Town Activities

The town is being spruced up this year.  The palm trees in the town square are decorated with strings of coloured lights.

The regional government has set up a program where a few bands travel to towns for free community entertainment.  Band night is Wednesday evening in Lo de Marcos.  The past Wednesday we had a 16 piece band play for 2 hours and lots of people danced to the music.

The taco stands set up around the town square on Wednesday evenings so you can enjoy an evening out of dinner and dancing very inexpensively!

Vic spent Wednesday morning setting up our Christmas decorations around our patio.  A nice site to come home to after an evening out.

our winter home in Mexico

The morning of Thursday December 3rd we met up with our travel buddies George and Carmen to drive to Lo de Marcos, Nayarit, Mexico.

It was our first time crossing at the Anzalduas International Bridge at Mission TX. This crossing is RV friendly.  No commercial traffic can cross at this bridge.  The lanes are wide and straight through.  The cost for us was $16.75 USD for our motorhome with tow car.  It was $9 for the truck with 5th wheel trailer that our friends were driving. You drive through the "Nothing to Declare" lanes and line up for an x-ray of the RV.  They take about 10 minutes to study the results of the x-ray. Then you are clear to purchase your tourist card (and vehicle permit if you didn't purchase it ahead of time over the internet).

We used toll roads where available on our route south.  The route took us through Monterrey, Saltillo, Zacatecas, Aguacalientes and Guadalajara.  The roads were excellent.  Much better than the route down 15D on the west coast.

The tolls were $90 more on this route but it is 608 miles shorter for us to travel to Mission TX and down this route than our route previous years of driving to Tucson AZ, crossing at Nogales and driving down the west coast of Mexico. We saved $1338 CAD on fuel and camping fees by taking this route from Mission .(The price of gas at PEMEX in Mexico is 13.57pesos/litre or $1.08 CAD which is more than the price in Toronto currently)

We spent 2 nights as PEMEX stations.  The first night in Concepion de Oro and the second night at Magdalena.  The PEMEX station in Magdalena is new and has a large compound for RVs and truckers to overnight.

We arrived at Savage RV Park in Lo de Marcos at 10:20 am on Saturday December 5th.  It is hot and humid here.  Day time highs are 30C to 33C with overnight lows of 22C.  The ocean is 29.2C (about 85F) so quite comfortable for swimming, floating or boogie boarding.

Saturday night is taco night in town so we headed out for an inexpensive dinner for our first night back in our winter home.

December 3rd

We are still at Lemon Tree RV Inn in Mission TX.  Since we arrived here on Nov 10th, the cost of regular unleaded gas has not gone above $1.86/gallon.  In fact, one lady went shopping about 30 minutes north of here on Black Friday and found that gas was only $1.68 at Murphys that day!  We topped our motorhome up on Nov 30th at $1.77/gallon.  Gas is certainly one item that is cheaper here than in Canada or Mexico!

Shortly after we arrived here, Vic had a toothache.  Luckily we are about a half hour drive to the international bridge to Nuevo Progresso which is a popular place for dental treatment.  We drove to Progresso TX, parked our car on the US side and paid 50 cents each to walk across the bridge into Mexico.  Vic had researched the various dentists and booked an appointment.  Once you cross the bridge there are 2 blocks containing nothing but dental clinics, pharmacies, and optometrists! Vic needed a root canal and crown.  Total cost $470 USD and he was pleased with the dentist's expertise.

Lemon Tree RV Inn is located next door to an orange grove.  The trees are loaded with oranges which are picked and sold in 10 lb bags for $5.

 Our park has many orange and lemon trees within it so we can freely pick oranges which are sweet to eat.

One Saturday we visited the DonWes Flea Market and purchased a 10 lb bag of red grapefruit for $3.  Smaller red grapefruit for juicing were 10 lbs for $2.

There are lots of little cottontail rabbits running around the park.  They are most apparent when we go for a walk in the evening. We saw about a dozen last night. They are busy nibbling on the grass and allow us to come within a few feet before they hop away.  There are enough around that we have to sweep the rabbit droppings off the shuffleboard court in the morning before we play!

We hear a flock of small green parrots fly over our campground almost every day.  Even though they are flying high you can hear them long before they pass above us.  They look similar in size to the Quaker Parrot that we used to have as a pet.

Lemon Tree RV Inn is close to the Anzalduas Park in Mission which has a large field for flying remote control model airplanes.  Vic brought 4 of his airplanes with him so he has been able to go out several mornings to fly them.  Unfortunately, Texas is known for being windy and he hasn't been able to go out to fly as often as he'd like.

We've been busy with social activities here, especially a wonderful American Thanksgiving dinner.  The owners of the park provided 9 turkeys and 22 pies for the celebration!  The residents contributed the stuffing, veggies and salads for the meal.  There are only 104 people in the park at the moment.  By January there will be about 300 people in residence. 

Black Friday we helped put up the Christmas tree and decorate the community center for Christmas.

Nov 30th Vic took our motorhome in for an oil change.  The charge was $115 at Lube Master Plus in Alamos which has tall bays for servicing motorhomes and trucks.

The weather has been cloudy and cool here for the past few days (about 16C in the daytime) so it is time to move further south. Our current plan is to cross the border into Mexico on Thursday December 3rd.