I Spy with my Little Eyes........Nogales Mexico?

Next month will mark our third anniversary on the road, each of these years we spent time in Arizona during the winter months and each of these years we have made day trips into Mexico. The last two years we crossed the border in Yuma into Los Algodones Mexico.  We found this little city easy to navigate with many little shop and catered to the dental, vision and pharmaceutical needs of the tourist visiting the town. Each time we visited we would hit the Purple Store for our prescription and liquor purchases as well as wandered the streets in search of treasures we just could not live without.

This year we decided to switch it up a little bit and enter Mexico through Nogales Arizona into Nogales Mexico. Just a short 12 hour drive from Tucson….wait it just seemed like 12 hours. When is the last time you spent an hour in the truck with a 5 year old playing a never ending game of  “ I spy with my little eyes”? Actually it is about an hour south of Tucson on I-19. We parked in one of the many secure parking areas charging $4-5 for the day and walked across the border.

Getting ready to walk in!

I spy Lily and Somer wearing sombreros!

Although they still had some dental and vision shops there were not nearly as many as Los Algodones. There was quite a few pharmacies but they were all pretty small, nothing like the Purple Store. Nogales is much less touristy and more like what we would classify as old Mexico.

There were still shops up and down the streets but they did not seem as clean or kept up as Los Algodones and their wares were not as appealing. One thing I will say is that the vendors seemed friendlier and genuinely appreciated you being there.

There did not seem to be a “tourist district” like we were accustomed to so we wandered the streets more dazed and confused but eventually did find a pharmacy where we bought everything we were looking for. On this trip we bought (4) Z-packs, (2) bottles of 800mg Ibuprofen and (2) bottles of Benadryl for just under $30.

Outside one of the many pharmacies

We never did find a liquor store but Forrest and I were both approached by two different guys who asked us what we were looking for and that they could get us anything we wanted…. “legal, illegal I get it for you”. I am not really sure what that meant but we passed.

We had lunch at La Roca, a great local restaurant which I would highly recommend. They had great food (which says a lot considering I am not a huge fan of Mexican food) and a really cool atmosphere.

The menu

Getting Serenaded

The line to get out was about 2 hours but once we got up to the customs station they passed us right through. We were a little skeptical having Lily along but after showing her birth certificate and asking Lily a couple of questions we were good to go. I am glad we went to experience it but now that we have been there, I cannot say we would go back, it just did not offer the what we were looking for and had a different vibe compared to Los Algodones.  

Line back into the U.S.

Vehicle traffic waiting to get back in

"The Wall"

That night for dinner Forrest and Somer made us “campfire pizza”. They hand made the pizza and cooked it over the glowing embers of a fire.  This was our first experience with this delicacy and it was really good!

Campfire Pizza!

We have also been working on a couple of projects around the rigs. One day we installed cables on the ramp of Forrest and Somer’s toy hauler to create a patio. It was a little intimidating drilling that first hole into their new rig but it worked out great!

Getting ready to drill into the ramp!

Finished!

And we are continuing to work with Dakota every day. We have been working on hand signals for retrieving and working on her gun shyness. The Tucson Skeet and Trap club is only 3 miles from us so we have been taking her down there getting her used to gun shots. When we first started we went down there and played with her at the very edges of the range; throwing the retrieving dummy, walking or just sitting and relaxing. She was a little nervous her first time but pretty much ignored the gunshots after a few minutes.

Walking by one of the skeet stations

We have been going down there almost every day slowly working our way closer and closer to the shooting. We push her a little more each time and she lets us know when she is too nervous. After 10 days of this we are within 75 yards of the shooters and she just ignores them. Our hope is that we will be able to be within 20 yards by the time we leave here in a few weeks.

Our biggest surprise of the week came Saturday when we got a message from our nephew David who said he was going to be in Tucson for the day and wanted to get together. David is an over the road trucker who we have not seen in about 10 years. As a matter of fact we had a hard time pinpointing the last time we got together.

David and his rig

Very cool dash

and sleeper

We spent about 3 hours catching up on each others lives, families, brothers, sisters and cousins. It was great seeing him and vowed not to let another 10 years pass before we got together again!

Tomorrow we get to FINALLY meet long time blogger friends John and Pam! As John would say…..more on that later….    

Windowless in Tucson!!!!!

It has been a while since we have driven in “big city” traffic so Tucson rolled out the red carpet and threw everything at us. Bumper to bumper traffic, accidents and idiot drivers.

Welcome To Tucson

Roll over involving a horse trailer

Dakota and I led the way in the jeep while Barb followed in the big rig. We went directly to the 20 acre Snyder Hills BLM area on the southwest edge of the city. We had camped here for a couple days in 2014 and found it a nice quiet place to stay. Our hope was to stay there for 14 days and then find another location. However when we arrived we found it absolutely packed! There were rigs everywhere and I mean everywhere. There was one open spot but after a couple attempts we decided that we would not fit and ended up parking along one of the drive lanes adjacent to the road.

20 acres of RV's

At the dead end but near the busy road

As we were getting set up I noticed there was something wrong with the bedroom window. It was gone! How did that happen? As our friend Dianne would say “Geez”. I guess the emergency window had an emergency......

Barb has been on the phone with a couple local Forest River dealers in an attempt to order a new one. After several days Lazy Days never called her back, but she got a hold of a very helpful parts man at Frost RV who tried for a couple days to find the exact one we needed. She finally called Forest River herself, gave them our VIN number and he promptly gave her the part number. Unfortunately she could not just order the window, we get to get a new frame and everything....AND they have to make the part (2-3 weeks and another week for delivery) AND it could only be ordered by an authorized dealer. So she called Frost RV back and they ordered it while she was on the line with them.  In the meantime I snapped out the screen, encased it in plastic and snapped it back in place so we are somewhat secure from the dust and wind.

After our first noisy night at Snyder Hills we moved over to Justin’s Diamond J’s just a couple miles down the road. Forrest, Somer and Lily were due to arrive and we were hoping to get a little better spot for the next couple of days and determine where we wanted to stay longer term. Diamond J’s is a nice park with somewhat large sites. Unfortunately they did not have any sites for that night so we took a $12 sites in their overflow area (They charged us $12 for the jeep and trailer as well). The overflow sites were even closer to the road then the Snyder Hills site!

Late that afternoon Forrest arrived! We have not seen them in over 7 months and it was great to see them….Lily is really growing up!

Between  the traffic noise and the dogs barking across the street we had a restless night and wished we were back at Snyder Hills...so that's what we did the next morning, packed up again and moved back to Snyder Hills. Luckily someone had vacated a spot that would fit both of us so now we are snuggled in here for a few weeks. The previous tenants must have had quite the party while they were here because they left 7 cans of whipped cream behind...someone's birthday perhaps, something more interesting? For those of you who don't know just google "huffing Reddi-Whip" and you will  understand.

Our friends Greg and Cori, owners of RV Solar Solutions arrived at Diamond J's the following day as well so we went over to their place for a welcoming happy hour. We have not seen them since Quartzsite last winter. They had reserved a spot for a month so hopefully we will have more get-togethers with them.

Forrest, Somer, Barb, Greg and Cori

Our first adventure here was to the Desert Museum. Each of us bought a Tucson Attractions Coupon Book so it was 1/2 regular admission. Barb and I had toured the museum last year and thought Forrest, Somer and Lily would enjoy it. It is like a combo museum, zoo, botanical gardens all rolled into one. Lots of wildlife exhibits....Lily got to pet a stingray as well as walk through the hummingbird exhibit both of which she thought were very cool!

This guy was over a foot long

Archaeologist Lily

Touching the Stingrays!

Western Tanager

This hummingbird is sitting on a nest

The nest is no bigger then a quarter

I tried to get Barb to do this but she refused saying they would

probably have to call the fire department to extract her!

They have just about every variety of desert plant there is, they had names by many of the plants so you could learn the plants that grow in the surrounding desert.

A crested Saguaro

This one looks like a fuzzy Dilbert

Bee on a daisy

No sure what these are but you can caption this one yourself

Also arriving this week was Jim and Brenda who we had recently met in Quartzsite. They are having some work done on their Momentum and spent a night here at Snyder Hills. We got together one afternoon for a tutorial on blogger. Stay tuned for their blog adventures coming soon!!!!

This morning Barb woke me up whispering "Happy Anniversary" in my ear. Wait? What?!?! At first I thought it was a dream but it quickly turned into a nightmare as I had not bought anything for her....no card, no gift, no candy....so I got ran to the truck (after getting dressed) and rushed to the nearest store. Entering the store I stopped dead in my tracks and knew I was in trouble...... but with the help of a friendly sales clerk I left with everything I needed.....

Feliz Aniversario a mi Ángel de la guarda!

Whew dodged that bullet......I am going to give them to her tonight, I will let  you know how that goes!

Farewell to our Quartzsite Friends!

It is really hard to believe it has been 2 months since we parked in the Arizona desert. Sadly it is time for us to move on. Quartzsite started out as a place to spend the winter at minimal cost while staying warm.  But over the past two years it has turned into something totally different. Now for us, the cheap living has become a secondary benefit rather than our main reason for coming here and it certainly is not about the warm weather (it really has not been all that warm). Now it is all about the people. A place to reconnect with old friends from across the U.S. and Canada and a place to meet new likeminded people.

This year has been filled with both. Although we cross paths with some of our friends during the summer months, winter in Quartzsite is where we usually count on seeing many of them. This year was no exception.

First, two random pictures......

I caught this picture when the dogs were outside in the sun waiting for Barb to come home

I took this picture of North America with the drone.

It is made out of rocks and is probably 40'x40' 

It was really great having Vicki and Harry as neighbors. Although we met last year we really never got a chance to get to know each other. This year we were able to have several get-togethers and know them better. (You will note that most of these pictures were taken by Steve, I was really bad at taking pictures!) If you want to read more about our adventures (with many of the same pictures) over the past couple of weeks, check out Steve and Dianne's blog as we did something with them almost every day.

Vicki and Harry

 We also reconnected with George and Nancy who we had not seen since our Alaska adventures last summer. We both had busy schedules the time they were here but we managed to get together once and of course I forgot the camera!

Dale and Ruth were the first people we connected with when we arrived in Quartzsite having several happy hours before they had to move on to better cell coverage areas.

Ruth, Tazzy and Dale

Then there was Deb and Ray, BC residents who promised us a gourmet tater tot dinner but in the end invited another couple when they had to move on and we were not available their last night in the area.

Where's my tater tots?!?!?

Les and Sue convinced us to join Escapee’s. They get the award of having the most unusual pets in the form of fish. The last time we saw them was in Homer Alaska last summer. We were able to get together with them several times and never fail to have a good time and the happy hour our last night there was the perfect way to cap off our Quartzsite adventure.

Les and Sue

There was a handful of people we were only able to see once; Dave and Maxine, Alan and Donna, and couple of people long time blog readers that we met for the first; Butch and Donna (don’t forget to send us your contact information), Dale and Chloe (thanks for the beers!) as well as Cindy and Roger, Jim and Brenda (see you in Tucson!), Guy and Susan, Rick and Kathy (thanks for the fire!) and last but not least Shawn and Kim.

Kathy and Rick

Shawn and Kim

(l-r) Brenda, Jim, Susan, Guy, Roger, Rowdy, Cindy and Missy

The last week was a whirlwind of activity Silly Al’s with Steve, Dianne, Harry and Vicki.

Our Silly Al's adventure

Beer Belly’s twice, once with Shawn and Kim and again with Steve and Dianne.

Daisy and Dakota even made it to Beer Belly's!

Another beer sampling, the last one was so good we decided to up the ante and tried 16 different beers followed by some incredible T-bone steaks and crème brulee! That was a fun but crazy evening.

The line up

Steve starting us off with the first beer

Barb torching the crème brulee

And finally one last ride with Steve and Dianne, we did the Deere Run and Diablo Pass trails. I stole virtually all these pictures from Steve’s blog, thanks for the pictures Steve!!!!!

We met the owner of this mine, a Wisconsinite who lived near our old stomping grounds!

A meth cook gone wrong?

Deere Run Resort is just a mix of furniture out in the desert

Our tentative plans for next year don’t have us over this way at all so who knows when we will see many of these people again. It is bitter sweet departure leaving our desert friends but we have something to look forward to…..we are meeting our son Forrest and his family down in Tucson for a month in the desert there!