Mexico fun and all ready to start traveling again!

April 20 – 27, 2014 

It’s now time, after 4 months of fun in the sun we are packing up to start traveling again.  We pull out tomorrow morning the 28th for an overnight stay in San Antonio.  Then we head to a small town about 70 miles west of San Antonio called Ingram TX.  We have friends that just moved there from south Florida a couple of months ago.  We spent the winter with them last year in South Florida. We plan to be there for 4 days and then head northeast toward Tennessee next weekend.  In some ways it feels like we are just starting out again.  It’s great to feel excited about what the future travel destinations hold for us.

This week I completed the last of our tasks to get ready to travel.  I lubricated the RV suspensionlast Monday the 20th.  Then on the 21st we defrosted the freezer. Defrosting the freezer only takes about an hour to do.  We put all of the frozen food in a large cooler, turn off the refrigerator, and then use a hair drier to quickly melt the accumulated ice.  After that, we use a large towel to soak up the water and then clean the surfaces with a mild soap.  It’s now ready to refill with food and run for another 4-5 months before we do it again.

Wednesday I opened the back of the refrigerator to clean it out for the first time in almost 2 years.  Well, to my surprise there wasn’t anything in there to clean out, it was very clean. I spent a little time checking out the wiring for loose or bad connections and to just understand what was going on in there.  Not sure I learned anything except that I didn’t need to be worried about a nest of insects or large amounts of dirt. 
 

This is the outside of an RV refrigerator for those who don't know.  It's the 2 sets of vents on the left.  The vent on the right is for the stove top exhaust. 

Thursday we spent most of the day at the pool.  Yay us!

We managed to get over to Mexico again on Friday.  We had a great day pampering ourselves and shopping.  We both got pedicures and I got a haircut all for $30 with tips included.  We both had a drink each while we were getting the pedicures for a total of $2.50.  We bought some gifts and a new pot for Rosey, our pet plant.  Of course we also restocked up on some liquor at the duty free shop.  After spending 6 hours in 95 degree heat and 80% humidity, we were ready to get back home!

The Rio Grande River with USA on the right and Mexico on the left.

Pulling up to the border.  We parked in the lot on the left at the last exit before the check point.  Cost $2 for the day and then you walk across the border.

This sign is just after you enter Mexico. There are 4 border crossings near where we are, this is the only one that is safe to cross.  The drug war is all around us here.  It is really sad that these people are being held down by the drug cartels.

View of downtown Nuevo Progreso MX.

This is the woman who worked on my pedicure.  In the background you can see the barber who cut my hair.

Patty enjoying a beer while getting a pedicure.  I had a frozen margarita.

Ok, one picture of me.  We had lunch at a pizza place.

Mexican pizza baked in a brick oven.  It was really good!  We ate half and took the other half back home and had it for dinner.

Saturday the 26th we went to the Wal-Mart in Weslaco TX and to the H-E-B (local grocery store) to get essentials for traveling and to get more gifts from here to take north.  We also picked up a 5 foot table for Patty to use in her new hobby business cutting t-shirts.  While at Wal-Mart I also topped off the fuel tank for our 240 mile trip on Monday. 

Patty's new work area for making cut shirts.  She will add her sewing machine when we pick it up in Indiana in June.  The table folds for when we are moving.

Patty making a shirt.  She made 6 shirts on Sunday.  It was really too hot to be outside!

Before we left for Wal-Mart on Saturday we pulled out the beginning of a birds nest from the RV hitch cavity.  We had been watching birds go in and out of the space for weeks but didn’t find anything in there until now, which still wasn’t much of a nest.  I’m really glad there wasn’t a nest with eggs or worse yet babies in it.  I don’t know what we would have done then!

We also bought mouse traps on Saturday.  On Thursday last week, Patty was in the process of making coffee by dumping the old grounds in the garbage can.  I was just getting out of bed when she yelled that I needed to see what was in the garbage can.  Yikes!  Do I really what to see what was in there?!  It turned out to be a field mouse.  

We did some looking around the RV and found several places (droppings) where mice had been.  So now we have traps set in 4 locations but have not trapped one yet.  We were hoping the one we caught in the garbage was the only one but that wasn’t the case.  We got up Sunday morning to find the bait had been eaten from 3 of the 4 traps without triggering any of them!  We have reset with peanut butter all over the triggers and hope to snag them or it.

On Saturday I washed the awning and cleaned the RV wheels.  We also played our last darts of the season.  We can see why things slow down here in the summer time, it’s really HOT!  The AC in the dart room at the pool really didn’t do very much to cool it down.  It was still over 90 at 7 pm!

Sunday the 27th I put a UV coating on the awning and washed the truck.  I also completely emptied the “basement” (under floor storage space), swept it out and then repacked it.   Yesterday was hot, but today it got even hotter.  It reached 100 by 2:30 and then went up to 106 by 4:10!  I worked outside most of the day so I would come in and hydrate every 20 minutes.  It is now time to head north and we are now ready to pull out in the morning!

This is to document the high temperature today. We understand that this is very early for this high temperature here in South TX.  

Just a fun picture of some fajita meat.  It looked like a pair of meat underwear.

 Stay Tuned!