant, Charlies Rock, which has the best margaritas and seafood.  Celebrating our first day in Mexico for the season!

The only downer for Vic was the quality of the electricity.  Our surge protector kept shutting our power off as the supply was 140 volts instead of 130 volts or lower. 

Thursday November 15th

We left San Carlos at 10 am.  Our departure had been delayed as we all waited while Mike had a chip repaired in his windshield by a local service man.  (cost less than $20) We weren't driving far (only 238 miles) to stay at a Pemex gas station in Los Mochis so we were not in a rush to leave.  The gas price in Mexico right now is 10.7 pesos per litre (which is less than 1 dollar as the exchange is about 13 pesos to 1 Canadian dollar). There is no competition here -- Pemex is the only vendor of gasoline and diesel.

The temperature was 85F when we arrived in Los Mochis just before 4 pm.  The Pemex Stn number 4925 is a safe place to overnight.  It has a locked compound for truckers and RVers with a 24 hour guard.  Our only cost is a tip of $4 to the guard. There were also two other RVs from BC who spent the night there.

Friday November 16th to Sunday November 18th

We left Los Mochis about 8 am on Friday. Temp was 67F.  We passed the Tropic of Cancer about noon and were parked at San Fernado RV Park in Mazatlan by 1 pm. It was a humid 85F. (feels like 100F) We will stay here a week.  This is a 4 day holiday weekend in Mexico celebrating Revolution Day.  We will have custom windshield covers made here for our RV and John's RV but there is a delay in delivery of the material from Guadalajara due to the holiday.  Hopefully all will be done by Thursday night November 22nd.  The weekly price for our RV site is $155 USD.

This park has a nice swimming pool and hot tub.  We are on the north end of the city where there are lots of restaurants, shops, bank, etc to walk to.  Just 1 short block to the ocean.  The veggie truck comes in on Mon, Wed and Fridays. He carries fresh vegetables, fruit, eggs and shrimp. A fish vendor dropped by on Sunday to sell Durado.  Apparently a shrimp vendor comes on Thursday.  There is a Sam's Club, Walmart, Mega and Sorianna for supercentre type shopping.  And of course Vic appreciated a snack at the Dairy Queen on Saturday!

The first evening here we had dinner at the "Fat Fish" restaurant that specializes in barbequed ribs (one serving is enough for 2 meals).  Mike and Mavis left Saturday morning for Lo de Marcos, our final destination, as they wanted to participate in couples golfing on Sunday.

In the meantime John, Pat, Vic and Bev will do some sightseeing in Mazatlan. Saturday night we walked the beach and then saw fireworks from a nearby hotel.

The forecast weather for Sunday is high of 84F with feels like 99F.  Time to go cool off in the pool!

Tucson AZ - Lazy Days RV Resort

Saturday, November 10th:

We stayed over an extra day due to high winds (up to 60 mph) in Deming, NM,  The four of us decided to do a day trip with the car to visit Silver City, NM which is located about 50 miles northwest of Deming.  Luckily we had been smart enough to take winter jackets as Silver City was 2,000 ft higher in elevation than Deming so is much colder.  We walked the historic part of Silver City

roof decoration at one of the many art studios in the historic area of Silver City

about to enter the Silver City Museum

and the Silver City Museum.


On the way back to Deming we drove through the surrounding area to view the open pit Santa Rita Copper Mine.

panoramic view of the open pit copper mine

Sunday, November 11th:

The winds diminished and we were anxious to leave as the forecast low for Sunday night in Deming was 19F.  Brrrrr.  We headed out to Tucson and stopped for lunch near Dragoon at the scenic viewpoint.  It was an ideal photo opportunity of the beautiful rock formations in the area.

Monday, November 12th:

We booked into Lazy Days RV Resort in Tucson for 3 days.  Our friends Mike and Mavis from Enderby BC were waiting here for us yesterday.  We've spent the day shopping and doing a few small repairs.  The trees in the resort here are loaded with oranges, grapefruit and limes.  The management encourages the campers to pick the fruit.  So far we've had a grapefruit and a lime.  Tasty!

Our current plans are to leave Wednesday morning to travel as a small caravan of 3 rigs for our trip to Lo de Marcos, Nayarit, MX.

Deming, New Mexico

Since our last post, we spent 2 days at Coffee Creek RV Resort which is located 50 miles west of Fort Worth, Texas.  Bev and Pat enjoyed the luxury of the hot tub after the day of driving while Vic and John got a bit of work done on our RVs while we were there.

On November 8th, we left Coffee Creek to head to Pecos, Texas.  This was the day we saw our first cotton fields of the trip.  We stopped for gas at Abilene, paying $3.10 per gallon.  The day was warm - a pleasant 77F when we stopped at a rest area for lunch.

Friday November 9th, we headed to El Paso to shop at a computer store for a few items, passing into the Mountain Time Zone. Then we headed to the LoW HI Ranch at Deming, New Mexico.  We had planned to stay only one night here but there is a Wind Advisory for Saturday with winds gusting to 60 mph so we'll stay tucked in here for another night before heading out to Tucson. 

Our cheapest gas so far this trip was at the ALON (formerly Fina) in Las Cruces, just north of El Paso.  $2.91/gallon which works out to about 76 cents/litre!

Between Las Cruces and Deming we ran into a rain storm for a few miles. On the other side of the storm was a beautiful rainbow. We were conveniently approaching a rest stop and pulled in for a photo op.

Our rigs with rainbow.

Vic and Bev's moho in front of Pot of Gold.

The 4th Installment is Underway

Halloween night...at last.

After a week of preparations, updating, packing, loading, and planning, we are finally ready to leave for our fourth trip by motorhome to Mexico. It has been very hectic with the pressures of getting everything ready and we have finally been able to cool down, calm down, and sit down.

Now the kids are knocking at the door for treats. We are expecting an early end to the procession as the rainy weather should do in all but the hardiest. By 8 o'clock, the flow is down to a trickle and we do the last minute things such as setting the thermostat back to 9C round the clock. Then all electrical devices except for some lights are unplugged or their breakers turned off. A final pee then the water is turned off.
We are on the road and headed for the London Flying J.

Thursday Nov 1
We get underway by 8:50 (late) and meet up with our new travel buddies, John & Pat. Really they are old travel buddies that we used to boat with for many years. Like us, they have converted their water yacht to a land yacht and are traveling to Mexico with us this year.

We cross the border with ease and head on towards Indiana but this time we are not going to La Porte to see brother Don & Mary. We are spending the night at a campground at Goshen Indiana which lies about hour's drive south east of La Porte. The reason...We have ordered a replacement sofa from Flair Interiors after visiting the factory in April and it is ready for pickup.

Friday Nov 2
We arrive at the Flair factory at 9 AM and have allocated up to 2 hours for the sofa to be installed. We bump into a guy in the parking lot and recognize him as Mark who we met in April. He had shown us several sofa models and gave us lots of ideas for our new sofa. He went right to work to check up on our delivery and had the sofa moved to the shipping door where we met him with the motorhome. They brought out the sofa in two pieces and moved them inside and assembled them in position. The window valences needed to be shortened as the new sofa is higher than the original. Mark swiftly removed the valance and took the offending pieces into the shop to cut them down. He returned in a flash and completed the installation in 30 minutes. Mark was a delight to work with and all the people at Flair were friendly and helpful.  Flair gets our highest recommendations...10 out of 10!
With time to spare we head over to Wakarusa to go for a factory tour of Monaco Coach who make our rigs. We are greatly disappointed to find that tours are available only on Tuesdays and Thursdays at this time of year. Boo hoo. We will have to put this on hold until returning in the Spring.
We continue on to La Porte for a birthday dinner celebration in honor of Mary who has turned %%& years old today.

Saturday Nov 3
We spend the day shopping by firstly heading to Bailey's emporium, a discount everything store. The we head into Michigan City to shop a Meijor's for groceries and Menards for hardware.

Sunday Nov 4
We are on the road again by 8:30 after filling up at the gas station just east of Don's for a bargain price of $3.13 per gallon. The destination for the day is Cuba Missouri with a stop for gas just west of St. Louis for even cheaper gas at the Pilot station, paying $2.94 including a 4 cent per gallon discount as a Pilot member. The weather has been depressing for over a week now, including the spin-off of Hurricane Sandy. The temps at night are dipping down towards freezing and daytimes are a wet miserable low 40's F. This campground holds some of its site open for winter use and the campground seems eerily empty. The wi-fi is a big disappointment as throughput is exceedingly poor and we are unable to post emails or blog. We did get to GasBuddy though to preview prices for the next day.

Monday Nov 5
We leave the campground around 8:30 with a rainy 43F. Yuk! Chandler Oklahoma is our overnight destination. As with the previous night, this campground is known to us from our stopover of last year. The drive is steady cloud and rain until we reach Tulsa. The skies clear to cloudless blue and the temp warms up to 59F. Nice.
The wi-fi here is working very well and we are able to get caught up on news and emails.
Tomorrow we head to a spot west of Dallas for a couple of days to get a few chores done.

Time to get ready to head south

It's hard to believe that we'll be on our way south in just 6 days from now.

We've sold our first tow car, a 2004 Ford Focus, with its Roadmaster tow gear and now have a 2008 Chevy HHR

We have switched to Blue Ox tow gear.

One weekend, we drove our car to Cleveland, Ohio to pick up the Blue Ox base plate for the HHR.  From Cleveland we drove to Hershey, PA to attend the largest RV show.  Interesting show!  It was Bev's first visit to Hershey so she enjoyed the view of the street lights shaped like Hershey Kisses!

Unfortunately, we didn't have time to visit the Hershey museum.  And, of course, we stopped to shop at Camping World in Bath, NY on our way home (too bad they don't have any stores in Canada).

The following weekend, with the help of our friend John, Vic installed the base plate on the HHR and then we headed up to the RV to do a test of towing the HHR with the RV.  All worked well.

Then came the installation of a hitch on the car for our bike rack, wiring of lights to work in conjunction with the RV lights, wiring for our Even Brake system.

Today was 20C here at home so we took a drive in the country in one of our Spitfires before winterizing it with additives to the gas tank for winter storage. 

Tomorrow we start packing our RV for our annual journey south.

Visit to Mackinac Island MI

This was our second summer trip by car -- no RV.

On Wednesday July 25th we drove to Rogers City in northern Michigan to spend 6 days with Vic's brother and his wife at their summer home on Lake Huron. We took our friend Barb with us.  While there we drove north to Mackinaw City to take the ferry to Mackinac Island for the day.

Mackinac Island is a unique place as there are no cars allowed -- only bicycles or horse and carriage.

View along Main Street

There are many ice cream and fudge shops on Main Street so we stopped to shop along the way.

On our previous trip to Mackinac Island we rented bicycles to travel around the perimeter of the island.  This time we walked the trails across the island and visited many sites we had not seen before.  

We visited the Stuart House Museum which highlighted the history of the fur trade industry on the island. Then passed the cemetery on the trail to Fort Holmes and the lookout point.

The 2 forts on the island are Fort Mackinac (founded in 1780) and Fort Holmes (built in 1812) .

Fort Mackinac

The stairway down the hill from Fort Holmes.

The Grand Hotel, built in 1887, held a special event earlier this year to celebrate 125 years in business. The hotel is a very impressive structure with beautiful gardens.

view of the Grand Hotel from the ferry

Barb on the walkway to the Grand Hotel

Horse and carriage topiary in the Grand Hotel garden

Another view of one of the Grand Hotel gardens

There are many other beautiful hotels and Bed and Breakfast Inns on the island.  All the places had beautiful floral decorations. Here are a couple of examples:

The Lilac Tree Hotel on Main Street.

Metivier Inn  (originally a private residence built in 1877)

There are two remarkable rock formations known as Sugar Loaf and the Arch Rock.

View of Sugar Loaf from Point Lookout

Views of Arch Rock