Chaos Leaves Town

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12-27-06

Attempted Visit to Loltun Caves…

After I left Uxmal, I traveled south just a few kilometers to what’s known as the Puuc Route, there are several ruins all along the same road and all within a few kilometers of each other. And 11 KM from the last ruin is a large cave; I believe it’s a partial cenote, a cave in causing a large circular depression in the ground that over time fills with water. Many of the Mayan sites in this area are built right next to a cenote. Chichen Itza is situated between two very large cenotes. Many of the ruins were abandoned those times when the rains around here slacked, as the cenotes and wells dried up, then when the rains returned, the centers were repopulated, repairs made and new buildings begun. Finally, when the Spanish arrived and sacked the cities, most were abandoned and not reinhabited.

Anyway, I wanted to visit the place so I drove Puuc Route to where it was suppose to be, my map showed it very near the road, when I get to where it should be, nothing. There’s a sign pointing to the left but it’s shown differently, showing ‘Lol Tun’ whereas the maps say ‘Loltun’, so it could be the town of similar name, if one exists. I turn left anyway, and watch for signs. Around 3 KM later, I do pass though a small town, then 5 KM later, I give up finding the caves find a spot to turn the RV around without falling off a cliff. The road is barely wide enough for one vehicle and I would have to pull off the road to let opposing traffic pass.

When I get close to the sign that sent me that way, I’m very careful to examine every sign I see…nothing about a cenote, or the Loltun caves or any other Spanish words that might indicate a cave. When I get back to the ‘T’, I turn left and go another 6 KM to a town named Oxkutzcab. Still no Loltun cave or any signs. For what seems to be such a popular attraction you would think they would have lots of signs for tourists. No such luck.

I head back, check for signs all along the route, still no luck, and the road was mostly a farm country road so light traffic and nobody to ask where the caves were, and finally I end up back at Labna’ ruins. I visited for a while, didn’t get any pictures. The caves are supposed to be the best in the Yucatan…maybe I’ll see them next trip, sorry I missed them.

Since it was still early in the day, I headed on to Campeche. A few hours later and I reached the old city. Built in 1542, the streets are very crowded and narrow. I always follow bus signs whenever I get into a large city but it didn’t take long and I was lost, or at least I couldn’t find the campground I was looking for. I found a tight place to turn my bus around and headed back to the bypass that most Mexican cities have circling their cities. After that, it was easy to get my bearings and make it to a nice campground on the outskirts. I stayed there for 5 days and got my shopping and laundry done. I also took the time to figure out that there are many streaming video setups on the major networks so I could watch my favorite TV shows (mostly). It was fun catching up on my favorite comedies and missing the 95F heat of the city. The only blogging I did was to write more stories about my navy days.

When I left Campeche, I headed southwesterly, toward the Palenque Ruins, one of the top five ruins in Mexico. I knew from my guide book where I wanted to stay for the evening, and when I passed the place I stopped in the circle driveway in front of the resturant at a hotel. One of the waiters came out and I asked if I could spend the night. He says NO, no RV parking there. Well, as you know, I don’t speak Spanish so I drive on up to the Palenque museum parking lot and park there while I scout around and have something to drink. I can’t make out from the signs where the ruins are. They certainly arn’t near by the museum or the little store they had there, so I jump in the RV and head up the hill, expecting to find them just around the next corner. The road gets steeper and steeper and windy as it heads up the mountainside. I keep going, and after a couple miles I get to the site. I get up to the parking lot, but it’s full and I’m waved back. So I back up a few feet with seemingly no where to park except on a steep incline about 100 yards from the gate off to the side of the road. I park there, and scout around for a turn around place. Nothing. Well, I think, I’ll go tour the ruins and worry about it later.

Here’s a shot of the museum parking lot at the bottom of the hill:
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Then after buying a ticket, you climb up a few rock stairs, walk a 50 yard path and arrive at a flat plateau that the Maya made by hand here on the mountainside. The site is very large, with many buildings and was once the major crossroads of the Mayan empire. This place sits in the middle of the kindom of the Maya. Very impressive. And this was one of the few places where a tomb was found…all those artifacts from the tomb are in Mexico City, but the museum here near the ruins has a few peices.
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Sorry, I have been distracted for a couple days here at the campground where I’m staying. I’ve been helping the owner upgrade the electrical. That meant that I could, after I rewired my electrical connection with the proper sized wire and breaker, run my air conditioning. It’s much more comfortable here because the humidity is much lower then in the Yucatan, then when you add AC, even better.

I was pleased to have been here when those famous authors the Church’s stopped by for the night. They wrote the preeminent guidebook to Mexico named ‘Traveler’s Guide to Mexican Camping by Mike and Terri Church’. You hardly see any North American down here without a copy. They are good people and we had a few laughs discussing the Mexican travel adventure. I got my copy of the book signed. Pretty cool. They’re heading for Panama in a Class C.

Here are the Church’s enjoying the balmy night at Flores De Las Penas on the West coast:

Now back to regular photos of ruins…
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This is the tunnel into the tomb where they found a genuine casket with a royal body and all the original gifts sent with him to the underworld:

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The entrance to the tomb:

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Off in the distance, another pyramid:

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and another:

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This shot is of the original track up to a shrine and temple up those stairs, it’s a burial shrine right along the creek, pretty impressive:

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This creek was actually covered at one time, the Maya built a long tunnel out of rock pieces to cover it so as to open the courtyard:

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This building is interesting in that they built it using the contours of the hill to create a natural pyramid with an alter to a diety on the top. This would have been pretty close to what it looked like when it was finished. There are some very interesting and beautiful frescos inside the building:

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Overlooking the city, and the sea of jungle:

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Some of the best preserved fresco’s I’ve ever seen:

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This was the oldest pyramid at the site, predating all the other buildings by a couple hundred years. Note how crude and large the steps are:

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And out in the back yard, another pyramid, these people just never stopped:

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More soon!

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12-10-06

Merida to Uxmal Ruins…

The time came to leave Chichen Itza, I’d seen all I wanted to see there, got sick (with a cold and cough) then got well, and it was time to move on to Merida. There is only one RV park there so that’s where I stayed. After a 10 day stay in Piste’, nice but a very small town just a mile from Chichen Itza, I was looking for a large grocery store to restock and perhaps sample some nightlife in town. I don’t mean to diss Piste’ but the fruit and veggies were pretty bad most stores I’d gone to. Though in Piste’ I was able to find a bike repair shop through a store owner who spoke a little English and got my bike adjusted and lubed. The salty sea air I’d gone through had done a number on the metal parts and there was rust all over the chain, and an accident had bent the front wheel rim. They straightened my front wheel and lubed the chain, took around 2 hours, all for $6.04 US.

When I arrived at Merida, the RV park was asking $23 per night and it seemed expensive after the places I’d stayed with the same facilities for much, much, less. Like at Piste’ it was only $7.68 US per night, with all the same services PLUS sewer, and this place only had a dump station, that I couldn’t find. You kind of get use to lower prices and when someone slaps on a huge profit margin like this, it kind of bothers you. But, I needed to shop, they probably had higher taxes to pay, and there was a big store nearby, so I stayed. Rode my bike over to the store and did my shopping, struggled back with two bags hanging from my handlebars. Not the night for bar hopping, to tired after all that shopping.

This is where I parked in Merida, they have around 80 spaces for RVs and I was the only one there…

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Next day, I left for the Uxmal (Oosh-mahl) ruins, #2 in the big 4 of ruins. Chichen Itza is #1. I arrived around 2:30 in the afternoon and parked right on the site grounds, that’s my RV off in the distance. It was a boondocking place, no electric or whatever, but one of the RVs there had WiFi that I accessed for a couple hours when the genset was running…
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There are two large interesting and comfortable hotels here (I toured them), with restaurants and all, one of them is a Club Med, and I have to say, if you’re looking for a long quiet week in Mexico visiting ruins while staying in some first class hotels, this place is really worth a visit…fly into Cancun, take a bus over to Merida, rent a car then travel down here, it’s a short drive from Merida. Stay at one of the hotels, go visit Uxmal Ruins (the entrance is just a few feet from the hotels) then go on the ‘Puuc ancient ruins route’ that’s very near here. And there is a very large cave to tour as well. Probably 2 days at least visiting Uxmal then 2-3 days doing the Puuc Route at a slow pace so a rental car would be best travel method. Very much worth the effort…
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They had all these flowering plant and bushes all over the place, my ancient camera doesn’t do them justice:

But I enjoyed them:

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After wandering around for a couple hours, having dinner, and resting, at 6:30pm (1850hrs), I entered the Uxmal ruins grounds to watch the night light show. I’d heard it was interesting from some of the people staying in the parking lot, and I rented the headphones, with translation into English to improve my understanding of the ruins with what I thought would be an educational talk. Turned out that it was designed and written by art majors or something. Lots of singing and music and the same lights going off and on casting onto the same ruins. I should have stayed in the RV. Waste of time. But so inexpensive as to be worth it. Now that I’ve been to one of the light shows down here I know that it’s a waste of time and I’ll skip them from now on.
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The next day, I get my ticket and walk into the second best preserved and restored Mayan ruin in Mexico (or so the books say) for my second time. This is my forth visit to a Mayan ruin and this one is impressive. It’s not so much the size of the place as it is preserved artifacts still attached to buildings. I tried to get the best shots I could but my camera has decided to start absorbing moisture from the jungle so I’ve had to delete some of the most obvious shots where the lens is fogged. But there are nearly 100 pictures of the place so I hope you enjoy them, and the work that it took to get them…

This one is a discreet shot of the pyramid as I approached it along the road the Mayan built over 1200 years ago. It’s as impressive now as it must have been back then:

And a shot as you enter the grand plaza:

Off to the right of the grand pyramid:

I’m going to stop telling you about all these buildings because, really, no one knows what they were used for any longer, (exceptions noted). And I don’t believe all those that say every single building had religious or governmental purpose. In this place I’d swear that some of the buildings were surrounding a used car lot, or the equivalent, another building seemed to me to be for meat storage next to an ancient disco place, there is a plaza I’d swear was a shopping mall, and other places that seem to be cloistered homes where the upper classes just chilled after a hard day of whipping the peasants.

I think that too much is made of, and/or called religious buildings or administrative buildings. Many buildings seemed to be public works that would be equivalent in design, space and positioning to be mere shopping centers. In a society that had the ability, wealth, and leisure time to build sport arena’s, shopping centers are not that much of a stretch. That’s my opinion. Prove me wrong.

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This is one of those Mayan arches I’m fond of showing…since it points to the lack of a partial circle arch, used in the Med area for a thousand years previous to this…

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Here we see one of the rooms the Mayan’s built inside of their buildings. You never see much more then this, sometimes two rooms of this size would be connected by a large doorway but I never saw three rooms connected together unless it was a single wide low roofed building, like a series of shops linked together:

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Here’s one of the few ‘overhang’ walls that the Mayan’s built. Because of their building technique, this would have been a triumph of the work crew and designer. And it’s still standing 1200 years later.

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As can be seen, this quad is where one ball court could have been, except for the building there in the middle of it. It’s named the Nunery or something similar by the Spaniards that visited the place. I think this was just a shopping mall, which would explain all the single rooms spaced around the place, that look like little business places, and the building on the courtyard perhaps came after the city had fallen into disrepair…someone built their house in the courtyard because it was neat there, but that’s just my opinion, and they don’t hand out brochures here so what do I know anyway. But it had the look & feel of a large, open air shopping mall:

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Now here’s a real ball court, too obvious to ignore:

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One of the very large lizards that live around here:

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I’m leaving tomorrow and don’t know when I’ll be back on line…thanks for visiting.

Next time, we head South to the Puuc Route trying to find the Loltun’ caves…

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12-10-06

On the Road & Chetumal…

From Catemaco we headed due east to Chetumal, spending the night in a Pemex station that had long lines waiting for fuel. I’d fueled up 2-300 miles earlier and could easily make it to Chetumal so I spent that evening cleaning up the grassy area in front of the station rather then waiting for fuel. It was a mess of plastic bags, cups, bottles, papers and the like people had tossed out of their windows and since it was my front lawn that night, I didn’t mind spending 45 minutes picking it up. Filled two big bags with trash then brought out my lawn chair and a beer and enjoyed the distant sun sinking into the jungle, I could swear I saw steam rising as it set.

Next day we’re on our way and pass this odd suspention bridge. Cool design.

Around noon, we stopped along side of the hiway for lunch:

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On of the many types of flowers right around here in the jungle:

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When we arrived at Chetumal, we had time to stop and do some shopping in a giant mall, then tripped out to the property of one of the travelers. This land was inhabited by the Maya for a thousand years and on this property, there is both a platform for a house, tons of broken pottery on the ground, and a small pyramid. Wow. It’s not everyone who can say that their property is an archelogical find.

Where I parked:

The ancient mound where there use to be a house, the current property owner is allowed to build over it or around it but not dig into it:

Another view of the mount behind the modern palapa with it’s hammocks:

Next day, I rode my bike up the road maybe 2 miles from where we were staying, to a Mayan ruin site…I don’t recall the name and a quick check of my guide books turns up nothing, but it is an improved site, with a parking lot with restrooms, and a charge of $50 pesos to visit. It took me from 7:30 am to around 10:30 at a leisurely pace, without having to dodge any other tourists, to circumnavigate the entire site. This is one of the estimated 12,000 ancient ruin sites all over Mexico. This one I would call…cozy. It was a working town until the Spaniards arrived, murdered a bunch of people, forced many into slavery, then built a giant church on the grounds to show how powerful their god was to the natives. The church is interesting in that it has a couple of huge arches incorporated into the building. The Maya seemed to never figure out the arch, they built what’s actually an inverted V, like this ^ only steeper, and it could not carry much weight, or they just preferred to ignore the superior load bearing abilities of the classical arch for their own reasons. Whatever the case, they didn’t use the arch. Or wheels:

This was the first pyramid I was able to climb in Mexico…:

An example of how the jungle can cover huge buildings, there is another large pyramid just up this trail but it’s totally invisible until you’re nearly on top of it:

The top of another pyramid, this one has (had) what appears to be a home on top, the sign said that it was a female gods home or something like that:

A thousand years ago, this plaza would have been devoid of trees, but filled with merchants and shoppers:

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This is what the sign said is one of the rulers dwellings. There are several bedrooms, and a large kitchen nearby. These rooms are on top of a large but not very high pyramid overlooking a plaza, with a religious pyramid on the other side of it and administrative pyramids on either side. There does not seem to be what we would call a living room in the dwellings I’ve seen. But the weather here is so fair, I’d imagine people, including the rulers, would hang around outside until time for sleep:

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That was just one of the thousands of towns and cities that the Olmec, Toltec, and Maya built over here in the Yucatan.

A day or two later I moved over to a nearby RV park intending to stay a month or so…but the place wanted $32 per night and the weekly rates were not much better. They never told me what the monthly rate would be. Anyway, I didn’t see much in the area that would be all that interesting anyway, so I headed on up to Cancun and Chichen Itza. But here’s a few pictures of the RV park anyway. The ocean was pretty nice:

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12-7-06

Visit to a cemetery…

The several Mexican cemeteries we have passed in our 3-4 weeks here have been interesting to see at 40 MPH but I wanted a closer look, so when we stopped for a break right across the street from an old cemetery in the suburbs outside of a big town, I wandered over there with the camera to get a few shots.

Their cemeteries are colorful, cramped, with many heartfelt expressions of love chiseled into the granite markers. We visited a few days past the day of the dead so there were many flowers still there, adorning the graves…

The small buildings are really shrines to the departed, and the more money you have, the bigger and better the shrine is. There were above ground crypts as well, some going back to the 1800’s.

Many of the cap stones and shrines showed their age by style and weathering, but mostly the care and tending of these rest spots implied that the Mexican people visit their departed loved ones often, and bring gifts along with the flowers. One thing I did notice is that the tiles used in the construction of most of the shrines were nicer then most of the types of tile I’d seen in stores and homes I had visited in Mexico.

While I don’t know the burial traditions of this place, I think anyone would get a sense of how nice the people really are by seeing how they care for these family members. I wonder how far back their traditions go…

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Back on the road, and a couple hours later, we stopped at a Pemex for lunch. I found this guy living in a diesel air filter. I wanted the filter so I dropped it out and watched it scamper under my rig…too quickly for me to get another shot.

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Then the weather started to close in again and we drove through a couple of drenching squalls:

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This is one of the rain swollen streams we crossed, one thing they don’t lack here is rain:

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12-6-06

Down in Catemaco…

After we left Xalapa, we first headed east then south to Catemaco. It is a picturesque town on the shore of a lake of the same name. When we arrived, there were no other RV’s in the park that we could see, but the lake was inviting and we settled in for the night despite the lack of sewers or running water at our spaces. They were also asking too much and we negotiated a better price for several days stay. Meanwhile, we arranged for a special boat ride the next day for $350 pesos for six people. Happily, a German couple arrived late in an older Class A, Horst and Anna, and they joined our little group for tomorrows lake tour.

How we all parked in this little space:

The restaurant where we had great food at a great price, 1/2 the cost of in the US but high by Mexico standards of pricing:

The boats the tourists take to tour the lake, ours was arranged for the next day:

Up the street:

Dusk over the lake. It’s just across the street from where I’m parked:

Next day our boat waiting for us:

And we’re off:

The greyhound surveys, seemed he was a natural sailor:

Lazy birds:

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This area has been habited for thousands of years. It was in ancient times, a resort area. Although there are few ruins, there is some reason to believe that at one spring at the north end of the lake, bubbling warm fresh water through mud, has drawn people for centuries for soothing mud baths. There were constructions that have been rebuilt and reproductions of ancient statuary akin to the works that would have been here a thousand years ago and have been reset at ancient positions, though the actual statues are long missing. We toured the area, it’s called an ‘eco preserve’ area by locals, and some of the profits from our tickets are put back into preserving the flora and fauna. The pictures you see here are of the rebuilt buildings and reproductions of typical statuary, mostly historically accurate in that they are appropriate gods and goddesses of the indigenous peoples of the area. These first few pictures are as we motored the lake near the western shore for views of the egrets and a few nice estates.

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Their are 3 kinds of birds in this shot…we were told that the two smaller species, one mostly black, and the other mostly white with yellow feet, sometimes get drunk and walk on the wild side, producing the larger and heavier 3rd type of egret that was nearest the top of this tree. It’s dark with yellow feet, and they always seem larger then their parents. Or so the guide told us. You can see that it appears twice as large as it’s neighbors near it as well as larger then those perched below.

The weather was a little spooky, what with the clouds rolling over and sometimes threatening to rain, but it was mostly mild with a temp around 74F and no rain all day…

We approach the sanctuary:

Pay our $35 pesos and cross the suspension bridge with our guide:

A restored walkway:

One of the ceremonial circles:

A little local color:

This goddess takes on the sins of the petitioner or something, that’s the meaning of the black around her mouth. At first I just thought she needed a shave.

This was the sweat lodge. Water would be poured onto hot rocks for steam:

One of the interesting buildings that I forget the meaning of:

This use to be the area where they got the mud, now I’m not sure:

Some kids enjoying a swing:

There’s a gator out there somewhere. They were almost hunted to extinction by the locals but these are protected:

These lizards are rescued from the wild as eggs, grow up here, then are released at age 3 or 4. They handle that treatment well and after release are hunting on their own quickly. The locals eat to many of them which is why they need to be protected here:

On our way back from the ‘Eco Preserve’, we passed Monkey Island that some idiot thought would be a good place to release a few imported Indonesian Short Tailed Macaques. They’ve been overfed ever since but have never made it from this island to the mainland. The 2-3 year olds are captured and sold to zoos all over the world., which maintains the tribe population at around 20 individuals. One alpha male, female adults, and then the kids. Tourists have been overfeeding them since they got here. As you can see, they are fat, but not as unhealthy (I’m told) as they use to be because of a change in the treats the tourists are now allowed to give them. Before there were too many treats, now it’s protein instead. As you can imagine, the dog went nuts when he saw these little hairy people…but the monkeys could have cared less:

That tour only took 3 hours so the rest of the day we wandered around downtown Catemaco while I looked for some stuff called Microdyn. It’s based on iodine I believe and it’s used for purifying water and veggies. Took quite a while to find it, had to go to 4 stores. This town is a quintessentially Mexican village. I’ve been through many villages down here now and this one really gets my vote as one of the more interesting and attractive. But for you Gucci wearing types, it is very rustic as well. But there are some 3-4 star motels here. I’m glad I made it up here.

One of the aggravating things about RV’ing in Mexico is the lack of consistency. For the money we would have been paying for our spaces here, compared to the US, or even a better Mexican RV park, we would have gotten 30 amp, water, and sewer, or at least a working dump station. Maybe even cable. Here, we got 20 amps, no water unless you wanted to drag a bucket over to the restaurant, and a dump station you had to back up too, and that was higher then where you could park a rig like mine to use it…and sewage doesn’t flow uphill. They tried to charge us way too much, but we were able to negotiate a pretty good price since it’s the off-season and the place was empty when we got there. The campground ended up having my Class A, another Class A, two Class C rigs, a couple class B camper vans, a truck camper, and even backpackers, who used a tent. They mostly all arrived later in the day and the next day so we considered ourselves lucky to get the discount when we arrived and the place was empty. Plus we ended up staying 5 days for a look around so that made them happy. Like I said, I stayed indoors most of that time watching and listening to games and working on the blog, while it rained buckets, but I got a good sense of this place when I did go out. It was great staying here.

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11-29-06

On to Xalapa (aka Jalapa)…

After we left the Emerald Coast, we headed on up to Xalapa. This is a city with all the amenities including one of the largest collections of Olmec giant stone heads at their museum. It was off our track but the ladies wanted to visit with one of their friends that has a place down in Coatepec, which is just south of Xalapa.

So we arrive there late afternoon, settle in at the parking lot of a Sam’s store and spend the night. Next day the women head off to their friends place and I take a taxi half way across town to the museum. I got there at 10am and wandered around for 4 & 1/2 hours. Could have been longer but I was suppose to meet the women at 3pm and follow them to Coatepec to camp. Well, the road was so bad and the boondocking site so small in Coatepec that we decided to bag that excursion and stayed on the Sam’s parking lot for another night there in Xalapa.

The city itself is just your typical semi-modern Mexican city so I didn’t take any pictures of it, and we were having some rainstorms though the area so it was sort of gloomy.

When you first walk into the museum, this Olmec head is right there. They didn’t have any brochures to hand out so I’ll have to go by memory for this part, I think this head is considered the 7th best out of all they have:

This one is even better, it spoke to me while I was standing there, almost made me wet my pants, stupid ghostly Olmec head voice:

These guys were pissed at something:

These things weighed tons so they are not worried about a visitor walking off with them:

So you know, we are getting progessively older as these pictures take us for a walk through the museum. Starting over 800 years ago and going back to 4,700 years BPE. I won’t say much about these pieces since their descriptions were in Spanish so I don’t know much about them, occasionally there were brochures available in English so I can describe some pieces. This is a picture of the other wing of the museum, I’m still in the first part of this main wing when I took this shot out of a side door, just to give you an idea of the size of the place. They have some of the heads in their own alcoves with other pieces, they look like little courtyards in the tropics:

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This is a panther, stylized as you can see. The mouth is like a pathway to the other side:

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Here’s one of the altars:

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Can’t remember for sure…father holding dead son?

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One of the more interesting figures

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This is a clay figure of someone after they have had their skin flailed, no explanation of why you would want such a statue, maybe as a warning?:

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These following clay figures are all over 1,000 years old and are an excellent example of the type of creative art they had going on back then, wouldn’t I love to have one of these:

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Here’s a couple shots of El Tajin, where a lot of the pieces here in the museum came from, and that I visited a few days before:

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This piece is the most macabre in the museum, this is a clay representation of a torture victim. They would be tied up like the clay figure, with those big ropes, with arms placed in those cones (they’re hard to see, there are like horns near the ear and they are behind the head) so you would have your arms up behind your head and tied, with all the weight of the rock, the whole thing is made out of rock, except the rope then ?, shiver:

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These skulls and artifacts were presented here like they were found in a group grave; it may have been raided, not known:

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This guy with the huge woody is wearing the skin of a victim, seems happy about it:

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Anyway, hope you enjoyed the visit to the museum. Sadly, the Spanish did an excellent job of stealing all the gold so there are none of those types of artifacts here. There are some pieces at Chichen Itza and I’m planning on going there next, don’t know for sure where that museum is yet but I’ll try to find it soon.

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11-29-06

On the Emerald Coast, Mexico…

After spending the morning touring the El Tajin ruins, one day is probably enough, half a day not enough, we went on without Woody (he headed on down to Panama), to the Emerald Coast. This area is well worth the visit. We got here just between the seasons so where we stayed they had few guests. We stayed two nights to recharge our personal batteries and to get on-line (it takes some effort to get the satellite set up and running and all, so if we’re not going to be in one place for at least two days, we usually bag it and don’t set up at all).

Anyway, here’s where we stayed. Note that there are several RV camping spots all up and down the coast here, all bordering the ocean. Many choices, good facilities, good nearby services and food, etc. It’s a place where you could settle for several months if you wished:

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As you can see, not to popular with the tourists at this time of year:

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The Caribbean shore, where in days of yore, Spaniards came to exploit, er, explore.

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11-20-06

Even More from Catemaco…

We’re hanging here at the La Ceiba RV park in Catemaco (Caw-tea-maw-ko) another day or so, it’s Sunday, Nov. 19, 2006 and I’m trying to catch the NFL games today. I have ordered streaming audio of all the games over the internet and then I’ve got the TV tuned to an early game, Oakland vs. Kansas City, shown on a local station (with audio in Spanish). The sources are out of sync by about a minute so I watch the play on TV, and a minute later, listen to the play by play from the computer. Strange, but no stranger then the stuff you do. Yes, I can see you through your computer screen.

Anyway, here are some more pictures of the ancient city of El Tejin.
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They tell me that there are 17 ballcourts here but I only found two so I am no longer sure what I’m looking for when it comes to ballcourts. Most of the hoops that are traditional on either side of a ballcourt have been stolen and the rest removed to be placed in museums. But still, I would expect to see a wide narrow area with viewing stands on either side of any ballcourt. I suppose you folks should come here and see for yourselves. Why is the hoop stolen so often? It’s because of the macabre history of the hoops, and their artistry. During ritural games, sometimes lasting for days, the teams would use the head of someone bested in battle or the head of a sacrificial victim. The human head pushed or tossed through the hoop would count as a score, sometimes ending the game. Much like todays basketball. Every member of the loosing team could be killed. Kind of an inducement to play really, really hard. Many players died during games. Other games appeared to be just for practice where the teams tossed handmade balls of flora through the hoops to score. Thanks to the Spanish, we can only guess at most of the daily history since they destroyed all the written codicies and we only have bare sketches and their biased opinions of some of the daily life here.
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Thought that I would take my own picture with the neat structure in the background but I miss timed, that’s why I have a stunned look, it’s called the Pyramid of the Niches and is said to have 365 niches (it’s crumbled some). The pyramid was painted red and the niches black. It would have been impressive when built for sure:

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The pathways and plazas shown here are original. Very comfortable to walk on, not the bumpy plazas of old Europe or the ancient roads of the Romans (I’m told), though this place has some roads like those too, the main road into this complex is rough cobblestone:

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Well, that’s all the pictures I have of El Tajin. Tomorrow we are getting back on the road so I’ll not be on the web for a few days. After that, I’ll put up pictures of this place, Catemaco, quite the lake they have here. It’s been raining heavily for the last couple days so we’ve kind of stayed indoors mostly. But the first whole day we were here, I got some good shots.

If you can’t get enough of the ruins, here’s a link to another site that has more pictures:

El Tajin Archaeological Ruins

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11-18-06

Down in Catemaco…

We settled here in Catemaco next to a large lake and have spent a couple days relaxing and checking out the town. It was overcast when we got here, the day after a major wind storm that caused lots of fallen trees and power lines, etc. It’s been intermittently raining most of the day so I took this opportunity to do some budgeting and computer work while trying to figure out why the Oregon Ducks football game was on the radio for 35 minutes and then after a glitch on my end stopped playing. Then all I could get from the radio station was a commercial loop. Very maddening but the Ducks are loosing big time anyway so no biggy to me I guess. Damn it.

I’ll get some more of those 100 pictures I told you about up here today while I’m enjoying the Prairie Home Companion. Here’s a link especially for you foreign readers, since you may have no idea what the show is about. Each show is 2 hours long and they are mostly comedy and music with some old fashioned monologs thrown in. Anyway, the shows are archived and available for free as streaming audio in English on-line:

Prairie Home Companion

The first day in Mexico it was getting wet and that evening we stopped and stayed at a Pemex station for the night.

Here’s a shot of our rigs and the weather:

The next day was more of the same weather:

We passed this huge statue in a grape growing region:

Here’s one of the many swollen rivers we passed over that day:

Finally we arrived at the El Taj’in ruins in the highlands:

We were sort of mobbed by salespersons as the weather was poor we were among the few that visited that day.

Here’s a view of the museum from where we parked for the night. Since we got there late in the afternoon, we stayed on the museum parking lot for a mere $6 US. Next morning we headed into the site thankful that it is free on Sundays.

A look at the booths the vendors use to sell you all sorts of trinkets:

The walk to the museum:

The entrance to the site:

Another view of a couple pyramids:

The following pictures speak for themselves, note that these ruins are over a thousand years old, and were inhabited then abandoned then reinhabited then finally abandoned for 800 years. Anyway, enjoy:

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Ahh, I’m finally here, the place I’ve studied and read about and seen pictures of nearly my entire life. It does not disappoint. The Mayans built this place, I believe over a thousand years ago:

A shot of Sam to give you an idea of scale, plus she’s cute. Here she’s pointing out her great dimples to me, as if I didn’t know already:

One of the several ball courts (17) here at the site, this one is the most well defined:

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Here they (archeologists) are protecting the place with a roof since there are a lot of fresco paintings all around this building. The thatch roof helps keep it dry:

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A view from the hill top, where the elite lived in the cooling breezes, looking down over the city. Even up here, in the quiet part of town, there appear to be plazas where the elite could stand high over groups of people and lie to them, just like today:

Up in the elite part of town:

Look carefully at the lower half of the picture, those are frescos painted over a thousand years ago:

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Sam talking to the scientist we found up on the bluff sweeping up around the covered building. He knows five languages and kept Sam occupied for 40 minutes. Since I don’t speak spanish, I wandered off after 20 minutes or so:

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These following shots are just a few other buildings I happened to pass while wandering the site:

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This shot is of a stair well that I thought was particularly interesting. Seems meant to be intimidating:
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Well, I’m kind of tired so I’m going to take a break. I’ll put up more tomorrow before the football game.

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11-13-06

Back into Mexico…

We’ve been on the road in Mexico now for a week, we crossed the border on Nov. 7th and today is Nov. 13th. The first travel day we went to a small town right on the Carribean coast named La Pesca and stayed right there on the beach for 3 days. It’s a Mexican tourist destination and the beach we stopped at has hosted as many as 70,000 on vacation weekends. But it was nearly deserted while we were there.

The first set of pics is of three of our four rigs and the RV park we stayed at in Mission, Texas:

This next picture is of two of the group members, Woody on the chair and Sam there in the foreground. Woody was born in Panama, joined the US Marines there and spent his 30 year career in the US. He has a thick accent, speaks Spanish first and English second and is driving back to Panama to visit all his relatives. He wanted to travel with us for a while since he had never driven an RV in Mexico and wanted to know the ropes.

Sam was born in Colombia, moved to New York at 1 & 1/2 and speaks both Brooklynese (though she grew up on Long Island) and Spanish. She is traveling down to a remote place in the Yucatan to stay a few months and maybe take a management job, if it’s offered.

Not shown is Kathe, she’s a land owner in Mexico and has been across the border at least 20 times, speaks fluent Spanish and English and will be trying to sell homes on her property to women that would like to retire down in Mexico.

We’re all traveling together to sort of help each other along with accumulated knowledge and mutual assistance.

Our first stop inside Mexico after we passed the border and border checks, this is what passes as a rest stop, we had lunch here. That’s Kathe there in the middle of the picture and her rig behind:

Just a random shot of the roadway and the typical flora and fauna, lot’s of moisture in this area. Nothing like the West coast of Mexico at this latitude, which is basically a desert:

Late in the day we arrive at the beach in La Pesca for some boondocking:

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Just a shot of my rig:

Then the jetty:

Then there is that finger of ocean water that was creeping up the beach while we wandered around, and patterns of wetness all the way up the beach. There was a friend of Kathe’s that came by and told us the dredging done recently in the channel was causing this problem, so we move to another nearby beach:

Here was my first overnight boondocking place:

And a general shot of the area, note that on busy weekends there are nearly 70,000 Mexicans here, obviously, this is the off season for this beach. If you look carefully you’ll see all those little grass covered shelters in the picture all the way up the beach. They’re rented for $50 pesos per day:

After settling in a little, I wandered over to the beach, it’s around 100 yards from where I parked, and took the following four pictures. It’s sunset and these are mostly looking somewhat east:

As you can see from my shadow, I’m very tall:

Dawn the next morning:

Still dawn, but you can see there are some tourists, Sam & Woody. We did see a lot of Mexicanos drop by. In fact we helped a family that had dropped their car alarm remote into the ocean, so they couldn’t get their SUV started to drive home. I silenced the siren and Sam was able to activate the starter with the same secret procedure as works with her alarm. We got hugs:

That’s Kathe’s little 4 wheel drive runabout. I added a little hidden switch to deactivate it so a bad guy would have trouble hot wiring it:

A couple days later and we leave the beach and pass through La Pesca. It’s a typical little town of 3000 near the beach:

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10-27-06

From Rosamond to Texas…

I left my brothers house the day after I received the power supply (PS) I needed for the used LCD monitor I bought on eBay. As soon as I plugged it into the PS and turned it on, I could see defects in the screen display. Damn. Then I went back to the documentation I had about the product to see if I’d missed something in the description of the monitor or in the pictures the seller provided. There was no mention of the blue blotches that were large and obvious on the screen. And both were on the right side of the screen but the pictures provided by the seller only showed close up pics of the left side. Hmmm. Interesting. I had time to shoot off a complaint email to the seller and got on the road next morning by 9am.

I took the shortest route to Fort Stockton Texas with a stop in Benson Arizona. I pushed it that first day since I was fresh and drove until around 9:30pm or so with a couple stops to stretch my legs. I parked the rig across two, three parking slots used by truckers at a truck stop. I felt safe doing that since when I got there the place had 50 to 100 empty slots and I wanted to park in a way that would minimize the parking lot lights getting into the rig and disturbing my sleep. Next morning at 6am I get up and find I’m blocked in by two semis. I slept right through their arrival. After breakfast and some coffee, I seesaw the rig back and forth a few times before I can make it out. A couple hours later and I pass a large wind farm. It was the first time I stopped to take a picture or two. The first day was over familiar ground so I didn’t bother to take more pictures of the same places I’d passed and taken shots of before.

A giant wind farm just inside Texas:

More wind farm:

That night I stopped in Fort Stockton, Texas and spent the night. Next morning at around 10:30, way out in the boondocks, the weather began to change and I liked the patterns of light in the clouds so I stopped here and there and got a few shots:

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This part of the trip was really out there in the country (I headed south from Fort Stockton on US285), I only passed two or three small towns and a handful of farms. Most of the farms I did see were falling down and had the look of better days long gone. Not to say that there weren’t any newer farms or ranches, there were, but they were just well off the road mostly.

Out in the boondocks:

The remnants of a pacific hurricane showed up:

I liked the look of these strata. Millions of years of deposits right there exposed:

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Anyway, at around 2ish that day, on my 3rd day of travel, I get about 60 miles from my next stop, Hondo Texas, and I call one of the RV parks there in town and ask if they have cable TV. I want to watch the Seahawks play and hope that cable will at least give me the choice to watch it. “Sure we do”, he says. When I get there and hook up to the TV style cable sticking out of the ground, all I find is one channel. Walk over and talk to the guy that has already taken my money and ask about cable, “Nope”, he says, “We don’t have cable”. When I point out I had called and asked about it, he starts backtracking and pretending he didn’t really know whether they had it or not. Jackass. Lying Jackass. And the place cost me $20 for the night. No laundry, no cable, and bathrooms (filthy) without doorknobs and doors you have to jamb with logs to keep closed! Well, I called two other parks and they didn’t have cable either, I was tired, and it made no difference at all anyway so I stayed there.

Here’s the catfish pond:

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My rig there, no other guests, hmm, wonder why:

Nice old tractor:

The office. Don’t stay here unless you can’t find anywhere else. I’m told that there is an Escapee’s park 8 miles east of Hondo, but I didn’t visit it. They say it has all the amenities.

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Next day I moved to another park. Again, $20 per night, no laundry, no cable, no trash bins…etc. Stay out of Hondo, Texas. Not RV friendly. The parks I stayed at were the Hondo Catfish Lake & RV and Countryside Mobile Home & RV. Both ask too much money. If they were $8 per night, maybe. But not worth $20, at least not in my experience.

The day I drove to Hondo, I noticed that the voltage meter on the dash was reading higher then normal. Still in the OK range but high. Around an hour later, the voltage dropped to well below normal. Symptom of a bad alternator. So I shut everything off that might use the battery and limped into Hondo. Next morning I move to the second RV park in town and ask if they know any RV repair people in town. I make some calls and no one seems to want to work on it. So, the day after that, I leave town and head on south to a much bigger town, McAllen, running my genset the whole way so as to keep the batteries topped up since it charges them all. I got down here in the late afternoon, stopped in a parking lot and called around to find an RV park worth visiting.

I’m now at a nice park just to the west of McAllen in Mission, Texas called the Twin Lakes RV. It does have bathrooms, showers, laundry, and free WiFi. I’ve done some work on the alternator and should have it fixed in a couple days. I take my time with these things.

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10-14-06

Dreams & other Things…

I did not leave the Sea Bird RV park in Brookings very early in the day because I was hoping that a used LCD monitor I’d purchased via eBay would arrive before I left. I knew from the tracking system that it was suppose to be on the truck from Coos Bay to Brookings but you know how those things go. Anyway, I’d kind of developed a relationship with the owner of the local mail forwarding service and he knew how antsy I was to get the package before I left. I had to leave today because if I didn’t I’d miss my connections with my brother and probably miss the Oregon Ducks vs. the California Bears at Berkley. That relationship helped because I tried to call FedEx but ended up in phone loop hell. I called the mail guy and explained that I needed to find out if the package had made it onto the truck and he gave me the driver’s cell phone number. Wow, great luck. By now, it’s 4pm and I have to leave by 5pm, 6pm at the latest. I call and the guy answers, checks his route sheet and “Yes, it’s here”. So we make a plan to get together at a local parking lot. I meet him about 20 minutes later, grab my package, thank him profusely, he tells me that if I hadn’t called he wouldn’t deliver to the RV park until 9ish. Then it would be returned to the shipper (since I’d be gone by then) and I’d have to pay for re-shipping plus waiting another week or two.

So, I leave town at exactly 5pm. Whew. Great load off my mind. Now I’m in a hurry because I’d like to get to the RV park in San Leandro at a decent hour. I didn’t get any pictures while on Hiway 101 heading south because you need to pay attention to your driving. Too many cliffs and such along the way, and very curvy-swervy and upy-downy. Moreover, there are places where the road narrows and winds through giant redwoods. A lot of places I could only do 20-30 MPH.

I arrive at San Leandro around 1:30AM, tried to park in my reserved RV space as quietly as possible (that’s impossible since I have to back into the slot), shut everything down, relax a few minutes, and went to bed.

Next morning (Saturday), I take BART and then a shuttle to the airport (Oakland), and then jump on the rental car shuttle, which fills with a gaggle of giggley girls, the cheer squad of a nearby high school heading for a big game, and just seconds before we get to the rental place brother calls. He’s standing at the curb when I arrive. Nice.

So we head back to the RV, dump off a bunch of crap brother doesn’t need, and go back and park at the BART station, then ride downtown to Berkley. We walk until we arrive at the bar where the Ducks fans hang out before the game. Had a few beers and almost had a hot dog but when I asked the guy where the other condiments were for their $6 hot dogs he tells me that the mustard and ketchup where all they had. Off I go down to a local college type hot dog place that was so crowded it took nearly a half hour to get my dog. However, they had many condiments…and it only cost $3.50.

When I got back to the bar, there had been a little trouble with someone sneaking in and there was a cop there. He parked his cycle on the street in front of the bar…

Nice bar that must have had 200 people there for the pregame:

Here’s Dan and me (on the right) just about ready to go into the stadium:

The ‘Bear’ facade:

The tennis courts - they were all spongy like, nice to walk on:

And an interesting old building:

The field from our seats:

The poor replay screen:

After the stands had filled a bit:

Those folks up there get to fire off the cannon when the Bears score:

And we’re off!:

The game didn’t start until 5pm and here it is late in what turned out to be a very bad day for the Ducks:

We straggled home, dejected and all. Sniff. The Ducks lost! No, they were beaten, and will drop in the standings. However, if they beat USC the weekend of Oct. 14th, they’ll still get a bowl game. The next day, we drove the rental around from where we were in San Leandro, through Oakland, across the Bay Bridge, around San Francisco, and then back home. The circle route allowed us to visit five breweries. After visiting the first two places on the Oakland side (I’m not much for drinking in the early part of the day so I didn’t taste the brews like Dan did), we took the Treasure Island exit off the Bay Bridge to get a few shots of the bay. There had been a weekend long air show over the bay so all the boats were out there to watch the Blue Angles and such. Pretty neat. These first shots are from near the older Treasure Island apartments where, back when I was a sailor, the married junior officers lived.

The Bay Bridge crossing over to San Francisco:

My brother trying to convince me that “Here’s a good shot” right into the sunset, yeah, right, a good shot:

In that general direction but lower and farther to the right:

More of the bay, that’s the Golden Gate Bridge over there:

And a few minutes later, a view of San Francisco:

Here we are heading down to the navy base down below the hill we were just on…took us a second or two to realize that it’s not a Navy base anymore and we can just drive in there:

There’s the main gate:

Just beyond the gate and that white building, (the old Navy Admin building), there is a christian church. One fine Sunday morning I was walking by the church when a Lt.JG (Lieutenant Junior Grade) stops me. I salute and stand at attention. We know each other vaguely from shared work details around the base. He then proceeds to ramble on how I’m suppose to be in church, how it’s good for my soul and other crap. While he’s talking I think “Whoa, what if I was a jew, would he, could he, be ordering me to a christian church?”. When he says, “I think I’ll order you to church, sailor”, I say, “No sir, I don’t think you can sir”. He starts sputtering, eventally ending the conversation with “Well, you certainly NEED church”. To which I answer, “No sir, I don’t think so sir”. He turned and stomped off. You can get away with most anything if you say sir. When I told this story to friends later, they say that it’s good I didn’t go into the church because it surely would have burst into flames. I disagree.

Further into the base are now hundreds of condos and apartments where there use to be 10’s of military style barracks that housed thousands of sailors. This base was mainly a school and I went to electronics school here. I also got involved with a drill team here, and earned a nickname. This place is prime real estate now since it’s only around 5 minutes from downtown San Francisco. We saw hundereds of appartments, no reason to take pictures of them. But if you lived there, you’d probably love the place…until the fog sets in. Months of fog. Makes sunlight feel like liquid gold.

The drill area and a nice view of the other part of the Bay Bridge. It’s getting a face-lift and some new lanes added, plus some needed repairs because of the last big earthquake here:

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There’s my old barracks, in the shot directly above. While I was there waiting for my orders, I would muster out in front of the building at 7am with everyone else. Then the CPO (Chief Petty Officer) would ask for volunteers for various jobs all over the base. I’d wait until a large group had agreed to some job and then, when they were marching back up the stairs to get ready, I’d follow them into the barracks, and right out the back door. Then I’d spend the rest of the day just goofing off. They called me ‘Super Skate’ because I was always ’skating’ out of duty. Never peeled one potato. The day I got caught was the day I got my ship orders so I lucked out and didn’t get a ‘court marshal’.

When I was here, I was waiting for my assignment to a ship. I’d volunteered for Viet Nam and they were having trouble finding me a spot so I spent several weeks here. The year before I’d gone down to San Diego for boot camp, I’d been here for Electronics school (I flunked out - it was too fast for me, I needed a slower pace). While here, I became a member of the “US Naval Military Precision Drill Team of Treasure Island California” (that’s really it’s name), which is the main reason I flunked out, too much time with them practicing drills instead of studying. We practiced after school and on weekends went and marched in parades. One parade we were invited to was in San Francisco. We only had two speeds, slow & slower, and when we did a drill, that also took time. The parade officials were yelling at our drillmaster but each time we stopped in front of a crowd and did a drill, people would go nuts! Screaming, standing ovations, riotous applause, the whole bit. The officials would lay off us for a few more blocks. Eventually we got to the reviewing stand and while we did our drill, the news people were looking for quotes from members of government and all. The stand had the SF mayor, US & state dignitaries, big wigs & family members. Since we had been causing such a ruckus with the crowd & the officials, the press swarmed around the stands asking for quotes about us just after we had done a special drill in front of them all. The mayor’s 22-year-old daughter happened to be asked what she thought of our drill team. She called us a “moving sex machine” that quote was in the nightly news and appeared in nearly all the next days’ papers so the drill team staff had many phone interviews. Then just after we had been reviewed, the parade officials kicked us off the parade route for marching to slowly. But we made the news. Hah! It would be cool if someone that works at a SF paper could look that up for me and email me a link…yes, very cool.

Weeks later, we were invited to be the ‘entertainment’, along with a band, at a party for Admiral Nimitz. This was after we had been on several trips to local area parades, each time either winning or almost winning the drill team contests. During that time, we also developed several unique and thrilling drills that just wowed the crowds. I’m pretty sure that we only recieved one 3rd place trophy. All the others were 1st or 2nd, the majority 1st place. We tossed the 3rd place trophy.

The party was his birthday party, I believe, so we would have performed for him near Feb. 24th, 1965. We performed at the Hilton in downtown SF on an upper floor, in a large room filled with friends of Adm. Nimitz. Since he was such a respected navy guy, as you would expect, the place was filled with naval officers and their wives and families. I think around 500 people all sitting around tables surrounding a large dance floor in the middle of the room, bandstand at one end.

We staged out in the hallway while they finished dinner and before the band was to play. Several famous senior officers came out to give us encouragement and calm our nerves (we had never performed in such a small space before, before such a distinguished crowd, and most of us were teenagers). At the end of the dance floor was a raised bandstand. We entered, in our dress blues, perfectly pressed, with spit shined and polished shoes and rifles since the team prided itself on such things. With our pieces (rifles - plugged so they couldn’t be fired), clothes and shoes being perfect, we entered through double doors marching four columns of four abreast.

We had practiced modified drills, since we usually marched outdoors, that we could do in such a tight space. Just after starting in that small space, we did a drill where we rapidly drop our pieces from our shoulders down to waist level, WHAM, into our palms, like slicing the air with a sword. Then we get it to where we can slam the butt on the floor twice, drag it up and spin it like a propellor before dropping it on our shoulder. Our second drill, with many of the same moves, was very close to the bandstand, I was directly facing the drummer and was around 12″ away. He started sweating as we did our drill, knowing that he was probably in the wrong place. We never talked during a drill, using numbers to communicate. I expected a shouted ‘ONE’ from the drillmaster which was the ‘everyone freeze’ command since I didn’t seem to have enough room for the sudden and sword like arc my piece would make during the maneuver…I thought I could whack the guy on the head, if I wasn’t sharp. But the drillmaster (DM) trusted me and during the drill, stone-faced, I watched as beads of sweat formed on the drummer’s forehead. When I got to the part where I slam the piece down into my palm, I pulled the butt of it way back and just caught the end of the barrel in my palm, just missing him by an inch or two. The drummer was visibly relieved. (Remember that he was navy too, he was standing at attention, and he wasn’t supposed to cut & run). Anyway, we did several drills to thunderous applause, and exited after about 15 minutes of drilling to take a break (very hot in there with all those people, very loud too with the applause and us in our tapped shoes and what with banging the butts of our pieces on the hardwood floor several times). When we returned to the hall, it was to do two very special and spectacular drills for Nimitz.

We had practiced our hearts out…since we knew how special a guy he was and our respect level for him was so high. We marched onto the dance floor, four rows by four columns, and did a rather nifty drill where the columns do a syncopated drill with pieces twirling and being slammed on the floor and such. After that, we took a couple steps and needed to do a turn around. I wasn’t the best at this, and when we took two steps we were suppose to stop, I took another step. That put me right at the edge of a table with two officers and their wives. My next drill move was supposed to be to slam my piece into my palm, do some fancy drill moves, then spin the piece. I knew that I didn’t have room to do the spin without hitting the table, so I shouted ‘ONE’ in mid step. Every one on the team, except the drillmaster, froze in position. My piece is held by both hands, across the middle of my body at a 45 degree angle, and my next move is suppose to be a twirl of the piece, and I’m in mid-stride. The drillmaster matches over to where I’m standing. Makes a big show of looking me and my hazardous position over. Whispers in my ear, “May I touch your piece”. I say, “Yes”. He removes my piece from my hands. Then he barks an order to me alone to resume the drill where I left off…sans piece. I resume. Since we are a precision drill team this means I behave as though my piece is still there, eventually, my forearm is parallel with the floor, my hand appearing to cradle the missing piece and I stop. He orders me to ignore the following portion of the drill (we had single digit orders for this sort of thing). Now that I’m at attention, he turns to the rest of the team and orders just them to resume. Meanwhile I’m standing still as ordered, facing straight ahead, into the crowd. At just what he deems the right moment, he shouts ‘ONE’ and the team instantly stops in mid drill. Then he turns his attention to me. I’m facing away from the team and at attention with my arm positioned as though I was holding my piece. He looks at me, looks over at the squad, and looks back at me. Marches over to a naval officer, asks him to hold my piece, and then returns to me. Wraps his arms around my waist, picks me up, walks me over to the squad and plops me in place. Then orders me alone to commence a drill, when I get to the right part, he barks ‘ONE’ and then returns my piece to my hands to a roar of laughter, applause and murmurs of approval. Then he orders the entire team to proceed. We are now all in sync to a roar of approval from the crowd. Now we have turned completely around and we’re all 16 of us marching slowly to towards the bandstand. We had just three steps to take before we started our most spectacular drill.

When the DM barks the command, the outer two columns immediately stop and began a drill while the inner two columns march one more step. They then stop and began a drill sequence. If you can see this in your mind, picture 16 young men, in dress navy blues, with white spats and impossibly shiny shoes and guns (pieces) while we all do a drill in cadence but seemingly at odds, inner columns with the outer. The nature of the drill routine is to always be in cadence and during this drill two columns would always be slamming the butts of their pieces on the wood floor while the other two were doing some other maneuver. Then it would revert to the other columns. Very satisfying noises.

Suddenly, after we have done this entire routine at odds while in cadence, we turn to face the other columns. So now we have the two outer columns facing the inner two columns. We are all now in sequence and doing the same moves during the drill with the inner columns one-step beyond where the outer columns are positioned. The last sequence is; remove piece from shoulder and drop it over the chest to the left hand, swing piece so it is straight up and down in front of the body, move the right hand to the upper portion of the piece and grab, drop the left hand smartly to the side while simultaneously with the right drop the piece to the floor and tap the floor smartly twice in cadence. Pull the piece back up over the chest and grab with left, drop the right hand to your side then back up under the piece. Remove the left hand and…(this is the big finish and happens all in cadence, all 16 of us at the same instant, it’s called a Queen Anne Salute)…spin the piece 360 degrees into our left hands while dropping to a one knee stance. The four columns mesh into two columns as the shiny and chromed pieces spin towards each other, like airplane propellers. Sort of like shuffling two packs of cards in a blender, only cooler. And with spinning, flashing guns. Then, when we all get our knees on the floor, we precisely and smartly move all 16 pieces so the butts are pressed to the center of our chests and the barrels are all pointing at a 45 degree angle up to the ceiling, our left hands resting on our left legs (our right knees on the floor).

Whew, we did it. You can’t imagine all the things that can go wrong with a drill like this. It was a new drill for us, it had only been invented a few weeks before, we’d only performed it in public 3 times, we had foreshortened the movement to account for the small space so that was new too, and most of us were teenagers not accustomed to that kind of performance pressure. But we did it and did it perfectly in every possible way. While we were all marveling at that, we were getting a standing ovation. Most of us said later that we didn’t even hear it for a while, we were so astonished at the beauty of the drill in that setting and at doing it perfectly…in practice, we had screwed it up many times.

The standing ovation went on for several minutes. When it quieted down, we continued with the end of that spectacular drill and smartly marched out of the room to the sound of continuous applause that went on long after the doors closed.

While we were out there in the hall amazed at our success, with the DM slamming me on the back for my screw up that everyone in the audience loved, Adm. Nimitz (and some of his staff) came out and congratulated us his own bad personal self. What an honor. We were all so stunned, I can’t remember if he shook my hand or not…seems he did. Later we were invited into the hall where we mingled and met with many senior officers who were amazed that they really didn’t know much about their own Navy drill team.

And then, sadly, I was sent to San Diego to meet my ship. I wouldn’t meet any of the people from the drill team for months. But it’s something I’ll never forget. I’m pretty sure I can still do most of the drills. I know I can still do a Queen Anne Salute.

Click here to read some history of Adm. Nimitz.

“Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz died at his home on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay on February 20, 1966. He would have been 81 years old on the day of his funeral at Golden Gate National Cemetery at San Bruno. He was the last surviving five-star admiral.”

While I was waiting for orders, after I’d flunked out of school, I was still in the drill team and once when I’d skated out of duty, I found that there was a blood drive going on at the mess hall. So, I went to the building shown in the picture below, walked in the back door you see in the picture and tell them I’m from the blood drive picking up donuts for the donators. The petty officer asks me a few suspicious questions, which I answer with aplomb, then allows me to fill a large paper sack with fresh donuts. I wander over to the drill team quarters, plop them on the table, eat a bunch, and then take a morning nap on the couch. Super Skate strikes again.

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10-5-06

More from Brookings - ‘06

I’ve been working on various RV projects and haven’t gone on many trips around Brookings except a time or two. These are some of the pictures of those trips.

Standing on the cliff overlooking the beach on a cloudy day (looking South), the following pictures are all of Harris State Park, this is the south portion of the beach, then you can stumble your way through a tide pool section, until you get to the north portion:

The shear number of driftwood logs in this part of the country is amazing (looking North):

Looking South, note that this beach can be crowded, I just happened to come down on a day when everyone was off doing other stuff, I like how wide the beach is here:

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It wasn’t uncomfortable on this day. It was around 65F with no breese to speak of and a mild smell of salt in the air, long sleeve shirt weather. We haven’t had a good storm around here in a while so everything seemed to be sort of ‘waiting’ for another storm to come.

This portion of the trip was a tricky part since there isn’t a trail and you have to worry your way over and around slimy boulders and tide pools and such, did meet two or three other photographers that were getting close up shots of the tide pools, I don’t have the kind of equipment that would do a good job of that:

Then you run into this about midway through the difficult hike part, just think what it would be like during a storm:

These guys were hunkered down for no apparent reason, probably had their fill of shrimp and were just hanging out, waiting for a party:

A few days later and I took a bike tour near the RV park where I’m staying. The park is just south of the Chetco river, shown here:

Here’s the bridge that heads North to Brookings. It’s one mile away (I’m staying in Harbor):

There’s the ocean over there:

There’s all the boats and such in Harbor. There are several new buildings going up down there but the state says that the Harbor itself is in deep financial do-do:

I thought that this was a pretty good shot of the bridge. Taken from the northwest end of the bridge:

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9-24-06

Hanging Around Brookings, Oregon

I stayed at Harris Beach State RV Park for a few days and took the trail down to the beach on several occasions. The beach and small park is about 300 feet down hill and the road is pretty steep. After you get down around 250 feet I had to drag my bike down the last remaining section of trail onto the very wide beach. The sand isn’t compacted like I would prefer for bike riding but it was good for a workout around 90% of the time I was riding, the rest of the time I’d have to drag the bike through the loose sand.

One of the off shore hills:

And more random images of the beach:

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Here’s the bitch that decided I was a threat and chased me (on my bike) down the beach finally biteing my leg. My calf is pretty strong and I didn’t really feel much for a 1/2 hour or so…thinking that my pants prevented any real bite. But when I stopped and checked I found that the bitch drew blood. Not much mind you but enough that I returned to cuss out the owners. They were gone. Two weeks later and the swelling is just about gone.

One of the many interesting jumbles of huge rocks dotting the beach:

More random ocean & beach shots for you landbound readers:

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This little section is looking north from the ocean side park. I remember this area well because 16 years ago, my very ill mother, who we had talked into coming down here to Brookings from her home in Walla Walla for a previous Xmas, (eventually that visit caused them to move here) was down there climbing on a log, scampering around like she was a kid. That was just after she and dad had moved down here. The weather here, along with the senery, was a major factor in the quality of life for her and dad’s final few years. I can see her there on the beach, climbing, trying to balance herself, ignoring my shouts, running along that log, big smile.

Here’s some friends I made while resting at the beachside park:

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9-12-06

Family in Brookings…

After my brother and I hung out here in Brookings for a couple days, we drove up the Chetco River to a state park - Leob, in order to meet my sister and bil for some family time. I was able to score a RV pad right on the river with a view of the southern sky. So I could get online. I didn’t post because, well, I never got around to it. We were all hanging out and talking, hiking and the like. Not enough time to blog.

Here’s a view of the river from my camping spot:

And upstream:

My sister over there:

Our hike took us upriver for a while, the dog enjoyed it greatly:

My brother in law standing on a tree that once blew over but kept on growing:

Just a few random shots of the most northerly redwood forest in the US, the trail we took is just a couple miles long. When we reached a fork in the trail, my sister guessed that Dan would be coming the other direction so we could meet him. Turned out her guess was correct:

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Terri & Dan:

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9-8-06

Along the Oregon Coast…’06

After spending a couple months in Gresham, going to parties and all, it was time to get back on the road and just chill out, & stay away from bars for a while. So, when I call my brother to ask him about my mail that was at his place, I discover that he was planning on coming up to Brookings to meet my sister and brother in law. Brookings is around six hours south of Portland on the Oregon coast. Just a few miles from the California boarder. Since I was going that way anyway, it wasn’t a hard choice to make…so now I’m heading down to Brookings. I arrived on Aug. 30th and was happy to find an RV park that had an opening…I’d called several other parks and they were all filled. Turns out that it was Labor Day weekend, which I had forgotten about. Lucky for me I arrived on Wednesday before the weekend or I would not have found a place to park. My space was at the Driftwood RV park. I was within ear and eyeshot of the ocean and the cool breeze and 73F temperature was a welcome relief from the inland temps of 85F and up.

So I paid for two days (Wed. & Thurs.), since the staff told me that they were booked up for the weekend and there was a 100% chance that I would NOT get a space for the weekend. I crashed for the night and enjoyed the quiet and coolness. The next morning, while I’m calling around the other RV parks in town and out of town looking for a space, the manager comes by and tells me that there is a space for me for the weekend. Seems one of their regular guests got sick and wasn’t able to make it down to Brookings so I got their space. Yeah! I was really worried I’d end up in a stores parking lot while I waited for my brother to show up. Or up the coast over an hour away.

There were two things going on that made getting that space doubly lucky. First it was Labor Day, the most popular ‘camping’ weekend of the year because of the mostly great weather and the fact that it’s the last long weekend before school starts. In addition, here in Brookings/Harbor, there was a King Salmon fishing contest going on. I was parked around 1/4 mile away from the festivities. The grand prize for the largest salmon caught was $5,000 so as you can imagine, there were lots of entrants. You could also get a prize for the largest rock fish. Anyway, there were $15,000 in prizes. Mostly cash. You could either use your own boat or charter a boat. The cost for a six hour fishing trip on the ocean was around $200, and that included your fishing license. With the possibilty that you could win $5,000.

The following pictures are of my trip down to the coast (from Gresham, Oregon) and then from the fishing contest locale.

Here’s where I get off the I-5 South freeway onto a road that goes to the coast. The sign invites you to exit and travel to Drain. Then there is a town called Curtain. What they needed was a town called ‘Sink’ or ‘Toilet’ or ‘Shower’. So to get the complete set.

Here I am passing a lake along the Umpqua River. Years ago, when my folks lived in Brookings I’d take this route lots of times to visit them. After one particularly bad winter with lots of rain, I passed a section of riverside land near here that had had a landslide.

There were two houses that were demolished by a huge mud and rockslide that had crossed the road (plowed off when I went through years ago - but then there was still mud on the highway) and ran into the houses, killing several occupants. They were sleeping when the slide hit so probably didn’t know a thing about it. Every time I pass that area it’s hard not to visualize that accident and it’s aftermath of the houses all broken and jumbled up into kindling.

A few miles later and you pass an elk viewing area. The owners of the land deeded it to the state with the proviso that there could never be any elk hunting here. It has always been an elk hang out area and the ‘no hunting’ has helped the herd expand to thousands. Here’s just one of the several groups of elk I saw as I passed the park:

Finally reach the ocean:

And the famous Oregon Coast:

More:

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One of the bridges on 101 that was built in the 1930’s:

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I liked the looks of these rocks:

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Where I parked:

That’s the ocean under that cover of grey off in the distance:

And the harbor:

Here’s my bro trying to get my picture:

Here’s the fair:

And the winning fish at 44.6 pounds, we happened to be there when the people that caught it wandered up to the weigh station:

The fish feed. They had a dinner for $10 that was 2 salmon fillets, corn on the cob, watermellon, potato salad, and a roll. It was great:

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9-3-06

More from Fort Flagler SP…

I spent several days on the Olympic peninsula at Fort Flagler enjoying the great weather and riding my bike all over the park. The RV parking is down on the beach and the majority of the park is up on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. So every day I rode my bike up this huge steep hill rode around the park a while, stopped at the battery installations and such and then rode back down the hill. Good exercise on the bike and a great way to stretch your muscles.

Here’s a look at the view the foward firing station had of the ocean:

The building a huge arc lamp lived in, it would roll out on tracks closer to the edge of the cliff when used:

A look from the cliff at a cliff side gun installation:

Wandering around this park really took a lot of heavy pedaling. I have that new bike with the 16 speeds so I only had to walk the bike a couple times, usually I was able to downshift enough to keep going.

One of the local mountains over there on the Washinton coast:

One of the gun implacements:

Another view, this place had huge 10″ guns, they were never fired at an enemy so became unneeded until WWII, when they got sent to the Phillippines:

And another view:

Saw a deer and her fawn:

Here’s the fawn:

And a couple of random shots, keep in mind that this is near a rain forest and it’s unusual to have a lot of sunshine but it is summer and this portion of Washington is actually in a rain shadow because of the coast range…but not in a ‘cloud’ shadow:

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8-31-06

Fort Flagler SP & other…

I went over to the Sandy River for a look see a week ago Thursday. I’d been parking at the Wal-Mart for weeks and was passing Troutdale where the river is nearly every day. I hadn’t been there since we (the family) scattered my parents ashes there in the river 9 years ago. The Sandy drains into the Columbia and during some months is a raging river.

I like the RR bridge there so I went down for a few pictures. The river is the site of several drownings every year as there are several places to jump off of rocks and when you mix in beer, well, you know. It use to be the place to go for those little tiny fish that show up every other year. Can’t remember their name but there were several times over the years that we went down and scooped up a bucket full or had them given to us. Good eating but hard to clean them since they were so small. But you could get 20 lbs of them in about 15 minutes when they were running upstream.

The road into the state park:

Quiet time on the river (just wait for winter tho), here we’re looking toward the Columbia River which is westerly from here, it flows North/South, the Sandy river flows West at this point. The bridge there is the I-84 freeway:

The bridge:

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The next day, I headed North to the Olympic NF which is part of the Olympic Pennusula. The park wasn’t my destination really, I was heading to a state park named ‘Fort Flagler State Park’. I’d communicated with the park ranger there about being a campground host for a few weeks (filled before I could get up there) and wanted to see the place. The park sounded interesting and worth a visit.

Heading up the pennsula. That’s Hood Canal (actually a fiord):

Looking toward the north…that’s Port Angles over there on another pennusula. There’s a ferry port there with many routes that will take you to Canada or Seattle or Bremerton:

Here’s the CG. Not to crowded since I took this picture on a Sunday afternoon and alot of people had left already:

The shore line. Not a really inviting beach here what with the ‘Red Tide’ problem and the green slime that’s everywhere, but some people do swim here occasionally:

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8-30-06

Another LT’s Party…

So, after sitting around for a month here in Gresham, August rolls around. That means it’s ‘LT’s Birthday Party’. In which the owners of LT’s show their appreciation to all of us for sitting around their bar and drinking overpriced beer and wine.

This year they provided $1 pounders of beer (usually $1.75 for my brand), lots of free food, many gifts via drawings several times an hour and other goodies. I brought in my camera and printer so I could take shots of people just for fun and print them out right on the spot.

Skip gives his ‘identical, long lost twin for a day’ a kiss:

Cute blond girl:

Max and Millie doing the ‘may I help you?’ bit:

Another cute blond girl:

Vicki & ‘I ran over my regular glasses’ Gordon, & Skip:

Randy, Nancy & Margie:

Max doing her impression of ‘Danny’s Happy Dance’ for me:

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8-19-06

Jackie’s Party…

Every year about this time, Jackie has a BBQ and invites me and several other people of course. Last years party was great so I went. Anyway, I brought several chinook from the lake and everyone else brought stuff so there was quite a spread. Lots of left-overs. Got to meet Jeff’s (Jackie’s boyfriend) twin sister and all the ‘women’ showed up this year (you’d have to have been hanging around with them for the last 15 years like me to get the referance here). Even their mom and dad showed up, along with several other family friends of Jackie’s and Jeff’s. Probably 25 people.

It was a great party and fun was had by all. There was even a Seahawks football game going on during the party.

Here’s some pictures for ya!

It’s Jackie, lookin’ all cute and everything:

Even cuter in this one:

Jeff’s sister (what was her name again?):

The Coda: (Getting old but still nice).

The ‘Fire’ all ready to go:

Jeff ready to play:

Shelly looking regal as always, probably having her maid set out a gown or something:

Ronnie with a friend:

All the girls, I’m happy to say that I’m friends with all of them, that’s TJ on the right, you may remember her from the Lake Tahoe and Lake Billie Chinook series of pictures. The little girl in the background is a family friend:

Here’s the baby of a family friend:

TJ with her nephew (Shelly’s son):

Shelly with ??? (who was that girl?):

Shelly with her Dad:

And with her mom:

Ronnie and Dad:

And Ronnie and Shelly:

I’ll see them all again next year. I hope.

By the way…they all have long term boyfriends.

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8-11-06

Just hanging in Gresham…

While I would like to be driving around right now, there are still some things I’d like to take care of here in Oregon. Like repairing some of the nagging little things that plague a big moving house like this one.

When I was over at the coast, my trip back allowed me to stop at the Tillamook cheese factory. I needed some cheese so I thought that this would be a good place to get it since it’s the factory and all…if you’ve never had Tillamook cheese, too bad. It’s like won so many awards that awards are its bitch. Oh, and it’s good cheese too.

Here’s the factory:

I took my camera in but there wasn’t anything to take pictures of because they have the entire factory under (behind) glass so all the shots would have the reflection of a flash going off. I wandered around the place and finally ended up in the store. Guess what? The cheese bricks I usually pay $5 for in Gresham, they’re $8 at the factory. Butt heads. What a waste of time to stop there.

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A few days later and I took this shot of my dinette set that I’ve taken out of the RV since I’d rather use the room for my work bench and computer station.

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Meanwhile, I took some more pictures of friends at LTs bar. Had a pretty good night there a few nights ago. Everyone was in a good mood.

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Here’s Bonnie:

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And Blanca:

Here’s Bonnie’s baby having a beer…she’s only 9 months old but already drinking, it’s sad really:

Later, Gordon and I went out for dinner and then to a new bar here in Gresham (in the Safeway complex - strip mall type place):

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Later this month I’ll be heading up to Fort Flagler on the Olympic peninsula. I’ve been invited up there to talk to the manager about a handyman job for a month or two. Sounds like fun.

Talk to you guys later…

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7-26-06

Barview Jetty, Oregon Coast, ‘06…

I’ve settled in here at the Barview Jetty campground. It’s a county park that has over 200 sites for campers, tents, or RV’s. It’s a great park that seems very secluded even when it’s full. I got here last Friday around 12:30 and it was full up, with several people hanging around waiting for openings, mostly tenters. The staff suggested that I hang around to see if anyone with a RV space reserved cancels or doesn’t show up. At 1:15 they had four sites available for my rig and I moved right into a site that is quiet and only has other RV spaces at the back and to the right. I’m here because it was just too hot in Gresham. It’s now Wednesday and I’m very comfortable here. The weather is perfect, I get a very sound nights sleep, it’s quiet except for the ocean breaking on the coast, and there is a great beach to ride my bike on.

Here’s where I’m parked:

Some of the park, I’m parked out of frame to the right, and there are no RV spaces on the left so I’m not looking at my neighbors RV all the time:

The road to town, Garibaldi, Oregon:

I’m standing on the jetty, looking North, I ride my bike in that direction. I took this shot on Sunday so it’s relatively crowded:

There are some people here but now it’s Tuesday:

Just a random shot from the jetty:

Just so you know, the temps here were 70 to 75F every day and 55 to 65 every night. Very comfortable and really beats the 85 to 105F temps I was seeing up at Gresham & Portland.

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7-26-06

More pictures from Billie Chinook - Bob & Linda’s place…

I’m still at the coast but I’m going to backtrack nearly four weeks and show you folks some of the other pictures I took at Lake Billie Chinook.

After a day of fun on the lake, several of us who weren’t drunk (I don’t get drunk but I have friends that do…) headed up to Bob & Linda’s place. It’s their get away place. It sits on one of the many plateu’s around the lake but unlike Gordon’s place, it has a view. So I took several pictures of the sunset.

First, a picture of their house, and note that there is no railing around the deck. Linda stepped right off the edge several years ago:

The group, from left, Bob, Jeff, Jackie, Nicole, & Linda. Note that Linda was in lots of pain when this shot was taken and was scheduled for back surgery on July 26, that’s today as I write this. She’s a sweetheart and I have my fingers crossed that it all goes really well and that her recovery is short and that she gets some really good drugs. Sending mental HUGS her way:

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Surgery update: It’s three weeks later and what happened was the folks at the hospital screwed up the surgery so she had to go back twice more. First time was for a blood clot, next time for another blood clot. They opened her three times. Her whole back is black and blue. But it seems they finally finished and she is feeling really well right now.
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Their back yard:

More of the back yard, the tree there caught fire a few years ago, that’s as close as the forest fire got to their place:

Moon rise:

Sunset over one of the many mountains in the area:

This is the cliff that Bob stepped off the year he bought the place. He was reaching for a branch on the tree to hang a bird feeder, forgot where he was and took another step. Right off the edge of the cliff. It’s around 12 feet down. It’s a wonder he wasn’t killed. I took the first shot of this series, the house, from the edge of this. Gives you an idea of how far from the house he was. And his feeble cries went unanswered for quite a while, he laid down there for an hour I was told:

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7-23-06

Down the Oregon coast…

After returning from Gordon’s property, getting the genset fixed, and getting paid by one of my old clients, I’ve been hanging around here in Gresham, Oregon, hanging with my friends at LT’s tavern. I was able to get several of them to come up for some pool and a beer or two. After all that fun, I just drive a mile or so to a new community development near where I use to live and park for the night on a new street next to an empty site.

But…it’s gotten so hot there, hovering around 95 to 105F, that it was not all that comfortable. Since my genset was fixed and all last week, I can run it all day so the AC can be on but hanging out here in the RV all day isn’t that much fun. So, since the weather reports indicated that it will be hot here for weeks, and that the coast was cool, it was time for a road trip.

I left Portland on a wim Friday evening around 8:30 because it was so hot, over 100F. I felt that a trip to the coast, (which was, is, and will be in the 70’s for the next several weeks), would be fun.

Now I’m down on the Oregon coast at a state park named ‘Barview Jetty State Park’. First I drove down to Seaside and just parked in the lot of a theater there for the night. It was already cool when I arrived and early the next morning it rained. Very refreshing after days of heat. The next morning I get up and drive to an RV park near downtown and find they are full up. And will be for weeks. They called for me and found that all the area RV parks were full. The town was packed with people too.

So, I head south. I pass several RV parks but none of them looked all that appealing to me. When I get to Garibaldi, I find a line of people waiting for campsites. This place is large enough that it still feels less then crowded even when it’s booked solid so I followed the staffs recommendation and waited until checkout time at 1:30 PM. There were 5 no shows so I got in and set up.

It is sooo comfortable, with temps just perfect at 70F. My satellite connection works well, I get several TV stations and it’s quiet here except for the mornful cry of the fog horn over at the jetty. I’m settled in and paid up through Wednesday. Later today, I’ll go back down and add a few days. I might have trouble next Saturday since I’m told that the park is booked for the entire weekend. I might have to leave. We’ll see.

Before I left Seaside, I took a few shots at the small park I stopped at to eat breakfast. Here’s the estuary, downtown Seaside is to the Southwest in these shots, all the shots look westerly:

This guy caught my attention when he started wading across the water and hollering how cold it was, it’s around 9 AM:

After I got back on the road and headed south, I found this spot around 50 miles south of Seaside:

Same place looking South this time, that is the Pacific Ocean down there:

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7-18-06

Lake Billie Chinook…’06

I hauled ass and made it from Lake Tahoe to Gresham in one day. I got to my favorite bar and got a hug from Max. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any taco’s left (Tuesday is Taco night…2 for a $1 with all the fixings) so I had a burger instead.

Max and TJ there in the background happy to see me:

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It’s a couple of days later and I got invited up to Gordon’s property at Lake Billie Chinook. I jumped at the offer. It’s great up there and we all sit around talking and getting drunk when we’re not out on the lake swimming or fishing.

Here’s a shot of the property from the fireplace looking at Gordon’s mobile home and rig…

It’s a tight winding road up to Gordon’s, there’s the lake:

More of the lake from a different road, again with a shear drop off:

Down there is the yacht club, Gordon keeps his boat down there during the season:

Here’s my rig all set up:

Gordon’s solar setup. He can’t get electric up here so he’s off the grid and uses batteries with solar charging and a couple backup generators:

Here’s some of the folks that came up this year, there were actually 27 people there but I didn’t get any group photos. That’s Jack on the left, Gordon in the middle and Bob on the right:

Linda gets ready to win at bingo, our group won six times. It’s private property so you’re allowed to bring your own drinks and the payout is in cash:

Even Jackie and Jeff came up this year:

After bingo we all get together for b-b-q. From the left, that’s Jennie, Julie, Jeff #2, TJ sitting on her new beau Lee, Millie and David (Limey) with his two dogs (who were a constant annoyance the entire weekend):

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7-9-06

Leaving Tahoe…Trip to Portland…

The last few days at Lake Tahoe was pleasant with excellent weather and some easy work to do at the site. After work, there was something I needed to do before leaving and that was to get my bike repaired. I’d bought a cheap $65 bike at Big K near Dan’s place a couple weeks ago and I put it together the day before I left Rosamond. Dan lives on a steep hill and while I was testing the bike after I put it together, the damn right side plastic pedal cracked trying to pedal up the hill. Over the next six weeks of use at Tahoe, it finally fell apart. And the left pedal was all cracked too. Cheap crap. (I checked and I’m not over weight for the bike).

Anyway, I went into the Tahoe Big K and explained my problem with the new bike and (surprise!) the manager of the sports department just gave me a new pack of pedals. Didn’t ask for a receipt or anything. Nice. I bring them home and they’re the wrong size, but that was the only size they had in stock. So I go to several thrift stores looking for bike parts and ask the bike repair guy near the Tallac site, since there are thousands of rental bikes all over, where is the bike ‘bone yard’ for Tahoe? He doesn’t know but sends me to a sporting goods store a few miles up the road closer to town. When I get there, I wander back to the repair counter and I kid you not, they have a glass case with several sets of bike pedals in there with $150 price tags. Choke.

Well, I don’t think that I’ll find anything there but I ask the guy anyway if he has used bike pedals that will fit my bike. He says ‘Yeah, for around $12′. ‘Metal’, I ask? ‘Yeah’ he says. OK, good start. Then I ask him if we can work out a trade for my brand new, but won’t fit, pedals I got at Big K. ‘Sure, straight across’, he says. Well. That’s pretty neat. Here I am in Tahoe, where they really charge tourist rates for everything, and this happens. Not such a bad place after all. He hands me the pedals and they look brand new. He explains that they came off a new bike that the purchaser upgraded with better pedals.

Here’s what’s left of the orginal equipment ‘Huffy’ bike pedals, the plastic pedal part is all broken off and what’s left is the metal shaft:

Then here’s the new pedals all pretty like:

The next day I was on the road to Portland (Gresham, actually), and passed many a forest fire. The valleys were looking very smoky. In fact, I bypassed Carson City so I wouldn’t have to deal with road closures:

This is many miles North of Reno and I’m still seeing forest and grassland fire smoke. Every ten to 30 miles I’d see another new fire smoke column rising. These were all started by dry lightning storms. And this area had them for around two weeks.

It’s cleared up some here, I’m South of the Oregon border in Califoria just rolling along Northward. The weather was fine, the temp was comfortable and the rig was running great. This is where I decided to just keep driving and make it to Gresham around 9pm instead of stopping at a RV park for the night. I also decided to push my luck and keep going to Kalamath Falls to get fuel. The Oregon prices are $0.50 less per gallon then in California. It was worth the attempt. At this point, I was under 1/2 tank (90 gallon tank with a range of 800-900 miles).

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6-23-06

The Pope Pond Pump repair…

The Pope Estate has a large man made pond with a waterfall and all. It’s been stocked with four trout this year and I was assigned to get the recirculating pump (RP) running. What the RP does is to keep the water in the pond oxygenated so alge won’t overtake the pond. Then city water is added at a lower rate then without the pump to keep things fresh. That lower water flow allows the sprinklers around that area to have more water which keeps more plants alive. The excess water overflows the pond and is channeled into a small creek that spills into the lake. We think that the pump supplies 2/3rds of the water over the waterfalls (there are four) and the city supplied water 1/3rd. We don’t know for sure since there are no instructions anywhere.

I hauled the pumping system parts out of the barn and connected it all up and…nothing. Wouldn’t draw water from the pond down to the pump. Priming the pipe inlet to the pump resulted in numerous leaks. I know next to nothing about pond recirculating pumps but I did want to work on it so I dragged it back to the shop.

What seemed to be happening was that there were too many leaks in the plastic plumbing, sucking air, so the water wouldn’t syphon correctly over the edge of the pond and down to the pump.

Here’s a shot of the inlet to the pipe, which then runs down the hill to the pump, the white piping connects to a large filter that is shown in the next shot:

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This is the screened debris filter that’s immersed in the pond and attached to the piping shown in the previous shot:

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This is down hill from the first shot, the pipe is buried by forest fodder, the slope is steep and the drop is around 6 feet. The blue thing is a large debris filter, the pump & motor assembly is in the shop. The white pipe is 1 & 1/4″ PVC and ends at a Threaded Union with rubber O ring. That part is screwed onto the pump inlet:

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Here’s a few shots of the pond:

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The gazebo next to the pond:

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This is the rock garden where the small waterfalls feeding the pond are located:

After I got the pump to the shop, I discovered that the big white threaded union has different threads then the inlet screw to the pump! (For you experts, the pump inlet is national coarse threads, the PVC piping is national fine threads). It’s been this way since it was installed in 1994. Over the years it’s just gotten worse and leaked more and more as when the large coupler was tightened on the inlet, it would cinch up to a point and then slip a thread. Usually the installer would be a volunteer like me and they would just cinch it as tight as they could and move on, allowing a leak. What I did was to cut off a piece of threaded PVC from a spare threaded union and glue it to the inlet to the pump. The surfaces were easy to get nice and flat using a belt sander and then I used PVC glue to get a real good seal. Now the white 1 & 1/4″ PVC nut shown there on the bench would seal when screwed on, note that the actual union is shown in a previous shot. The pipe sticking straight up from the pump is the outlet which goes to the blue debris filter, the white thing on the front of the pump is the new, fine threaded inlet.

Well, my fix to the pump seems to work quite well. The plumbing unions were hand tightened and there was no plumbing tape (teflon thread sealing tape) used but even then there are NO leaks. Yeh!

Here’s the pump installed:

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Here’s another view:

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Here’s the whole assembly enclosed by a wire screen ‘dog house’ to keep out the curious:

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6-19-06

Wrap party and after…

The first session at Tallac Historic Site at South Lake Tahoe finished up with a couple projects I was working on still unfinished. I’ve decided to stay on for a couple weeks…until June 30th or so to finish up.

Meanwhile, on June 14th, we had a session wrap party with a byob rule and USFS provided goodies like burgers and cake. Yummy.

Here’s a few pixs of some of the volunteers. No names are given unless they actually read this blog and request their names be included. These people are almost all volunteers with a couple FS personnel and interns thrown in:

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The following Friday, I moved from my space up at the admin site, with the full services it has there, down to the volunteers campground nearer to the site. This campground doesn’t have sewer (but does have everything else) so I’ll have to trot my black and grey water over to the dump once a week in the portable tank provided.

Here’s some shots of where I’m staying now, note where the satellite dish is there on the left and near the rear of the rig. I had to move it 3 times over the two days I spent trying to get it working:

Here’s a late afternoon shot of the campgrounds…nice and empty, I like the solitude:

Ahhh, peace and quiet, less blacktop, but no views. Note that the first turn into the CG is so sharp that I had to turn the rig around and back into the CG. I think I know how I could avoid that next time but on this first attempt it took me over 45 minutes to get where I’m parked:

The project I’m working on now involves the Pope Estate pond & fountain/waterfall. I’ll put up some pixs later, for now, surfice it to say that I’m getting the large pump that recirculates the water in the pond fixed. I’m no pond expert but I’ve found that the pump was put in with the wrong sized plumbing. So it leaks air and won’t self prime. That makes it unwieldy to set up and get running so every spring some volunteer has nothing but trouble with the system. I’ve already modified the inlet side of the pump to accept the plumbing that was initially spec’ed & installed when the system was first installed (they mated the right size of piping but the threads on the pump are NPT whereas the pipe nut used fine threads, not coarse like NPT [National Pipe Threads]). A pix would be better and I’ll get that later.

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6-10-06

Tour of the Tunderbird Lodge…

Last Wednesday, the group took a day off from our busy schedules to go visit the Thunderbird Lodge as it’s called. It’s on the East side of Lake Tahoe and North of Stateline.

Here’s a shot of the lodge from the parking lot…

And a little further on:

On the path down, I liked the colors here:

Then a shot as we passed the ‘lighthouse’ style semi-modern addition:

Here we are listening to the director, he gives us an ‘insiders’ type tour:

Here’s the view one owner had from their Living, Dining, kitchen, family room:

This is the original living room built by Geo. Whittell Jr. It was built 1936-1940:

A view out the living room windows. This room had a large fireplace on either end that the servants kept burning. In fine weather, the Whittell’s ate dinner out there, served of course. Mostly though, Geo’s wife stayed in Europe and moved in elite circles while Geo’s mistress lived here. They seemed to enjoy the arrangement.

Geo. was a little weird and had his zoo here on the grounds. His favorite pet was a full sized lion. He use to go into bars near his other properties in LA with the lion. One story has it that he was accosted by a patron of the bar that Geo. had cheated in a land deal. The guy was yelling at Geo. so he just told Sam the lion “Up”. Sam just stood up and put his paws on the guys shoulders…scared the crap out of him, he fell backwards and injured himself in the fall. Later he sued Geo. and won $5000, Geo. paid up and said that the entertainment was worth the cost.

Geo. had a 600 foot tunnel carved into the solid granite. Here’s a shot:

It originally went to a dock where supplies were off loaded, also went to an unfinished swimming pool. A workman fell off a ladder and died there so it was never finished. After that accident, Geo. had an extension built that led to this large boat house. The boat is very expensive to maintain so it’s not kept here until the season for tourists starts. They make some expense money off of rentals of the boat for weddings and corporate outings. It’s spectacular…sorry it wasn’t there:

Here’s the historic boat of another informal tour group. They give these tours of the place to potential doners as often as possible, because, as you can imagine, this place is expensive to maintain. This little cove was the original dock for Geo. but he eventually bought a huge boat with dual aircraft engines. Which explains the very large boat house. The thing would get up to 60 MPH.

As with many mansions on Lake Tahoe during the period this was built, it has a seperate card house where the rich of the day would while away many hours playing poker. This card room had a secret entrance connected to the tunnel. Geo. would hire dancers from the casino up the coast, bring them by boat into the boat house and then surprise his guests with scantily clad women from the bathroom. There was a secret door in the shower stall, a corkscrew ladder down to the tunnel. This was the way Geo. would leave a game if he was loosing too. And how he would bring up his pet Sam the lion. Sam had a cage in the tunnel. Usually, when guests would arrive at the card house, Sam would be lounging on the floor in front of the fire. Eventually, Sam would crush Geo.’s leg and hip while rough-housing. He wouldn’t go to a doctor for fear that would get Sam taken from him. Years later, Geo. would be confined to a wheel chair because of that accident. There was also a pet elephant and several other exotic animals kept on the grounds.

The card house:

Geo. was a heavy drinker and character but he was also a pioneer, he always had the newest of everything and here at his summer house are the most interesting antques. Radios, old movie projectors, the first air conditioning system on Lake Tahoe, secret doors, odd lofts called play rooms, etc. Worth the time to take the tour if you’re in the area.

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6-3-06

The Pope Estate @ Tahoe…

Even tho it was late May, we can still get this:

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Last time I gave you a tour of the Baldwin estate. That part of the grounds has the Baldwin museum and all the historic buildings associated with the Lucky Baldwin and his development of the South shore of Lake Tahoe as a casino/resort. The place ended up being so popular that he had to expand several times and built numerous docks on the lake to accommodate the crowds arriving from San Francisco and other points. His daughter inherited his ‘conservation’ spirit and years later, her fortune secure, she closed and tore down the hotel and casino because she was concerned about the sewage from all the guests flowing into the lake. And the maintainence on the buildings was a huge drain on the fortune.

If you head south from the Baldwin Estate, just a 100 yards or so, you enter the Pope estate (now public property like the Baldwin). The Pope Estate was developed in 1894 and the Baldwin estate was begun in around 1902. The Popes looked down on the Baldwins as bar trash and so weren’t friends. Their estates were right next door to each other but they seldom mixed.

I took these shots of the Pope Estate a few days after the snow fell:
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This is the Gazebo built by a later owner, the pond and area around it were all added to the property…meaning that none of it is natural. Many of the plants too were imported:

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Here’s the north side of the main house showing the porch:

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One of Santa’s little helpers freezing her ass off (remember the snow? And that lake is really ice water). She’s doing a photo shoot:

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The living room:

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Again:

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The foyer:

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The butler’s pantry:

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The dining room:

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Note that there is no kitchen in this 2600sq ft per floor house. Here’s the staircase to the living quarters:

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Here’s the master bedroom:

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The master bedroom opens onto the screened porch. These porches were very popular as a preventative measure against tuberculosis, the fresh air was supposed to keep that bug away and make you healthy. Many slept out here the whole season:

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And the mistresses room, she didn’t always sleep with the master:

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A shot from the porch window looking at the pantry building, the large building on the left is the kitchen with a school room upstairs, the other building to the right is the laundry:

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Upstairs bathroom:

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This is one of the upstairs bedrooms, the kids room, and it looks like what I’ve been told all the upstairs looked like when the Forest Service was gifted this place…there’s still some restoration going on:

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And here’s a shot of the front porch and staircase, the lake is to my back, the living room to the right, the dining room to the left:

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This is the ‘guest cottage’ that is off to the south of the mansion. This is also where the ‘Winnie Ruth Judd‘ murder trunk is kept. Winnie killed two of her female friends and stuffed them in trunks and sent the trunks by train to LA where the murders were uncovered. A murder buff bought one of the trunks at auction and years later gifted it to the historical society. And it ended up here:

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Here’s the trunk:

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And the blood stains inside (the plastic and moth balls keep the smell manageable) there in the corner and back. This was the smaller of the two trunks and the woman had to be cut up into chunks to fit inside. The leaking blood was the tip off to the authorities, the trunks presence here might explain the ghostly happenings at the Pope house:

I’ve grown tired…I’ll put up the rest of the shots later. Bye!

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5-26-06

Dead mouse…

Here’s the dead mouse pic I promised…poor little bastard. Sniff.

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5-26-06

Tour the Baldwin Estate…

I’m here at the Baldwin Estate in So. Lake Tahoe as a volunteer and since I’ve got keys and everything, I thought I’d throw some pics of the place your way.

This is the volunteers computer room where I spend a lot of my time, the public doesn’t come in here. It use to be a storage room or the maids room, no one knows anymore:

Next door is the laundry & electrical room. I was very impressed with the work done by a previous volunteer…he hid modern electrical wiring, up to code, behind the original electrical panels. The first pic shows the old stuff, the second the new behind the old:

Here’s a couple pics of the laundry room stuff, note the old style heater:

Then you move from the electrical & laundry room into the cook stove & refer room, the refer is original from the early ’20’s and I just had it fixed yesterday, working fine now, the last time it was worked on was 5 years ago, before that, anyone’s guess:

And then into the serving pantry:

I missed getting a shot of the dinning room…forgot, sorry.

And finally, here is the living room, the grand room with the 25 foot ceilings and the chandeleers and stuff:

Then some more pics from the living room. The grand door is huge and opens up onto a view of the beach…note that the trees were much smaller when folks lived here:

Here’s the porch:

Here’s a good view of the ornate door, it’s huge and heavy (at least in my expirience):

If you spin around in the living room and face West, you’d be looking out at this:

And the other side of the courtyard, what’s interesting is that this place was made for those lazy afternoons and evenings when people would sit around this courtyard and just talk about the events of the day, or about Chaucher, Shelly, Fitzgerald or Poe, and usually after a game of tennis or a swim. Ya see, they didn’t have television…:

This part of the museum is now a retrospective of the lives of the Washoe of the area. They were totally robbed of their ancestral lands (evidence of their being here in Tahoe for 12,000 years) and after years of pleading, begging and anger, they were awarded $2.41 per acre of the lands taken from them. This small section of the museum tells their story, what was 5000 people shrank to 500 in just a few years after the white man came here:

There’s at least 4 or 5 other rooms I’m not showing here. And there are more rooms upstairs. What a life for these people. But, ya know, they’re all dead. All that money didn’t stop that.

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5-25-06

More from Lake Tahoe…

Two or three days ago, I got home from volunteer work at 4:30 or so and was lounging around here in the RV when I happened to glance out the north facing windows to see a brown bear wandering across the blacktop right (within 15 feet) in front of my RV. I had the front curtains closed and it was a chore to quickly open them, grab my camera, wait for it to boot and finally get a picture. By that time the beast was all the way across blacktop area and nosing around the dumpster. But I did finally get two pics before it ambled off (it had seen me after I opened the curtains). Later I was able to wrestle it to the ground and get a three count. Enjoy the wildlife!

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5-19-06

More work I’ve done at Tahoe…

I’ve been here a work week so far (Monday thru Thursday) and have accomplished a little. For instance, the battery operated golf carts we use extensively during the season just sit for 6 months of the year in cold, wet conditions. My first project was to get the ‘Gem’ cart up and running. This is the newest cart here and was donated by the manufacturer. It’s cool and goes like hell when it’s working.

Here’s what it looks like:

It has six 12V batteries and all of them were dead except for one. The on-board charger wouldn’t charge the rest up because they were too low so it just constantly beeped plaintively. It would require too much current to charge the dead batteries so I had to use my own 12V charger and charge 5 of the batteries up enough that the on-board charger could take over. It took nearly 2 gallons of distilled water to top off the batteries. After charging for several hours, everything is back to normal and the Gem is working fine. I’m a little worried that the batteries won’t last very long but I’ll write up a ’storage’ procedure before I leave. Maybe that will help them survive through next year.

Next I had to work on this little cart. It had charged up OK and worked fine for most of a day and then just stopped. Dead. The workers pushed it to the shop and when I opened it up I found a broken battery cable terminal, caused by extensive corrosion. After replacing the terminal and cleaning things up, it’s nearly as good as new…

Next, I worked on this one:

It had the same problem as the last cart…it was working fine but then just died. Note that in all these carts, the batteries and electromechanical devices are mainly under the seat. This cart was a little different in that it’s one of the oldest, which means that the parts are difficult to replace if bad. I rooted around in the guts of the thing and found 3 terminals that were so corroded that they had broken off after surviving the winter. After replacing all those, it seemed to work fine for a few minutes. Then it just dies. I pushed it back to the shop and started debugging. Several hours later, and after drawing my own schematic, I decided that a major part, the ‘Forward-Neutral-Reverse’ switch is bad. It’s huge as it switches all the motor current if you are trying to change direction. It’s also old, cracked, and probably impossible to find a new one. So this weekend I’ll be on-line trying to find a replacement switch or something I can use to replace it…maybe relays or something. I’ll keep you posted.

Update: I was able to take the big F-N-R switch apart, re-thread a stud, replace some older hardware, clean and brighten the contacts enough that it’s working fine now.

Meanwhile, I took these shots of the Baldwin Museum and the classic car I’ll be working on next week…

The masters house:

The antique…needs new tires all around…I’ll work on that next week or so:

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5-19-06

Work I’ve done at Tallac Historic Site…

The Gates…

Last year in May, I was assigned to rebuild two 6 foot wide gates. It was fun trying to come up with a way to build something that would last for a long time. I was told that the gates had been a souce of constant problems since the weather and width of the gates conspired to cause them to droop and come apart to easily. I was told that they had been replaced several times and the last set had only been up for 3-4 years and was already falling apart.

With that information in mind, I tried to come up with a design which would last a little longer. The fence posts themselves had been replaced just the year before (’04) and the gates repaired and stiffened. The posts were OK, but the gates sucked and were falling apart again. I didn’t want to reset the posts so I just straightened them a little. They were still out of alignment a little but not so bad that I couldn’t work with them.

This is what the gates looked like in May of ‘05:

Note that there are several patches holding the things up and the 2 X 4 on the left is breaking apart:

My camera failed last year before I was able to get pictures of the finished gates so I thought I’d put some on the blog that I took last week (May ‘06):

Here’s a closer shot of one of the gates. I used a major triangle to support the horizontal piece along the top of the fence, used a 4″ X 4″ for the stile (wood on the gate that the hinges attach to), 2″ X 6″ for the runner and diagonal member and 2″ X 4″ studs for the final pieces. I tried to use as much cedar as possible (resists water and bugs) and obtained all the wood from the scrap pile so the wood was aged. The joints are a mixure of lap and compound lap. I used 2-part epoxy on all joints to delay rot. I angled the runner along the bottom so rain water would weep off. It was a lot of fun building them and this year I find that they are still very strong and doing well. None of the joints have separated at all. In fact the free ends of the gates are just as high off the ground this year as they were when I finished them last year. I used two major trianges and a minor compound form to stiffen and strengthen the gates while at the same time making the gates weigh less then if I had used 2″ X 4″ studs and tried to brace things well. The old gates used 2 X 4’s thoughout.

And the other side, the wow on the left side is an optical illusion:

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5-16-06

More from Lake Tahoe…

We hung around South Lake Tahoe for the four days TJ was around. Went to a couple casinos, visited some local bars, and went to an Improv comedy club at Harrah’s. Funny, but not wet your pants funny.

Sunday morning we picked up the rental car and drove around until time to go to the Sacramento airport. The trip is 3 hours round trip.

These shots are from the small park just above Cave Rock on the East side of the lake:

Here’s a few shots of Fallen Leaf Lake on the West side of Lake Tahoe…about two miles west and 300-400 feet above where I work actually:

On the way back, I just missed an accident on the 2 lane road in the mountains. Seems an SUV slowed down too quickly to make a turn and got hammered from the back. The car that hit the SUV tumbled down a 25 foot embankment missing several large trees, landing upside down. I was about 4 cars behind the whole thing. There were plenty of people down there already and since I have not had first aid training for years, I didn’t stop. News the next night said no one was hurt. Lucky for them.

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5-13-06

Rosamond to Lake Tahoe…

Wednesday the 10th of May, I left my brothers house and headed for Lake Tahoe. First I took some pixs of his new baby…a Toyota Prius hybrid. I got to drive it for 2 days and it’s a blast. I was getting 37.6 MPG. There is a LCD color display that shows you the milage you’re getting or you can switch it to a GPS map. This little engine keeps the battery charged.

Monday morning I left for Sacramento and on to Tahoe, here’s a shot of the desert near Rosamond as I turned onto highway 99:

And further North on 99. Those are wind power generators up there on the hill:

I picked up TJ at the Sacramento airport. She wanted to come up to Tahoe for a few days. Her suitcase is huge. Takes up half the space in the RV:

About half the way up to Tahoe you start following ‘The American River’. Very cool:

We stopped near a little park. The temp was near 75F:

Then around 10 miles up the road we ran into this:

Here’s a shot of TJ’s butt:

TJ strikes a pose (not my doing, I didn’t put her up to it):

Our first view of the lake from US50:

There’s still a bunch of snow, we’re at around 5500 feet here:

I thought this pond was pretty neat:

An hour later and here we are:

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4-17-06

Staying at Dan’s house…

I’ve been here at Dan’s house for around three weeks now and this trip there isn’t much to fix. Last year I fixed 28 or so items that weren’t working or were broken or miss applied that my brother hadn’t had time or skill to do much about.

This time there really isn’t anything new. Everything I fixed last time is still fixed. Not much to do. And since he flipped the little Ford Escort I put the engine in last time I was here, there’s no wheels for me to use so I’m kind of stuck in the house all day. I could walk down to the strip mall but couldn’t carry much back.

In other words, I’m getting bored. I might head up to Death Valley and hang out there for a couple weeks. Don’t know yet. The fuel price is soooo bad, over $3 per gallon of diesel, that I have to really think about my next destination and plan so I save as much fuel as I can. ‘Course to offset the cost, I could hang in one place longer, and it helps if it’s free. Like at Dan’s place it doesn’t cost me anything. And where I’m going next month, Lake Tahoe, I’ll get free parking for the rig for 6 weeks. It’s volunteer work for the forest service so I get a free site. I could extend my stay too.

I don’t have any plans after that except maybe head up to Portland, Oregon and visit friends for a couple weeks. Then maybe over to northern Idaho to try and find a piece of land to park on during the summer. I don’t know. I do know that the fuel prices won’t stop my travels, just put a crimp in them.

Let me know where you think I should go…comments are “ON”.

Jim

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4-7-06

If you recall, I was forced by my satellite internet provider (Direcway) to return to the states in order to receive a refund of a wrongly charged ‘termination’ fee. The management of Direcway have their collective heads so far up their collective toshes that they will never figure out why they get flamed all over the web at hundreds of sites.

Anyway, I left the RV park in Amado and headed north to Tempe, then on to my brothers house in Rosamond, CA.

As you can see the weather was kinda gloomy. Matched my mood. I wanted to stay another month in Mexico. Sigh. I’ll be back there in November or December:

I stopped just for this picture since the topography was so typical of the area:

When I got to Quartzsite, I first stopped at the Love’s Fuel station there in town. I’d been paying $1.86 or so per gallon of diesel in Mexico, and here it’s $2.59. I’m lucky to have found that price. Most of the places I’d passed in Arizona were in the $2.75 per gallon range.

As I drove through town, I found that all the RV business that are here from around late November through early February are now all closed so I won’t be able to do any shopping for RV parts.

I spent the night at the free BLM camping area savoring the cool breeze that whipped through the area. I’d parked a 100 yards away from my nearest neighbor so I got some alone time. While waiting for nightfall, I did some fluid checks on the rig and checked the air pressure in the tires. With everything OK, I had dinner and watched some TV, then went to bed early.

The next morning, around 6am, I woke up refreshed and ready for another day of driving.

I headed north towards Parker, Arizona because I wanted to avoid having to drive through all the traffic around LA. My brothers place is 90 miles north of LA so I took the roads that take me north of Edwards AFB.

This is the hiway to Parker:

A few hours later and I’m heading due west. The weather cleared up a little and I took this shot because I was near what is really a spectacular desert valley. It doesn’t really come through that way in the picture. Guess you need to go there yourself:

Later on, I passed this volcanic rock field. Kind of interesting but no cinder cone or caldera:

After this, I passed through Barstow and onto Hiway 58. The 4 lane section. Around the middle of that section, I hit a pothole that rattled my teeth. Right after that, I’m hearing a loud thumpa, thumpa, thumpa. Sounds like a flat so I start to pull over. I stop at a pull out and check all the tires. No flat and no tread separation that I could find. And no dead animals stuck between my duals. But whenever I move, a loud noise from the front end. I think I’ve got it localized to the left front, I call service and they dispatch a truck to tow me back to Barstow for service. While I’m waiting, I lift the rig on the front leveler and discover that the noise is coming from the right front wheel. And it’s loud too. While messing around with the tire, I find that 4 of the six lug nuts are loose! So I call and cancel the tow but ask for a tire truck (big rigs use them when they have a flat on the freeway-they have the tools and a compressor and can fix any tire problem without towing). The same outfit says they’re still coming out and can do the work. Meanwhile, I’ve tried to tighten the nuts with the tools I have but this is a 19.5″ tire so you need to apply around 200 Ft/Lbs to these nuts. I don’t have the strength. The tow truck gets there and I find that the guy has no idea about this big of a tire. Doesn’t even have a torque wrench with him. Not even aware of the tire pressures needed. Anyway, working together we get the nuts wrenched down tight and I head out. No more noise. Whee, another potential problem solved with a simple fix. I gotta tell you, the noise was so loud and so persistant that I thought that there was major front end damage to deal with. Here’s a shot of the wheel:

You can see by this shot that I was able to find a nice pull off of the freeway in order to work on the wheel. And there is a handy turn around for the tow guy to head back to town right here too:

Note: Found out from the manufacturer and other sources that the torque needed for the big nuts holding the wheel on is 450-500 ft-lbs. I don’t have the tool for that much torque but I’m looking for one.

A few miles down the road, this is the Mojave Desert:

A few hours later and I get to my brothers house in Rosamond, CA. He’s in Las Vegas but I’m just happy to be here. Note the steep driveway and street, I keep telling him that he needs to buy a new house on flat land with RV parking but he’s not hearing me:

Here’s the little patio he’s built to give himself a nice area to look out over the valley in the evening, has a little pond too:

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4-1-06

Back in the states…

My satellite internet provider basically screwed up and forced me to retreat to the states in order to re-activate my modem. The signal I was getting in Mazatlan was too weak for them to contact my modem. So, I cut my trip short by about three weeks and just high tailed it back to Arizona. I traveled up Mex 15 trying to miss as many toll roads as possible.

I started from the La Posta RV park in mid-town Mazatlan. Headed North on Mex 15. Here’s a shot of the ‘free’ road just outside of Mazatlan, it differs from the ‘toll’ road in that it’s only two lanes and has more potholes:

Around mid-day, I stopped in some small pueblo at this small taco stand. What you can’t see in the picture are the 10’s of thousands of flies that seem to like the food. Anyway, I ordered 2 beef tacos. They were great so I took a picture of the cook.

These chickens (pollos) hang out just in back of the taco stand:

This is a shot of the street just behind the place:

Just up the road a ways, one of the few sections of the free road that’s 4-lane:

The first evening I stopped at this RV park right on the ocean, it’s around 26 MILES off of the hiway, and around 35 miles south of Navojoa, so it took me around an hour of taking wrong turns to find the place. I missed the turn off of the freeway, went through Navojoa, turned back and took a short cut south to a little berg named Huatabampito, try to say that fast:

Here’s a shot from the restaurant:

Around an hour later, sunset:

And the beach at sunrise:

Nice cooling breeze the whole time I was there. Also many sand flea bites.

For some reason I woke up at 6am and decided to leave at 7. Glad I did because that put me in Nogales at 5pm and at my next RV park in Arizona before sunset of the 2nd day.

Here’s another of the small towns I passed through on the second day of travel. This shot is of the town tower. The road through town was being resurfaced so it was a little dicey getting the rig through without hitting anything. Luckily, road workers tried to help make it easier for me, and for that I thank them:

I got to Nogales around 4:30 so I figured I could make it to the nearest stateside RV park before dark. I like to be able to see while I try to park without help. The best time to get to the boarder crossing would be around 7:30 PM or AM but since I was here, decided to bare up and head across anyway. It took around 45 minutes to get through customs, because of the traffic. The inspection only took around 15 minutes. She took my eggs, and today, I’d like an egg. Oh well. I’d cleaned out the freezer of chicken and most beef, oh, and I’d eaten all the fruit.

After crossing the boarder, I head north on US 19, this shot is a senic view of the hills near Nogales, I also took it because I was feeling sooo good to be on a really good road for a change (after being shook nearly to death on some of the Mexican roads by potholes and the damn topes I’d not seen and hit at speed):

An hour later and I’m in Amado, Arizona. There are two RV parks right next to each other here. One is older, been here for 40-50 years or so and the other one is around 4 years old. I stayed at the older one. Save some money. Had a chilidog for dinner and went to bed around 11PM. That night, I kept waking up for no apparent reason. The next morning I felt awful, like the sky was pressing down on me, making me feel heavy. Tummy was grumbling. All my joints hurt. Even my hair hurt. Laid down on the couch around 11AM and fell in and out of sleep until 3PM. Later, I did struggle around and get my satellite set up, connected to the satellite, called Direcway tech support and had them walk me through re-activating the modem, then called billing and got the process started on getting my $300 back. Took an hour. Felt badly the rest of the day and into the night when I went back to bed at around 12AM. I hadn’t eaten anything all day. Drank a couple mouthfuls of water and a ginger ale.

The following day I felt slightly better but not by much. Still didn’t have any idea what was wrong. Maybe a heart attack? But no, none of the classical symptoms like the soar jaw, or bum left arm, and there was no heartburn, etc. Just a general malaise, no appetite, sore joints, mild headache, slight nausea, feeling of pressure all over the body. Took a couple aspirin with little effect. Heart rate OK. Joint pain lessened a little.
Then around 5PM, a sudden onset of diarrhea. HA! Food poisoning of the kind I don’t recall ever experiencing before. Whew. Glad that’s what it was. Think of all the other really nasty things it could have been.

The 2nd day here at the park, I’m feeling much better. Eating better. Pressure gone. Don’t know where I got the bug, probably that little taco stand from lunch the day before. But what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger. I’m going to try to remember the symptoms since they were different from what to me are usual food poisoning symptoms. (I’m use to trying new things and taking chances with new foods so I might get food poisoning more often then you since I’m not to concerned about cleanliness). This episode was one of the few times in my life I really felt like maybe going to the hospital since I couldn’t initially figure out what the problem might be. I did IM my daughter just in case and checked if I’d sent her my ‘Living Will’.

I going to stay here until tomorrow morning (Sunday, April 2nd, 2006) and head up to Tucson for shopping, then on to Quartzsite for some RV parts. The following day, I’ll make it to my brothers place in Rosamond, CA.

The Mountain View RV Ranch in Amado.

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3-26-06

Dinner out in Mazatlan

We, Ismael, Rosita and I, went out for dinner last evening around 6 pm. This was the makeup dinner I wanted to buy for Ismael and his wife since they have been so nice and have given me lots of free time or services here at the park. Plus Ismael has driven me all over town several times and all the way down to Teacapan last week. Of course I kind of repaid that by being the local computer guru around here, and helped Ismael install a new repeater for the WiFi.

They choose the restaurant and it is right downtown in old Mazatlan. There are narrow streets, very old buildings, lots of street activity including a street discussion of a book. There were about 70 people listening intently to a women talk about a new book that had just been published. The area was a grand plaza that had lots of booths set up selling books. I’ve never seen that in the states.

We sat outside since the weather was so pleasant. I ordered a weird soup kind of thing that came in a very hot & huge stone bowl. Had beef, cactus chunks, and vegetables. Couple dabs of goat cheese and some diced peppers too. It was excellent and very spicy. There was so much that I brought a large doggie tray home with me.

Then we wandered around the area, checked out the bookseller booths, and then went into the old opera house. They were having a ballet and the tickets were only $60 pesos but I couldn’t talk them into going. I’m not a big fan either but I did want to see the inside of that building. It’s a couple of hundred years old, very ornate, and typically Mexican. I took some pictures out in front of a wedding couple.

Ismael and his wife Rosa (Rosita):

A shot while on the street of one of many gardens that seem to be everywhere:

Don’t know what this is:

Here’s where we eat dinner:

A close up shot:

Here’s the ‘booksellers row’:

As we approached the Opera House:

One happy couple, outside the Opera House:

Wow, it’s been several minutes and they are still happy with each other:

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3-23-06

Mazatlan Yacht Club

I wandered down to the north of the Golden Zone to look at that boat I found on the web. It’s not exactly what I hoped for but the price is right. What I found is that it doesn’t apprear to be a 36 footer like the ad states. It seems shorter than that. Alot less room then I expected, I’ve been on several 35 footers and this didn’t feel like one, not really anywhere to put my electronics shop or tools. The dealer told me he thought it was a 30 footer and a printed estimate they handed me after the tour shows it as a 26 footer. Makes a big difference in the price.

But, the price isn’t bad…$13,000 USD and then around $7,000 to get her seaworthy. And it has radar (most don’t at this age). It needs new rigging, wiring upgraded, painting and the bottom cleaned and checked for voids or rot in the plastic.

While I was waiting, I looked around, there are some of these for sale, this club doesn’t allow any ‘For Sale’ signs on the boats.

This trimaran is for sale for $160,000USD. To rich and ugly for me:

Here’s a view of boats from the dingy, just ’cause:

And the fantail of the boat:

The cockpit:

The dinnette:

The galley:

The bow:

Again:

The tail:

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3-22-06

Trip to Teacapan…

I wanted to see the 7 RV parks in Teacapan so Ismael and I drove down in his car to save wear and tear on my rig, plus the fuel would be less expensive for the trip down and back. We went around 300 kilometers total. I got a few shots of the road side and some towns we went through but mostly I was interested in the RV Parks. I’m looking for a remote place to spend a few weeks, away from the big city (Mazatlan).

There’s one fairly big town we passed that has an arch at the entrance and another at the exit. They were built in 1655. And the town was probably 100 years old before they could afford to go to that much trouble. There’s an old church steeple you can see from the hiway that looks that old. We didn’t stop. Maybe next time I go down there I’ll try to get into the town (the hiway bypasses it) and get some pictures.

Just a road side hiacenda that seemed more interesting at the time I took the picture:

This is the ‘rio’ that Ismael tells me is full of water most of the year. I tell him it’s not a river, it’s an arroyo. He insists it is a rio.

After about an hour of driving, a little of the countryside near the ocean, looking east:

This first park we stopped at, Rancho Los Angles, is remote, it’s the farthest park (8 miles) from Teacapan, has most all the amenities except WiFi. There is a resturant here. The road is a little rough and during the rainy season it floods, but I think most rigs could make it OK if they take it slowly. The weather was cool, around 75F, with a constant breeze off the ocean. I could stay here for weeks, if I could get my satellite internet working.

This is the mile long driveway into the park:

And the park itself:

This next park is just down the road from LA, called Villas Onac, has the same poor road into the park. But then it has WiFi. It’s big downfall is that it has no character. It has the appearance of being a boring place to stay.

Down south a few miles more is La Tambora RV Park. It appears this place hasn’t had anything done to it for years. The wiring is very old, you would be lucky to get even 15 amps here, which means you probably could not run your AC if there are more then two or three RVs in the park. It does have a mostly paved road going to the park. Rustic is too kind of a word:

This next one was my favorite place out of all the parks in this area. They are in the process of remodeling the outbuildings so the restroom is new, there is a new office going up, the place has loads of character, there is a nice swimming pool, resturant, the rates are low, the amenities fine. And it’s the closest to town. An easy walk or bike ride. The beach is excellent, the park appears to be in a little cove, there’s plenty of activity, the cocos forest behind the RV park is pleasant so it is an area that could hold your interest for weeks. When I come back to this part of Mexico next fall, I think I’ll stay here for a few weeks.

Here’s a few shots of Teacapan:

The town square:

Here’s Ismael and Rosita back at the office at La Posta RV Park:

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3-19-06

Walking around Mazatlan…

Last evening I wandered out of the RV park down the road (West) toward The Golden Zone. It’s about 2 blocks from here and I wanted to visit a neat looking place right on the beach that I’d passed by several times but curiously never really noticed until a day or so ago.

It’s a resturant in one section and a club in the other. There might be a hotel there too but I didn’t notice that. The building is kinda interesting with long stairways and hallways and empty or dark rooms off of corridors.

I went into the dinning area first. It has a beautiful grand piano in the foray and when I was there a lounge singer. Of course this is the off season so the place was nearly deserted. I check out the prices, around $35 per person for a dinner & drinks, so this is a pretty spendy and trendy place. There were several waiters standing around in their tucs waiting.

Here’s a view of the sunset from the veranda. Sure, there are several tables out here and out of respect for the diners, I didn’t take any flash shots of them while they were eating. The other portion of the building is hanging there on the cliff. That’s were the club is. A bar and dance floor. With several smaller areas (roped off while I was there) for different bands.

Here’s a view south from the veranda. It looks towards the ‘old town’ of Mazatlan. The beach here use to be where all the fishermen parked their boats. Since Mazatlan turned into a tourist destination over 100 years ago that all moved away over the years. Now it’s used for swimming and tanning.

One more shot of the sunset:

Or maybe two:

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3-16-06

Hangin’ at La Posta

I had dropped my satellite dish on the ground when I first got to Mazatlan several weeks back and finally got around to fixing what the problem was. When I picked the dish assembly last Sept. there was a piece of metal that the bolt goes through that had a crack in it. Over the ensuing weeks that broken part finally fell apart. At the Las Jaibas RV park, when I tried to set it up and at least test for a satellite signal, the part finally gave way and the dish toppled over. That bent an adjustment screw and broke a small piece of the dish (I’ll glue it back on).

Yesterday I took the tripod into a local machine shop and had them make me a humongous washer out of aluminum that fits up into the hole. Then I had them make me a new adjusting screw so I can tilt the dish forward and backward. The original was made of soft steel and wasn’t very good to begin with but the new one is hardened stainless steel. Should last a very long time.

Everything came to $285 pesos. My friend Ismael was kind enough to run me over there and I’m helping him install a better WiFi antenna system. He worked as a taxi driver for years so he knows where everything is in town. I’ve gotten to see tons of stuff I wouldn’t otherwise have ever known was there.

We passed a bunch of kids all dressed up having a kiddie’s parade today.
Cute kids. All dressed up in their little dresses with bows and streamers and balloons in their hair. Pretty neat.

Also walked up to the doctor’s office today. She had the results of my lab tests on the cysts she had cut out. The receptionist handed me the lab result sheet before I went in to see the doctor and it has this on it:

“NEVO MELANOCITICO INTRADERMICO”

I’m thinking that the middle word is ‘melanoma’ in Spanish but I have the sense to not freak out before I talk to the doc. She tells me that it means that the removed flesh was just a mole…nothing to worry about. Whew.

Anyway, I am done for now with surgery. I might come back and have some other moles on my back removed but the doc tells me they are nothing to worry about but if I do want them removed it would be $1,000 pesos. So, under $100 US. Pretty cool.

I did my budget yesterday and found that I’m running about 20% UNDER budget so far this year. Much of that is because I’m saving on living expenses by not moving around to much and staying where it’s free sometimes (like all of January), getting my bike stolen got me a free week here and working on the WiFi system at the last RV park got me 3 days free. So all that added together means that even with the master brake cylinder replacement and the surgery, I’m saving money.

I get a sense, now that I’ve been here over a month, that if I moved to a less crowded area of Mexico, I could save a bundle and push that 20% to 30% or more. That would be great. Perhaps spend 6 months a year down here. Three months in Mazatlan and 3 months somewhere else. We’ll see.

Here’s a nearby RV pad, I like the fountain, flowering trees and patio they have, mine’s not this nice.

Here’s a shot of the LaPosta RV Park office:

The pool:

The lounge area (yes, I know, it’s outside!):

Here’s a better shot of the pool, kind of cool today (low 70’s), so not a lot of swimmers, that’s my neighbor’s RV there in the shot:

Here’s a shot of the street just outside the park, go this way and you are going east. Go the other way and you run into ‘The Golden Zone’ in two blocks, the ocean is right there too. I can walk practically anywhere you’d want to go, bus anywhere else:

Last night I walked across the street to one of the street vendors for dinner. The smell wafts over the park from the barbeque every once in a while and I wanted to test the place. They had all this meat hand rotated over a fire pit, no walls, with several tables to sit at, no beer but they had some sort of milky looking juice to drink. I think it was like pina’ colada without the rum. The cook was male and the waitresses were very kind on the eyes, both around 17. Sitting very near a 4 lane road isn’t really a problem for me down here because they use cleaner fuel down here in Mexico and the smell, even in a big city like Mazatlan, isn’t that bad. It’s unusual to smell any exhaust.

I look at the menu and see Quesedillo Con Carne and order two of them. The food was delicious. AND I watched him sanitize his hands with bleach water before he made my food. The table was loaded with all sorts of hot sauces and bowls of fresh veggies like radishes and cucumber, onion, salsa (as in the tomato, pepper and onion mixed salad), etc. Everything was so good, I also had a taco. Yum. Yum.

Here’s where I had dinner last night, couldn’t beat it for taste though it doesn’t look like much:

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3-14-06

A move to LaPosta

So when Ismael quit his job at Las Jaibas RV Park, we had become friends enough that I symphasized with his issues with the patron’ and moved to a different RV park where his wife works. This one is about a block off of the main road that goes through the Golden Zone.

My new space:

See that white tree stump there near the rear tires? That’s where I left my bike the second night I was here. Totally forgot to lock it up. Next morning it’s missing. So Ismael hears about it and has his wife offer me a free week at the campground. Down here, a bike like mine costs $125 US. Up in the states it’s only $80. I took them up on the offer since the weekly fee here is around $105 US. I’m now in my second week here at the park and I’ve meet some new friends…

Jerry and Judy:

Bill:

Since Ismael no longer has a job, he’s taking a few weeks off before he goes back to taxi driving or whatever, so he offered to give me a ride over to Stone Island (not really an island - a penninsula now but it was an island) to look at the RV park over there.

On the way:

Looking west:

One of the more famous singers in the area owns this house. He’s in the process of selling it so they can put up condos:

I took this shot to get that purple house in the frame…I liked the color but the house itself is kinda boring from the street. That patio is pretty cool though. Let’s assume that the inside is purple too.

As we rounded the hill, looking back east to Mazatlan proper:

This is one of the streets down in ‘Old City’ of Mazatlan. Kind of hard to get around in a big rig:

We hired a boat to take us over to Stone Island:

Here’s where they park those cruise ships that come here. Ismael’s home is about 2 blocks to the starboard side of that ship:

After we landed on Stone Island, we walked over to the beach. The RV park we’re looking for is way off in the distance. The buildings along the beach are all businesses for tourists, but as you can see, there arn’t many because of the difficulty in getting here. The road is terrible with hundreds of pot holes. The other way is by boat. All those trees in the distance are coconut trees, it’s a huge plantation:

This is a shot of the little town we passed through by pedicab on the way to the RV park. It was a very, I’m mean very, rustic town. Would have gotten more shots but we were bouncing around too much:

Two days later we headed south to check out another RV park, these are like explorations for both me and Ismael since I’m looking for some ground to buy, maybe even a RV park, and he is looking for a new job sort of. And we hit it off so we’re hanging out and he’s showing me his favorite spots. We went to one ‘buy your RV plot’ place where last year he was offered a job but he turned it down back then because there was nothing but a couple roads on the land. Now there is a big beautiful meeting center, a pool is going in, there are a couple of buyers parked on their improved sites, there’s an apartment for the manager, etc. He wanted my opinion about the place. The park is 3 miles from the Mazatlan Areo Puerto, about 20 minutes from the Golden Zone, out in the sticks where you have to drive through a really old Mexican town with cobble stone paving, narrow roads, etc. The land slopes toward the hills, it’s quiet, peaceful, and the developer is ‘required’ by land use laws to reinsert the green that they removed. So, trees and grass will be reinstalled.

In short, I think the place will be a great success and told him he should take the job if it’s reoffered. Like I said, he hadn’t seen the place for months, and was impressed as I was. They gave us the grand tour. Had a great time. I hadn’t expected much from his descriptions so I forgot to take any pictures for you guys. After we left there, we headed even further south into the semi-big town 3 miles from the RV place and I started taking pictures again, this is a typical street in a typical small town in Mexico:

Here we are heading out of town due south:

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3-5-06

Night on the Town…

Friday night I went out and did some dancing at The Purple Onion. Had a few beers and then added two martinis. It all hit me about 30 seconds before I hit the bed at home (good timing), added to that, I was plenty tired. And just before that, I couldn’t find the $200 pesos I know I had when I walked out of the bar. So I didn’t pay the taxi anything. He didn’t come back the next day so I guess he found it.

The band stand.

Dancing!

Me and some ‘one night stand’ friends:

More bar back there:

Some of our newest and bestest friends ever! Now, what were their names?:

Couple of days later, when I go shopping. I’m in one of the little taxis that are all over the place. This trip cost me $60 pesos, but I had tons of groceries so couldn’t take the bus…$5 pesos for the bus.

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3-3-06

And even more from Mazatlan…

Well, I’m finally over the illness. I have been fighting with Montezuma’s revenge for 6 days. Nasty. It relaxed yesterday morning and I was able to eat a little. When the vegi man came by in his truck I grabbed a bunch of fresh off the tree bananas and ravished them. Soooo hungry. And I wanted to eat something that is recommended for the revenge. Also, I had a honey and peanut butter samich. Honey is well know as a anti-bacterial. Going back thousands of years (you should know that).

Yesterday was the first day since last Wednesday that I felt well enough to ride my bike so I took the opportunity to enjoy the beach. The two miles into a fresh breeze was soothing. A little hard on me, but I felt better after the ride.

When I got to the turn around I saw, again, all those yellow and black dogs hanging around. I did find out that in Mexico, very few own dogs or cats. They are here, but as feral. The thing that’s impressive is that these feral dogs just hang out around humans…they aren’t running from them. I’ve not seen one of these dogs bark, snap or even look afraid like most dogs do in the states. They are non-territorial here. They don’t come if you entreat them but they accept a scratch if they are near or wander by your outstretched hand. I’ve seen them all over Mexico, not just here.

One of them, just hangin’:

Here’s what I’ve learned. Mexicans do not mistreat these animals. They are allowed to live their lives in peace. Peaceful treatment leads to peaceful animals. They do have to scavange for food, but many here will drop them something now and again. I never saw a fat dog, but never skin and bones either. Sometimes I saw them actively playing with children on the beach. But when the people would leave, the dogs would stay.

I’m impressed with that. What nice people. And it implies that we in the states are doing it soooo wrong.

Today I went into town to make my appointment with the doctor. I stopped at a X-ray place to have my hand X-rayed since it’s been giving me trouble ever since May ‘05 when I hammered it with a 5 pound hammer. I thought I had an axial break…those take a long time to heal. The cost was $20 bucks or so. I took the shots over to the doc and she says that the bones are fine. Nothing on the X-rays. So I’m confused and she gives me a referance to a hand doc. See it’s been 10 months and it still gets puffy and I can’t use it to grip. Sometimes it hurts to bend.

After discussing the hand, we start the surgery. She does put on gloves this time but no mask. She jabs me with a needle for the topical and uses her rusty…I mean ‘trusty’ scapel to wack out the cyst I had. Then she moves to the other one and I get a few more jabs of the needle. Hmm, when she starts cutting? That hurts. So I complain a little and she jabs me more with the topical. Cuts again, still hurts. This happened 5 times before she finally had enough of the topical anesthesia injected. But really, not that bad. Did feel like a rusty scapel though, before the topical started working.

So now I have my thingys done and get on back to the RV. Five, six days from now I can get the stitches removed. I’m happy I had it done down here because I saved around $700 (ignoring the cost to get here, but I would have come anyway) and it needed to be done. Always felt she knew what she was doing. We had trouble communicating once in a while but I always got what she was telling me eventually. I hadn’t thought about the stitches before so I might be here in Mazatlan for a little longer then I thought. Maybe a week more. Then I’d like to head south to Teacapan’.

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3-3-06

More from Mazatlan…

So I went up the beach again today on my bike. First thing I did was snap a picture of the hacienda at the beach edge that they’ve been working on.

The before picture:

The after picture:

This old park, which includes those buildings shown above, is owned by a local family with many members, some even living in the states. I’m told that they have been fighting over the park for 10 years now. Lots of family, and the owners died without wills. And this is a tourist area so the economy is boom or bust, not much in between. But perhaps they have ironed out their difficulties.

Looking west towards the ocean.

This shot is of the worse hacienda they have. I can’t imagine them trying to save it, a roof support beam is rotted out and that big hole on the side of the building isn’t suppose to be there. And it’s been open to the sea for years.

Why am I so interested in this place? Well, I sense a bargain. I’d like to lock in a long term lease on one of those places on the beach for all year round and then rent it out when I’m not in Mazatlan. Anyone want to go halvies? Or quarters with me?

Here’s a shot of the interior of the RV park part looking east. It’s empty of course and most of the buildings are rotting away. The pads are to small for todays rigs…

My bike ride was exceptionally difficult today…I don’t know why, perhaps since the tide was just heading out, that made the sand mushy instead of firm.

Here’s that big rock I always head for during my rides:

Looking back while I rest, that tall building there in the middle is right in the Golden Zone:

Here’s that resturant I’m always talking about. Si, no windows.

A gaggle of touists. I tried to get a better shot of that gal there as she walked up the beach but I couldn’t get my camera set up fast enough. Sigh. Muy Hermosa!

After I left the beach I stopped up at the Playa Cerritos. This is one of the two resturants there.

Remember the story I told about my stubbed toe? This relates it that. The contractor just didn’t bother to put the cover back on. As you can tell, it’s been open quite a while. And it’s a public sidewalk. The bikes there for dramatic effect.

One other thing I found on the trip was a very long section of sidewalk that just wasn’t there. You’re riding along and it just disappears. Dirt path. No landscaping either. So I asked the manager here and he says that the property owner that the sidewalk fronts is ‘invited’ to pay 50% of the cost of the sidewalk. They can refuse. Their neighbors come over and talk to them. Sometimes it doesn’t work. It’s a public sidewalk, but they don’t have to pay their share of the property improvement. So, when that happens, no sidewalk. See that a lot down here, I’d wondered why.

Yesterday afternoon here at the RV park they had a little spiel about the condos going up near here presented by realtors. There was free food provided by a great local resturant, free margarita’s in large cups, and free Mexican type music. It was great. I sat over with the owner and the manager like a patron’ and people came over as supplicants, responding to our every request. Good fun.

Note: If you are a regular visitor to my daughters web site (www.goblinbox.com) and have clicked on the thread ‘Off I go…’, then you have already read the following few pages since I planted them there first. I might have changed a word or the order when I brought them here, but essentially they are the same. Also, it’s possible some of the stories are now out of order. You’ll adjust. I have added some pictures too. There is some minor PG13 language.

Feb. 21

Today I wandered up to the area where Gigante store is since I had an appointment with a dermitologist. It’s importante’ to have your skin checked every so often because of the skin cancer epidemic we have going on even though the prez and his idiot buddies don’t believe in science OR global warming, which includes the FACT of ozone depletion. I’d made the appointment yesterday while I was heading toward Gigante.

Here’s a shot from the bus of a typical street.

So I walk in and plant my ass down on a chair. I’m the only patient. The receptionist doesn’t speak any spanglish and I don’t speak english very well but she was pretty so I flirted with her as well as I could until time for my appointment with the DOCATOR…dun dun dun dunnnnnnnnn!!

The doctor is near my age, and she has this HUGE plack on the wall that seems to state she is a graduate of some doctor school somewhere. It’s all in Spanish so I have NO idea if she’s a medical doctor or a witch doctor. Isn’t Mexico fun?

Anyway, she asks me, in very broken English, ‘What the hell do YOU want?’. So I tell her, since she’s a skin doctor and all, that I’d like her to check my skin. It’s the same skin I walked in with and it’s kinda droupie but I’m use to it.

So, she gets all serious…’You have problem with skin, bad?’

I say, ‘No, just check up for safety.’

She relaxes and has me go into the examination room. Puts on a magnifier and tells me to remove the shirt. I do and she starts looking at my moles and stuff. Thing is? She never puts on gloves. Pokes and prods me all over looking at moles, asking questions etc. No gloves.

But I showered today so no biggie. I hope she did too.

She does find some irritation around one mole but in general I’m good. No weirdness to speak of.

We discuss the cyst or two I have and she quotes me $3,000 pesos to excise them. Hmmm, $300 USD for what would cost me $1,000 USD in the states? Sure, why not.

So while we’re talking in her office about the procedure…easy, local anesthetic and a bandage…I look at her medical degree again. It has a picture of her when she graduated years before. I say, ‘Muy hermosa’ (Very pretty). She laughs and tells me that her granddaughter was in the office a few days before, looked at the same picture and said, ‘Who is this?’. When she found out she says, ‘You were very pretty, now you are not’. Hey, 5 years old, what can you do. And it will happen to all of you.

Good night, buenesnoches.

Feb. 20

I wandered down to Gigante today for some grocs. There’s also a WalMart but I don’t go there as often since this is more convenient and less expensive.

They had the most delicious oranges. At $0.40 per kilo. That is a damn fine price even here. I grabbed 3-4 kilo’s of oranges and a kilo of bananas, also very good.

The beer I bought was less expensive then Modelo, but it’s more robust. And it’s imported! Doesn’t taste bad either.

I also found a nice looking watermelon and some warm milk, known here as leche. Funny thing is that most of the milk sold here is warm. It’s in a carton like soy milk is up in the states and they just pile it up on shelves or in the aisles. They also have cold milk in coolers. I tried some of the warm stuff last week and it tastes just like regular milk. When I first bought it, it was because I was looking for soy milk, I saw those cartons piled up in an aisle and figured they must be soy since they weren’t in the cooler case. So I bought 2 cartons. When I got here to the park, I asked the manager if they were cartons of soy milk, I couldn’t tell because every word was in Spanish.

He laughed and pointed to the picture of the cow on the front of the carton. “What does this look like?” he asked. To which I answered, “A soy bean?”.

Anyway, now I know that ‘leche’ means ‘milk’ and ’soya’ means ’soy milk’ but it still kind of weirds me out that there are tons of boxes of milk just sitting in store aisles getting warm. I guess they boil the hell out of the milk before shipping…

If you grew up in the states you’d know what I mean.

Feb. 19

Nearly every day I ride my bike the 2 miles up the playa into a fresh headwind to the resturant where I get back on regular streets for the ride back to the park. With the stopping for site seeing and stuff it takes me an hour or two. Yesterday the tide was in and the sand wasn’t as firm up that far up the beach as it usually is when the tide is lower so the ride up the beach was not altogether easy.

When I got to the hiway, I stopped at one of those little open air business along the road that sells ‘Cocos’. Cocos=coconuts. There is a pretty gal the was working by herself that day.

Here’s her place, she wasn’t in today when I took the pic. Took the day off I guess.

Here’s what most of them look like…I’ve eaten here twice…good food. Mucho spicy. Burn mouth like fire.

Anyway, I point at a coco on her sign and she goes to a cooler and grabs a fresh, just fell off the tree in her back yard within days, green husk and all, coconut. She whips out a giant machete and WHACKS the end off of it like she’d been whacking things off for years.

She jabs a straw in it and hands it to me. I hold out a palm full of coins. She laughs and grabs a few…I think it came to $12 pesos ($1.15 USD).

I’m still sweating from the bike ride and the coconut milk was soooo cold. I just now shivered thinking about it. There must have been at least a cup of coconut milk. Maybe more.

When she whacked the thing open, she skillfully nicked out a hole in the top of the nut for the straw and laid the piece of coconut on top when she handed it to me. I nibble at it but it didn’t have the intense sweet you have come to expect of coconut from stores. Delicate flavor.

After I’d finished drinking, she pointed at the nut and indicated she could whack it some more with the machete if I wanted. So, sure, why not I thought, slightly confused. I wasn’t sure whether most people just drink the juice and leave the meat or take it with them.

So she proceeded to break open the nut and scoop out the nutmeat. Drops it all in a bag, adds two limes, zips it up and hands it to me.

I ride the 2 miles back to the park and ask the manager what the deal was with the limes. Several people there all volunteer the info that with a fresh coconut, you don’t put sugar on it, you soak it in lime (limon’).

I did that and I have to say…it’s pretty damn good that way. Fresh off the tree, sprinkled with fresh lime juice. I could get use to this.

Point is, when a pretty woman in Mazatlan offers to whack something for you? Let her.

Good Day.

Feb. 17, 18

Yesterday and today I hung around the RV park and got several people up and running on the WiFi system I’ve set up here. I’ve got my Linksys WiFi router up on top of the office roof and all secure and stuff with a new SSID and a required key. Funny that I had to work on 5 Toshiba notebook computers, all running XP Home and all with the same sequence of symptoms. They couldn’t connect to the new SSID even though they were getting a better signal.

The fix was to go into the ‘Config Fix’ program provided by Toshiba and run it. Worked every time. Before…couldn’t get connected. After ‘Fix’ and a reboot…connects.

Weird.

The manager was all happy because now the signal reached all the way back to the fence where before it was only getting back 3 rows of RVs…so he wasn’t making much money from people because they couldn’t get a strong enough signal with regularity. He had a bunch of happy people that no longer had to wander up to the office with their laptops to get a good signal. And had 2 deadbeats come down and pay since the old password didn’t work anymore.

Then, late today, around 5:30 pm, I wander into my RV and I see a notice that there are ‘Wireless’ networks available. I click on it and find a new WiFi hotspot. Then, all my work goes to hell. The Linksys stops transmitting. W-t-f? It had worked from 10AM yesterday until 5:30pm this evening. I couldn’t even raise the router from the server…

First we go up on the roof and check it. It has power, and all the activity lamps are flashing like normal. But still no talky to the server. So we unplug it, drag it down into the office and plug it into the modem with a short cable. Takes right off and starts working again.

Here’s the office for the park…the WiFi router was sitting on top of it.

OK, this is weird, is it just a coincidence that it stopped working when that other WiFi came on air? Did that have something to do with it failing to transmit? Or was it just because of the extra long Cat5 cable (rated for long length)? Also, it’s a 802.11B box so the cable length could be like 300 meters if I wanted, the cable I used is commercially made, is rated for 100MHz and is only 10-15 meters. Well within it’s range.

I’m dumbfounded.

Any ideas? Anyone?

On Edit: I think the problem was that the original modem, in which I’ve turned OFF the transmitter? It’s still transmitting on channel 2, weakly, same channel I was using for the Linksys. When that other transmitter went on air, the conflict between the Linksys and the modems transmitter was enhanced, knocking me off the air. Changing the Linksys to channel 9 seems to have fixed that problem.

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2-21-06

Just rambling on about Mexico….

Back tracking another two weeks - - -

I was wandering in the Golden Zone here in Mazatlan just looking at stuff when I ran across a laundromat. Now this is important because I’m staying here at least a month and I need to do my laundry at least once every two months or so and it was getting to be time to do that.

So I walk up to the laundromat…but first, you guys need to know something about Mexico and their building codes. Or rather lack of them. They don’t seem to mind having a 3″ step right in front of their buildings. You also see 2″ steps followed by 8″ steps followed by a 4″ step. Get the picture? Most stairways around here are crazy with all sorts of step heights, each step being different from the previous.

Anyway, as I approached the place, the paint job was so good that I simply did not see the 3″ step, and promptly, with force, hammered my left foot big toe into the cement step. DAMN, Shit, Whoa!! Pain and agony ensued. But I limped into the place and checked prices like I’d intended. That helped me ignore the pain.

Now I’m limping and can hardly walk. I expect that the toe on my left foot is broken but if you go into a doc with a broken toe they usually just shrug and say, “Yeah, it’s broken, sorry. Bye.”.

I hobble down the street a ways and decide to take the bus instead of walking. Jump on the bus and 2 miles later get off to go to a bar for 1 or two beers to kill the pain. I wander in at The Purple Onion and find that there is only one seat left at the bar right at the end…where the waiters drop off the empty glasses. I clean myself off an area at the bar and hoist myself up on the stool using my left foot for leverage on the foot bar. OF COURSE it slips off the damn thing and my toe bashes into the bar. YIPE! Whine!

So I drink 3 beers instead of the one or two I planned on and try not to think of the pain.

Around an hour or two later, I leave the bar and climb into a bus to take me to the RV park. The bus is nearly empty but I don’t want to walk to far back into it so I choose the first seat. You know, the seat right close to the front door? And here in Mexico the buses have a barrier between the entrance and the first seat but it’s also closer to the seat then buses are in the states. So while I’m sliding into my seat I WACK my toe on a metal pole. HOLY SHIT did that hurt.

Within 4 hours, I’ve wacked my toe HARD 3 times. I haven’t looked at it yet. I get off the bus and hobble to my RV. When I look, there is no blood but it is swollen, the nail is broken and it’s black and blue.

The next 2 weeks I always wear socks and shoes for protection and had to put a box in my bed to lift the blankets up off my foot in order to sleep. But now it looks pretty good, it doesn’t look like a big, rotten purple grape anymore.

Ahhh, Mazatlan. Worth the pain.

Meanwhile, and backtracking this storyline by 2 weeks, I was heading into Culiacan on Mex15 and I was pissed at having to pay tolls every 50 miles or so. I ended up bypassing some of the toll roads, but missed about 3-4 of the bypasses because the signs are all in Spanish.

So, when I get to the outskirts of Culiacan, pop. 300,000, I bail off the freeway (non-toll road) onto a bypass route right through the city that I think will get me to the next bypass. I’m driving a 37-foot long bus and immediately get into trouble because my lane is fast disappearing and there are hundreds of cars trying to get in front of me. Made it but just barely.

I follow the ‘Mex15 - Mazatlan’ signs deep into the city. Finally, the signs peter out and I make a wrong turn onto a 6 lane but surprisingly homey street. I travel a mile or two, don’t see any Mazatlan signs and stop to ask a traffic cop, ‘Mazatlan?’ while I point in the direction I’m heading.

He answers ‘Si’ and I continue driving east. 4 miles later I’m cussing the guy. Not a single sign for Mazatlan. So I look for a left turn to do a turn around. Three or four streets later, I give up and just turn onto a side street going north, about a block up, I take a left into what initially looks like a street I can get the rig through.

Big mistake. I get onto the street and it’s a two lane, with cars & trucks double-parked all along it. The owner who saw me coming moved the first truck out of the way. The next truck? I hear a ‘clank’ as my tail passes it. I stop, jump out and run back to talk to a guy looking at it and find that it’s the driver�s mirror that had snapped back up against the frame, it’s made to do that so no damage. Or so we decided (don’t know if he was the owner).

About 50 yards and what seemed like two hours later, I get to the corner and after cross traffic clears, I make my first attempt to make the left turn. My drivers side rear starts scraping a banged up truck parked too far into the street (tail parked in the street I’m trying to turn from).

The locals are starting to pile up behind me and on the cross street. Watching. Not honking their horns. It was well past rush hour and well before lunch so that could have been why they were so patient.

After one car behind me squeezed by, a pedestrian came up and pointed at the damn truck, smiling, he had seen me scraping it. I smiled back and complained in English that I couldn’t get by. He laughs and indicates that ‘Sure you can, just crank it!’, or so I imagine he’s saying.

Anyway, I back up some, take a different angle, crank it, and go right by the truck and onto the street. By then there were about 15 cars backed up in various streets watching me. But still, no one was beeping or shaking their fists at me. Cool people.

So, I get back on the 6 lane road going back west and get back to where I made the wrong turn, get back on the Mazatlan road and head out of town.

I get about 22 miles up the highway and run right into another toll station. And this one was for $177 pesos! I’d taken the wrong turn to begin with. I should have just stayed on Mex15 since it was the bypass of the toll road, which is numbered Mex15D. That’s what happens when you’re trying to navigate and drive at the same time.

So I turn around, go back to a Pemex fuel station about a mile back and wander around asking people if they speak English. Oh, b-t-w, there are kids (17 - 18 yo) in uniform running all over Mexico carrying semi-automatic weapons. Truck loads of 15, 20 guys. I’ve seen them all along the route to Mazatlan; they even stop traffic and search them for drugs. Part of the war on crime here in Mexico.

Finally I run into someone that speaks English and he tells me the road I want is about 12 miles back the way I came. Back I go, find the sign and note that it says, ‘Mazatlan - Libra’, OH, shit, ‘Mazatlan - FREE!’ I’d seen signs like that before on the route but didn’t make the connection. Could have saved even more on tolls if I had half a brain.

So now I’m on the right road, going about 55 average I guess, it’s two lanes and the hiway is in pretty good shape. It gets fun on these bypasses because every little town has one, two or several ‘topes’ (toe - pays) which are speed bumps across the hiway. And there are lots of small towns. There are usually signs warning you that one is coming up, but sometimes not. These force you to slow down and when you do people run out and try to sell you stuff. My only regret is I didn’t stop to barter with the guy who had hammocks for sale. Damn, wish I’d gotten one. Or at least priced it out.

Then there are the ‘Vibratores’. These are seldom signed but if you’re paying attention, you’ll see white lines painted across the road. Better slow down quick because the vibratores are under the paint. Shake you out of the bus if you forget to slow.

The road is, like I said, in pretty good shape and in some areas has new blacktop. And in those areas there are 4″ to 12″ drops off the side of the road. They don’t bother to smooth them or to taper them down to ground level much.

So I’m driving at 60, not paying much attention, and a gentle curve comes up. I drift towards the outside, my front tire gets to, then starts to drop off the edge. It’s 12″ high. Just off the roadway, 25 yards ahead, is a 15′ drop off into a creek bed. Through a bunch of small trees. I wake up. ‘Shit, damn, whoa!’ I don’t jerk it back but I do nudge it back onto the road, worried that it was too late and I’d have to bail off the hiway and try to stop the damn thing in the gravel and dust, before getting to the trees. And hoping that the tire wouldn’t burst when it fell off the edge. What a heart stopper.

But, luck was with me, and the duals in the back kept me on the roadway allowing me to nudge the front back onto the roadway.

Point is, that while driving here in Mexico, there just isn’t the margin of error that you have in the states. YOU MUST pay constant attention to your driving or you’re going to wreck something. Or worse. And here it’s ‘Guilty until proven innocent’ code. The cops are going to hand cuff you, take you to jail while they sort out what happened and who’s got the insurance. I don’t mean you need the kind of intense concentration that makes you tired but the kind where you don’t do anything other then pay attention to the road.

‘Nuff said.

In other news, the diesel down here is much, much cleaner then in the states. I don’t know why I was surprized when I got my first fill up that I immediately saw that there was less and less black sooty smoke coming out of my tail pipe. The farther I went the better it got. When I would take off from a dead stop or accelerate up a hill, the black smoke was gone. AND when I’d go up a hill, usually, my cruise control would drop out as the speed drifted downward. With this tank of fuel, it only did that once out of 460 miles of hill country driving.

I’m very pissed at suppliers in the states not cleaning their fuel like they do here in a 3rd world country. Down here they appreciate a cleaner air. And I was all over this town in buses, and didn’t run into hardly any diesel smell.

Well, hell, what a rotten day. I paid for this VoIP service? My cost for a call VoIP from Mexico to Oregon is $0.05 per minute. I signed up in late Dec. and couldn’t get it to record and playback my voice hardly at all. So I waited, then I bought a new noise canceling headphone/mic. Still bad. Then I get down here. Sent an email to my T-Mobil service (cell phone), they shut off my service as requested. Now I’m working the VoIP on a WiFi setup to a DSL connection, not using my satellite link (which I also shut off). I call and do the test and it sounds pretty good. I’m encouraged.

So I try to call my old CU to tell them I’m not happy they still haven’t closed my accounts. I left them about a year after they were bought out by a bigger but badder (worst) CU there in Oregon. Now I’m with the Edwards AFB Federal CU.

I had mailed back my VISA card, cut up like you’re suppose to do, and told them to cancel all my accounts in Aug. ‘05. As an example of their incompetance, they still hadn’t done it. In fact there were charges on my accounts for being ‘too low of a balance’. And my VISA was still active. Now if this was the first problem of extra, excessive, incorrect or incompetant charges and behaviors on their part, I’d think it was me. But they screwed up sooooo many times, and charged my accounts for bogus charges soooo many times, that I simply don’t believe them any more.

So, I look all over their web site, and they have removed the ‘Contact Us via Email’ button. Now you have to call them by phone.

My cell phone is turned off, my VoIP phone is so choppy I can’t use it (I tried calling them using VoIP twice), and they don’t take emails anymore.

I buy a Telmex phone card. After 3 trips to the payphone and back to the RV park to talk to the owner about how to use the phone setup, I finally get through to the CU and get my accounts cancelled. I hope. I say that because back in ‘04, I told them, in person, sitting right there in their office to close my old business account with them. Zero balance. It’s still open.

The card was $50 pesos - $4.76 US. The first call was to my old CUs 800 number. Volume was so low I couldn’t hear. Cost $15 pesos. Balance $35 pesos. 800 numbers cost you down here. I call again using their regular number. Finally get through to someone. Talk to him maybe four minutes. Balance on my phone card? $15 pesos. Damn. Sure goes in a hurry at $5 pesos per minute ($0.50 USD).

But the real point is that I HATE THAT MY OLD CU WAS BOUGHT BY A BUNCH OF MONEY GRUBBIN’ JACKASSES. Who continually come up with new and inventive ways to screw their customers out of money. At least 5 times since they took over, they have automatically charged my accounts for some bogus charge, when I call they immediatly reverse the charges and say it was all a big mistake. Bull shit. B-t-w, my old CU was a Federal CU. Now it’s a state only. Anyway, I think I washed my hands of that whole organization. It was Oregon Credit Union, previously Cascade View Federal Credit Union. Previous to that it was the Hyster Federal Credit Union. Been with them since 1985.

So I bought a couple of kilos of locally made tamales. Not so good. They are around 3″ in diameter and 6″ long each. With about 1/4″ of meat in them. They are nearly all corn meal. Oh, well, live and learn. I got them because I use to have an authentic Mayan indian working for me back in Yakima and his wife made us a bunch of tamales. Much better. Really.

So today, I rode my bike over to the beach. We had a pretty good day, temp got up to 80F, but there were those clouds obscuring the sun. To bad. But I hung down at the beach for an hour or two enjoying the surf & sand.

Ya know what? There aren’t any flying insects to talk about down here. There are ants, but I spread cleanser around my RV to prevent them from entering. This is the insect winter, so most, except the ants, disappear. Saw one fly in the week I’ve been here. There are birds of course. And a lizard that lives in the coconut tree outside my RV.

My neighbor noticed the handyman here carting the thing off and she asked him what he was doing with it. “Oh”, he says, “I collect it for a friend, she’s going to harness it to her clothes to entertain gringo…for dinero. I’m going to sell it to her”.

So she buys it from the kid, releases it, and it’s roaming free here on the RV park grounds, usually hangs in the coconut tree outside my RV, pooping on stuff. Whenever the kid sees her, he does the finger across the throat, points at the lizard and laughs. She’s going to try to sell it to someone else before she leaves.

On Edit: Forgot to mention this flyer I picked up at the office of the RV park today. It’s for a chain of drug stores here in Mexico. They’re selling ‘penicillin’ over the counter in several of it’s forms! Damn. Oh, and for you women? Antidepressants of every kind. Cheap. And if you women bitch at me about the sterotype, it just proves you need them. HAH! HEHEHE!

Wow, spent nearly half a day on my bike roaming around the area north of where my RV is parked. It’s not well built up yet so the business are older. I was looking for a bar that would have the SuperBore on and beer.

What I found was a really neat resturant with bar on the beach and two small cafes’ on the beach but none of the three places even had a TV. When I asked the people at the big resutrant if they were having a TV brought in they laughed at me. Durnit. I’m thinking that they would later refer to me as the Loco Americano.

So after my trip up the beach on my bike, I came back to home base and ran into some neighbors that were headed down to the Golden Zone and jumped in a taxi with them. Cost me $20 pesos (p).

While wandering the streets, I found a bar with 7 TVs wthat will have the game on in English. Free snacks, half priced beer, prizes, etc. So I know where I’ll be come 1pm on Sunday.

This area has been a tourist stop for ages so the prices for things, although still less expensive then stateside, are higher then you’d expect.

On the way back to the campground, I used the bus. Fast and cheap but difficult to know where the hell you’re going, lucky I remembered some of the trip down.

Mazatlan is really cool as much as I’ve seen, just got here about 4 hours ago. I can’t get a satellite connection so I’m up on the WiFi here at the campground. The WiFi cost is $25USD per month and the campground cost is $358 per month. I’ve paid $200 pesos since that is all I had and they insist on pesos. Tomorrow I’ll head downtown and get the rest in cash. (That’s $3,750 pesos minus $200 pesos so I need $3550 peso more). And yes they use $ for pesos. The exchange rate is around $10.50 pesos per dollar, go figure.

I’m a little worried that I’ll have trouble finding a place where I can watch the Seahawks kick the shit out of the Steelers this coming Sunday in the Superbowl. I’m told that there are bars around here for that but it’s really iffy since no one I’ve met so far is a fan and I’m getting conflicting info on TV size and whether or not the game will be in english. We’ll see.

MEANWHILE, it was 75F when I got here with a cool ocean breeze from the west. Eat your hearts out…

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2-16-06

Ahhh, Mazatlan, land of enchantment…

It’s 75F, a light breeze coming from the north off the ocean, and a bar way down there at the end of my ride. Can it get any better? No, really, can it?

I’m heading for the huge rock way way off in the distance. To the right of it is a beach resturant with food & beer. And no windows. Does have a roof though.

This is a condo down the beach a ways. As I was passing it, a gal ran out and stopped me and tried to sell me one of them. They run from $100,000USD to $300,000. You can see the stepped building in the first picture way off in the distance.

Here’s another shot of one of those hacindas being refurbished. I thought that they had run out of money and stopped working on it. But, no, today I saw a guy working in there. Some of them are quite run down, falling down really.

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2-16-06

Settled in Mazatlan

Well, I found a nice place in Mazatlan to settle into. New park with WiFi. Nice flat spaces. My waste hose reaches the sewer though most here don’t because the builder put them clear at the back of the spaces instead of along the side like most parks.

This is on the street outside the RV park I’m staying at:

And my rig all cool looking, those big trees are coconut, the small trees are limon’:

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2-8-06

Game Day in Mazatlan…

Over there are more buildings, it’s Mazatlan but for a while I think it’s a different city. My guess is those towers are condos.

Well, those of you who watched the game yesterday now know that the officials stole the game from the Seahawks and gave it to Detroit. There were so many bogus calls that I stopped counting them. And to go the whole game without the Stealers making any game changing mistakes? No freaking way.

Anyway, on the way to the game I got on the wrong bus again. But, I’d left so early that I had plenty of time. And a map. The bus looped to the east for several miles and came back to the street I needed to be on before heading south. I jumped off there and sat at a bus stop waiting for another bus north bound. And of course there was an American Steeler fan there. Drinking a beer, on the street. Don’t see that stateside much. Anyway he kept telling me ‘No, that’s not the right bus’, I’d look at my map and he’d be wrong. Missed three buses that way.

Finally stopped listening to the guy, jumped on the next bus, which happened to be the right one, and off to my bar. Got there an hour late but early enough to get a good table.

Offered to let an American who has lived here for 6 years share my table so I got to learn lots of stuff about living here. One of his friends joined us and he happened to have once been the drummer for a salsa band. Had met and partied with the Rolling Stones. Opened for other big groups of the ’70s. Small world. The Stones were on the half time show in case you didn�t watch the Super Bowl.

Had a lot of fun, a kick ass Mexican style dinner, wandered back here at around 10pm and just woke up at 10am. An excellent adventure.

So, what’s been going on down here? PERFECT weather, every day, every night. There is a light ocean breeze that just doesn’t quit until around 8pm or so. The day time temps are in the 75-80F range and I’ve been sweating just a little in the middle of the day. The rest of the time it’s perfect. Light shirt, shorts, sandles are all you need.

Yesterday I went way downtown to find a place that makes tamales. Took the bus to where I’d been told. Walked the 2.5 blocks and, nope couldn’t find the place. BUT, I stopped into a little tiny Mexican cafe that had a few tables set up. These are shops that would remind you of the smallest business you might have seen in your downtown. Anyway, there happened to be an American young man in there that helped me order a traditional Mexican breakfast. Scrambled eggs (I won’t even try to spell EGG in Spanish but I can now say it) with onion, peppers, re-fried beans, goat cheese, cafe’ (coffee). All for $20p + $2p tip. Then I wandered off down the street and found an open barber shop. Got a good cut and then walked to the beach side to find a return bus.

This got me to thinking, when I was 17, I was in Viet Nam at Da Nang harbour. I willingly left the ship to wander in downtown Da Nang alone even though there were those on the ship who warned me against it because of the Cong that would randomly shoot Americans sniper style or toss satchel charges (bombs) from their scooters while riding by a crowd. Kinda like the same stuff I heard about going to Mexico (danger!, danger!, Will Robinson! , arms waving), mostly by people that have never been outside the states in their lives. I don’t feel that uncomfortable here (or Vietnam) even tho I don’t know anyone or even the lanugage.

Yesterday, on the way back I did some serious walking in dangerous parts of town. In one area, they were refurbishing a really old building. I stopped to check it out and started wandering back behind the building, just about as I got to a wall, I spotted part of someone, carrying a large stick/club stealthy like heading for a meeting, with my head I thought. So, practicing my mantra to the kids, I slowly backed up and got the hell out of there. But I could have misinterpreted that meeting too. Anyway, even getting lost 3 times yesterday didn’t bother me much since there were always people willing to help me, every time.

Anyway, it’s great fun here so far, today I’ll be at the bar until 9:30pm watching the Hawks kick the Steelers asses.

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2-6-06

Living in Mexico…

I finally headed into Mexico Jan. 31, 2006 on a sunny warm day. I entered at Naco, Arizona/Mexico. I had to go get the US customs agent to unlock the gate for RVs. The regular opening guy was suppose to be there at nine but still wasn’t there at 9:30. The car route was way to small for my rig.

After crossing the boarder, I stopped at the first official looking building…perhaps 25 feet inside the gate, and a young female guard asked me (nicely) if she could come into the rig and inspect. Not a problem. Anyway, she looked around quickly but I noticed that she didn’t bother to open the door to the back bedroom! I could have had 10 people in there. The door was held closed with a bungee cord so it wouldn’t bang around while driving but not hard to open.

After that quick inspection, she tells me to go to a building across the street but I should park first. I ask her if it’s OK to back up the rig and park in some spots behind me and she indicates yes. So I start the rig and promptly back the rig into a sign that wasn’t high enough for my rig. A guard walks out and tells me that I should go park across and up the street a couple hundred feet. Doesn’t mention the damage to the sign and neither do I. So I drive over and park. Grab all my credentials and wander back to the boarder.

I go into the office, hand the guy my passport and he says, “We can’t let you enter the country with this”. My chin drops. Then he flashes a smile and says, “Until you sign it senor!”. Whew. So I sign it and he tells me to go outside, up the street and get a stamp on the entrance documents after paying $21. So I go out and search for the ‘banco’ to do that. Passed a street kid asking for money. Didn’t give him any. Turned into an alcove and found what looked like a bank…she says, ‘Nope not here, up the road farther’. I pass the kid with the can again. Don’t give him anything. Get to a bus stop with three girls waiting. Ask them. They think they know and call the kid with the can to guide me. He takes me back to the place I’d already been to, wrong place. She tells the kid in Spanish where to take me. He guides me back around the girls, chattering to them in Spanish, and into the correct place. Inside they finish my paperwork, stamp it and collect my money. I wander back (you’re suppose to go back) and give the kid a couple bucks as I pass him. He seems happy. I return to the boarder station, the agent checks it over and says, ‘Welcome to Mexico’.

So I start out going south from Naco, Mexico generally heading to the west coast. I haven’t any special destination in mind but from my reading the west coast will be the safest and quickest way to get familiar with Mexico and it’s people.

My first picture in Mexico, heading due south:

So I passed though a small town in the desert mountains, Cananea, with the regular old Mexican building style and spot a couple clean cut young men a couple hundred yards up the road. I can see them talking and flashing smiles as they happily threw out their thumbs for a ride from me. Probably joking, and probably very surprized that I stopped to pick them up. I don’t speak a word of Spanish and they don’t speak a word of English. But we had a great time playing at trying to understand each other. They turned out to be nice young men on the way to Magdelena. They had hard hats and indicated that they were miners. I handed them an English to Spanish translation sheet and the best they came up with was asking me if I had a ‘wiff’. No, I say, I don’t have a ‘wife’ but did have two bambinos. (Italian I know). They got a 100 mile free ride and I got some company.

After Magdalena I start hitting toll roads. They’re everywhere down here. The feds contract out to road building companies and then don’t pay them. The contractors set up toll roads to pay for it all. Lots of left over corruption from the PRI days. And they’re still around. Or so I was told by a local. One thing, there is always a toll road bypass maintained by the government. Usually an old two lane road. So far, when I’ve been able to find the bypass, they have been fine, just require a little more effort to stay on the road and try to remember to slow down for the topes.

The first day I made it to Guaymas, and the recommended park was full. So I head to the coast and found another place. It was also full. So I stayed in a little crummy campground that was asking $22 USD per night. Not worth it. Owners really needs a good spanking for ripping people off. It was right next door the full place that was cleaner, had cable TV with US channels, free WiFi, better in all respects for $20 USD per night.

Got this shot as I was leaving a place nearby along the coast…it was also full:

Here’s a shot of the beach near where I stayed looking West:

A shot looking west toward the RV park, under that yellow sign:

The next morning, I headed south on Mexico 15 (M15) towards Los Mochis and arrived there around 3:30pm, stopping at a WalMart. Found a cash machine there and got my pesos (dollars are OK in Sonora county) and found beer on sale. I spent the night in a campground nearby M15. This whole day was uneventful so I didn’t take any pictures.

The 3rd morning in Mexico I left the park early and headed to Mazatlan using the M15 Free route. It was a little dicey in places, I almost ran the rig off a 12″ high road edge for instance, but I recovered and made good time. I passed through several small villages with the traditional Mexican open air business along side the road but it never worked out that I was hungry when I found an interesting place to stop. I did see the stereotypical Mexican wearing a sombero sitting on a two wheeled cart pulled by a donkey once.

I arrived slightly north of Mazatlan City around 4:30pm and found the RV park I was told about the night before. It is newer then most here, pleasant, has WiFi and nice flat spaces, and is near the beach. After checking in and trying to set up my satellite dish, unsucessfully, I go to bed with cool ocean breezes drifting through the RV. B-t-w, this park only takes pesos, no cards, and I only had around $300p. So I give the guy $200p. Next morning I head for the beach north looking for a bar that will be open for the Superbowl. No luck at the 3 places I stopped at, they didn’t even have TVs. But I got some beach pictures and spent an hour soaking up sun and wading in the water (kinda cool for swimming).

Here’s my first shot of the beach at Mazatlan, this is right next to several small business and this turn around is the furthest north, no road after here:

There’s an island way out there:

A view of ‘Hotel Row’ in Mazatlan. I’m on the northern edge of Mazatlan’s beach here:

By now, you’re asking youself, “Were there any people on the beach in that 75F weather?”, here’s the shot that tells you:

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2-5-06

Into Mexico, but first…this.

After leaving Dos Cabezas, Arizona, I timidly checked my brakes several times on the road down a mountain. Then boldly. They seemed to be doing great. I was expecting the pedal to be mushy (indicating air in the system) but they weren’t, they seem fine.

It’s a lonely road so I wasn’t to worried about running into anyone even if the brakes failed. I was planning on stopping in Willcox for supplies before I headed to Mexico, but couldn’t think of anything I needed. So I turned around, took a picture of the mountain that gave Dos Cabezas its name (two heads), and headed back up the hills. This gave me a new road to follow, and it looped back to where I was going anyway so no biggie.

Dos Cabezas: (That pointy double peak in the middle of the picture)

The road down south was pretty old but well maintained. Didn’t have any trouble on the trip. I spent my time driving and reached Bisbee, Arizona around 1:30pm. A quick check at the US side of the boarder in Naco informed me that I wouldn’t have any trouble bringing back into the US my shop equipment or parts.

Then I headed back into Bisbee to spend the night at a campground I’d read about. I wasn’t there at the CG more then 30 minutes and meet an artist who loves Bisbee and volunteered to show me around the place. Bisbee was once the largest city between St. Louis and San Francisco. It was based around a mine that happened to have high grade copper ore during the electric lighting & telephone boom across the US. So, with all those miners, this town was huge. And at 5,000 feet, it has almost perfect year round weather. Back in the ’70’s to ’80’s, the place was a vitual ghost town until some hippy artists found it. You could buy a nearly new, excellent condition, 5000 sq ft house for $3,000! Soon the place was crawling with hippy types, and the place started booming again with all it’s art and history and is now a modern sucess story. I spent another day here just wandering around looking at the place. Late in the afternoon of the second day, I took the tour into the mine. The original mine started out as a shaft sunk into the hillside, later it became an open pit mine.

Just look at the colors in those hills:

Bisbee proper:

Up the street a little:

One of the many quaint buildings along the street:

The courthouse doors, made in the early ’30s:

One of the numerous old buildings that use to be a brothel:

A view from the campgrounds:

A trip into the original mine:

Here’s where I was, and if I turn around and walk just 100 yards, you can get the picture after:

In the ’30’s the equipment was powerful enough that they could start this:

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1-24-06

These pictures show how I lash my awning after I’ve locked and clamped it in place before a trip. The added rod and bungee cords help prevent the wind from picking up the awning and unfurling it while traveling down the road. The installed locking mechanism sometimes can be vibrated loose by the road or by wind gusts.

RVs that are unlucky enough to have this happen can end up in a ditch or can cause huge accidents. The awning can unfurl and flop over the roof or rip off and fly or can act like a parachute and lift the RV up and push it over a lane or two, all depending on wind speed and direction. Not sexy.

I had my awning unfurl about 12″ once while on the freeway not far from Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. I happened to notice it happening just as I was slowing down to make an exit. After I quit screaming like a little girl, I got on line and did some research. I found on my favorite forum, Woodall’s, that this happens often enough, and is dangerous enough to make it a worry.

One of the forum regulars had come up with a simple, inexpensive, and quick fix. I had the parts on board so the cost was $0. The following pictures are how I installed it. Since this works so well, I’m not certain I’ll do anything more for this potential problem. There are commercial products for this but they all start around $50 and seem needlessly complicated.

Here is the awning pull-down rod (comes with the awning) inserted into the hole in the end of the awning tube, and after the rod is lashed down, it prevents the awning from unfurling:

Here are the bungee cords that hold the rod and after being looped around the arm, they are hooked into the eye of the rod and then the bracket that supports the arm, they are 18″ long and have plastic hooks to prevent maring:

Here’s a side view looking toward the rear of the RV, note that neither the rod nor the plastic bungee cord hooks touch the side of the rig, helping prevent chaffing the paint or sidewall: