Valle de Bravo (day 7)

Yet another coasting day with blue sky and sunshine. At the risk of having jealous or envious readers upset with us, I have to mention that we haven’t seen any precipitation since we were in Dallas, Texas area exactly a month ago on November 13.

Valle de Bravo (day 6)

Sometime last night we got some sleep. But it was in the earlier part of the night, because we were awake well before Santiago came and knocked on our door around 5:15am. Mexicans have a thing for loud fireworks. Not the fancy, pretty kind…just the loud kind!

Valle de Bravo (day 5)

We relaxed until 10:00am or so, and then left here to take the bus into the town of Valle de Bravo. We just wanted to walk around on our own for a while and then maybe buy some groceries.

Valle de Bravo (day 4)

We had no plans today, so we just hung around with Sherman and Whiskey and Oso and enjoyed the day. Did some reading, and Ruth did another few items of hand laundry. I cleaned the carpet of some of Whiskey's dog hair!

Valle de Bravo (day 3)

It sure is getting monotonous waking up to blue sky and sunshine every day. But, that’s our lot in life just now, so we’ll just have to put up with it.

Valle de Bravo (day 2)

Did you ever get up in the morning, and then just do pretty much nothing all day? Well we haven’t done that for a long time, but we did today!

Valle de Bravo

First job of the day was to try and get Sherman out of the parking area at the Givali Hotel. The height was okay, but when we entered they had to lift up the 4 strands of barbed wire to get us in. Plus, I was sure that our back end was going to drag when we exited.

El Rosario (day 3, the butterflies)

Put the furnace on as soon as we got up this morning…3C (38F) inside the motorhome. I think we are just about ready to head to the beach where the weather is warmer. But first, we had to see some butterlies!

El Rosario (day 2)

It was a little warmer last night…temperature inside when we woke up was 7C (45F). Should have put the furnace on, but a hot coffee and tea warmed us up pretty good.

El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary

Slept fine. Definitely chilly at 9,600 feet though. Outside temperature when we woke up was -1C (30F) and inside was only a couple of degrees better! Had to run the furnace for a half an hour or so this morning.

Somewhere in the mountains

We hadn’t heard from our contact here, so we decided to head out. We’re going to the monarch butterfly sanctuaries in the mountains just west of Mexico City. This is where all of the monarch butterflies in North America come to spend the winter.

Cuitzeo, Mexico

We seem to have a problem getting on the road early. We left Bugamville RV Park at around 10:00am, but we keep on saying to ourselves that on travel days we really want to be on the road by 8:00am.

Guanajuato (day 2)

It is definitely nice and quiet here. Not even any roosters crowing at 7:00am! So we actually slept in until almost 7:30am…that is something that does not happen very often.

November living expenses and income

Once again, we spent a little more than we expected to, but only in certain categories.

Guanajuato, Mexico

Had a nice sleep at the Botanical Gardens. We were getting caught up on internet stuff around 9am, when who drives up but our new friend Les!

El Charco del Ingenio

We had a long drive to do today, but we also had a few things we had to do this morning before we could leave.

San Miguel (day 3)

We had planned on getting a nice early 8:00am start for our hike up to the mirador (lookout) over the city of San Miguel. But, these things never seem to go quite as efficiently as we plan, and it was 9:45am by the time we left Sherman and Whiskey behind.

San Miguel (day 2)

When we woke up around 7am, it was cloudy outside...and it stayed that way for an hour or two. But then the sun broke through, and it was a beautiful day!

San Miguel de Allende

Slept okay, but it turned out there was a fair bit of truck noise, even though we were parked well off the road. Temperature in Sherman when we got up at around 7am was 8C (46F) which was a little chilly.

Villa de Reyes, San Luis Potosi, Mexico

Had a hard time leaving at a decent hour this morning. We want to get on the road early, but it seems that we’re not getting a whole lot of actual “relax” time, so it was almost 10:00am when we left Matehuala. Plus, we’ve been writing the blog the morning after, so I think we’re going to change that. Now that we have an internet stick that so far works just about anywhere, we are going to write and post the blog of that days activities at night before we go to bed. So there you have it, our blog post will be waiting for you as soon as you wake up in the morning!

Matehuala, Mexico

We left Monte Sur yesterday at about 9:30am. It was another beautiful day, and we were looking forward to the drive through the mountains. Turning onto Highway 58, we saw signs warning of single lane sections on the mountain road ahead. It was going to be a long slow drive.

Montemorelos, Mexico

We had a nice relaxing morning at the Campestre Monte Sur. Took Whiskey for a nice walk around the area where people own lots and some have built houses on them. There’s even a little petting zoo for the kids. Temperature was about 29C (84F) and sunny.

Allende, Mexico (day 2)

Chris came to collect us around 8:30am yesterday morning. The plan was to find us an internet “stick” so that we can get online when we don’t have wi-fi access. Mexico has an excellent cellular network and so when we’re not in a campground with wi-fi, we’ll be able to access the internet.

Mexico!

I was awake around 5:00am yesterday. Didn’t sleep the best, I guess because of the excitement of entering Mexico. I think Ruth was awake pretty early too, but we didn’t get up until it was starting to get light outside, about 6:30am.

Getting ready for Mexico

Saturday was our “get ready for Mexico” day. I had bought the oil and filter a week or two ago, so right after breakfast I gave Sherman an oil change. Won’t need to do that again until we leave Mexico in early March.

Laredo, Texas

Heading out of Utopia yesterday morning, there was a lot of deer. And a few antelope. I guess this part of Texas is where the deer and the antelope play. And we think we saw an elk, but it was behind the fence of one of the hunting ranches, so although it was wild, it was captive.

Utopia, Texas

Another nice drive yesterday. And, another nice day. Nothing but sunshine and blue sky all day. High around 68F (20C), which is nice, but they were calling for temperatures around the freezing mark last night.

Llano, Texas

This is a nice little town. On the outskirts of what they call "Texas Hill Country". It has several RV options. When we entered town yesterday afternoon, we saw RV's in a park by the river.

Gatesville, Texas

We went into the town of Whitney and did some laundry. Well, Ruth did some laundry. Whiskey and I kept Sherman company and found a good internet connection from the church across the road. Decided to head to the other free camping area on the opposite side of Lake Whitney.

Lake Whitney, Texas

Yesterday morning, we took Whiskey to the vet. Found a guy in Glen Rose who opened at 9:00am and so we drove over there then. Turned out he wasn’t in until 10:00am, but the receptionist said we could come back then.

Glen Rose, Texas

As we entered Glen Rose, we had pulled into a dead end street that was beside a new Comfort Inn. They had a decent internet connection, and we weren't on their property. The street didn't have anything built on it yet, and this seemed to be a good overnight parking spot.

Dallas, Texas (day 3)

Yesterday was another "do nothing" kind of day, and we were quite happy with that. Went on a walking/biking trail around another neighbourhood. That was kind of nice. And, the sun came out for much of the day, so that was nice too!

Dallas, Texas (day 2)

Just a relaxing day. The weather wasn't the best, so we did a little running around, and played cards.

Dallas, Texas

We're not actually in Dallas, we're in Plano, which is a suburb. The whole Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area pretty much all runs into one another anyhow.

Cooper Lake State Park, Texas

After sitting at the Mount Pleasant library yesterday, we tried the local Wal-Mart for booze. Didn’t see a single liquor store along the way, so we weren’t expecting much luck there.

Atlanta State Park, Texas

We made it to Texas! Only one more border to cross, and then we're in Mexico! But we will spend a week or two in Texas before heading into Mexico.

Hope, Arkansas

Travelling out of Pine Bluff yesterday, the scenery drastically improved. Between Memphis and Pine Bluff there had been a lot of farmers fields and flat terrain.

Pine Bluff, Arkansas

We had mentioned that Lana, our couchsurfing host in Memphis, is a glass blowing artist. Before we left, we were hoping that she would show us her studio and maybe a demonstration of how she makes some of the beautiful pieces that we saw on her website.

Memphis (day 3) - Downtown

Today, we took the bus and wandered around downtown Memphis. It was another bright sunny day with not a cloud in the sky, although a little cool. Temperature outside when we got up was around 37F (3C) with a high of around 55F (12C). But the bright sun was sure nice and warm.

Memphis, day 2 - Graceland

We don't do touristy things very often, but when we do, we try to do them as inexpensively as possible. Sometimes that makes things even more interesting.

Memphis, Tennessee

We arrived at our couchsurfing host in Memphis around 1:00pm yesterday afternoon. Lana lives in a beautiful neighbourhood filled with many huge oak trees. She wasn't home when we arrived, so we just parked on the street for a couple of hours.

Fort Pillow State Historic Park, Tennessee

Yesterday we woke up to rain at the Crown Winery. And seeing that we had internet we were in no rush to leave early and so we sat in the parking lot until about 10:30am and started heading west and a bit south.