March 4, 2009
We stayed at Totonaka RV park in San Carlos last night and had dinner across the street at the thatched roofed restaurant that we had garlic shrimp three months ago. We three couples are all from Northern CA, would you believe? I didn’t even know there were that many from CA in the Canadian dominant La Penita RV park!

We forgot to turn off the car last night and the battery was dead this morning. That held us all up for an extra 45 minutes. After getting diesel at the PEMEX 3531 just outside San Carlos, we were on our way a few minutes before 8am. Before now, we have tried to be on our way by 7am. It is getting cooler as we go north….we will soon be wishing for warm again. Yesterday we crossed the Tropic of Cancer. Today was an eventful day, especially after we went our separate way at Santa Anna. Richard and Sandy had to go out of Mexico at Nogales and we planned to go out at Lukeville, so we gave out hugs, drive carefullys, and addresses and drove with Ray and Judy up smaller highway 2 towards the border. It was a wonderful new highway for awhile, until we found the construction and drove for a ways beside the highway, very slowly. Another adventure (as we quickly call anything that threatens to be depressing) was at the main military inspection point. We came up on maybe 500 semi trucks lined up to be inspected and thought it must be an accident or something. That many truck drivers must still be there. Their line wasn’t moving much. We drove slowly right pass them in the right hand lane, were inspected rather quickly, and then guided through between the rows of trucks.

The border crossing was pretty smooth, although Andy and I had to pay for one of the tourist passes that we didn’t pay for on coming down. The officials told us (on coming down) that the new rule was that if we were together only one of us needed to pay for a visitor pass. That rule was so new that it no longer exists, I think. It was a great place to cross with hardly any traffic and no waiting at all. Tonight we are going to sleep in the USA at Organ Pipe National Park just over the border. We are in a wonderful parking place and ready to take off for Utah tomorrow, while Judy and Ray are going a different direction. It has been so fun traveling with them. We plan to look them up soon from home and keep in touch.