Travel

My parents are in town, which is a good thing.  They’re retired and live in their motorhome full-time, traveling around almost constantly.  They seem to love this lifestyle, and when they visit, they can stay in our area for a couple of weeks without having to stay in our house with us, which is a great arrangement!

Since I’m more interested in spending time with them than in blogging, I’m going to re-publish a few of the e-mail updates they sent to friends and family during their recent trip to Mexico. (No, they didn’t get swine flu.)  They really love Mexico and, because of they way they travel, they’ve experienced the country in a way that most people never do.  I found their updates fascinating.

3-02-09

Hola Everybody,

Here we are in Mexico again. We crossed the border from Arizona into Mexico for our second major adventure here on 2-18-09. It’s been two years since our first trip where we entered from south Texas, drove through central Mexico to Guanajuato, then west to Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta, up the west coast and back into Arizona. That trip was about six weeks. This time we are going the opposite direction. We’re traveling south along the west coast, crossing through Mexico City, and back up the east coast into Texas. We plan on about eight weeks for this trip. As usual we don’t have any reservations nor a fixed itinerary but plan each day as we go.

We spent 2 days in Organ Pipe National Monument in Arizona just before crossing. Organ Pipe is on the southern border between Yuma and Tucson. It is full of cactus plants most of which are Saguaros and Organ Pipes. This is a very unique park and well worth a visit even though it is remotely located. We toured the park by car and took lots of pictures of some unique shapes.

Our first couple of days in Mexico were uneventful in that we were just traveling to our first destination in Guaymas. This was the destination of an Escapee Club Rally of 50 RV’s that included many people that we know. We had pre-planned meeting our friends there, Richard and Pat, who will be our traveling companions for this trip. We spent a week in Guaymas with the Rally sightseeing and watching the celebration of their Mardi Gras which runs the weekend before Lent through Fat Tuesday. They had parades every day with music and lots of color. One day we went to a mini Sea World and watched sea lions and dolphins perform. Pat even got to swim with the dolphins which made her day.

On Thursday, Feb. 26, our caravan of two motor homes headed south to the beach town of Huatabampito where we spent the night. It would have been nice except that it was very windy there. We did walk the beach and did a walk around town but decided to leave the next day. We went to another beach town further south called Las Glorias and spent a couple of days there as the weather was much better. This is a big shrimp fishing area so we’ve been eating a lot of shrimp. We bought 3 kilos (about 6 pounds) of jumbo shrimp which are in our freezer. Yesterday we moved south again to another beach RV resort at Celestino Gasca which is about 45 miles north of Mazatlan. We met 2 other couples here who were at the Rally. We’re planning to join them tonight and build a fire on the beach.

We are finding as we did before that the Mexican people are friendly and helpful. We have seen police activity on the highway, usually truck inspections, but we have not been hassled at all. One major change that we have noticed was the inspection station for trucks headed north to the US border are thoroughly checking every truck. This has caused a backup of about 5 miles of trucks lined up waiting. There is a new inspection station being built to speed up the process and it looks almost ready to open.

Until the next update – Adios Familia y Amigos – Mike & Donna

One of my favorite amateur writers has finally quit the e-mail updates and started a blog!  Actually, Robert has gone back and forth between blogging and sending e-mails but either way, I think he’s a great writer and always has something interesting to say. 

His current subject is his adventure teaching English Literature at a university in Dalian, China.  I love his observations of everything from stinky fruit to timid students.  His photos are really great too.

Here’s a little taste of his writing, from a post called Road Sage:

Chinese-style “traffic control” might be arguably described as population control. There seem to be no actual rules of the road, and who owns a particular piece of the lane has much less to do with who has some sort of legal right, than with who has a stronger desire for it.

It is a battle of wills here. You don’t worry so much about what you’re “supposed” to do, as about what you can do. Elbows are strong in China, and they get used.

Car horns here are a basic means of communication.

Let’s say a taxi driver is approaching an intersection, and five people are trying to walk across the street in front of him, while two cab-drivers are trying to move into the street from his right. He can toot his horn, gently, to say “no, you wait: I really want to go now.” Another cabbie might lay on his horn, to say “sorry, my passenger is in a hurry, so I’m going to go anyway.” The first cabbie will either slow down and let the more-urgent driver get through, or lay harder on his own horn. It’s a kind of nonverbal communication that a professor could write books about…

You’ll have to click over to read the rest.  Enjoy!

A few years back we almost had the chance to live in Alaska for a year, and now that I’ve lived in 8 cities in 7 different states, I’m so glad we ended up in New Orleans instead.

When we lived in Michigan we missed the sun during winter.  It was cloudy most days, and when the sun did come out, it just meant that it would be colder than usual because there were no clouds to hold in the heat.  The sun had no power to warm.  You couldn’t feel it on your skin at all – you only knew it was there by looking.  Chocolate and cozy fires a few times a week got us through until April, when we’d start to feel like winter was over.

Here in Virginia I still hate the shortened days and chilly weather, but it is 68 degrees right now!  Even on cold days, when the sun is out it is powerful enough to warm up the inside of your car a bit.  You have a chance to soak up that energy and to produce some vitamin D.

The weather in Florida ranged from about 60-80 degrees while we were there.  It rained once, but otherwise, the sun was shining.  It was HOT.  It felt like summer.  I had to move into the shade after a half hour of sunning because I got overheated.  It was heavenly.