Miserable start to the day!

Very strange weather yesterday morning! We actually woke up to raindrops on the roof, and it was chilly and windy all morning. It's not normal to get any rain at all down here at this time of year, and it actually came down fairly hard at times.

How to cut a fresh pineapple

We love having fresh pineapple when we're in Mexico. First of all, it's cheap. You can usually buy a fresh pineapple for about 10 pesos (80 cents). We typically buy one per week, so I'm getting pretty good at cutting them up. It wasn't always that way, but practice makes perfect!

I bet you've never had "pajarete"!

Well the votes are in for the naming of the little blue car. As is usually the case with any election, it was a total waste of time. Either people didn't like the candidates, or they simply didn't exercise their right to vote! And then if you name a winner, the majority of the population isn't happy. And so it is with the little blue car.

Finally, out for a hike!

Barb and Sal arrived back from Chicago late Friday afternoon and so we are absolved of our campground responsibilities. This means that we can now feel free to go out and do little day trips and hikes like we've been wanting to do. So yesterday afternoon we climbed a nearby hill.

It's time to vote!

Okay, the suggestions are in and it's time to vote! We sorted through all the choices and came up with three of them that we kinda like.

Things are lookin' good!

Getting excited about the next few weeks! We've been looking after things here at Hacienda Contreras for the last two weeks and while that's been an enjoyable thing to do, it's also put a little cramp on our exploring.

The "little blue car" needs a name!

Are you ever bored? One of us saw on facebook the other day that someone mentioned they were bored. And we both had to think about when the last time was that we were bored. Can't remember. I guess we simply don't get bored!

Why Mexico?

When we bought a motorhome, we were originally planning on spending the winter in the southern United States as many "snowbirds" from Canada and the northern United States do. But our friends Glen and Steve were planning on exploring the Mexico's Baja Peninsula, and we decided to join them.

Clear and chilly

The last couple of nights the sky has been crystal clear! That also brings some cooler temperatures. We haven't seen any frost here yet (we're at 6,400 ft altitude), but it was only 9C (48F) inside the motorhome when we woke up this morning!

Where are we going next?

Thinking a little about our winter travel plans. We've been enjoying our time here relaxing at Hacienda Contreras, but we're into December now and it's hard to believe that we've been here three and a half weeks already!

What is it about Mexican carrots?

Yesterday was market day again. We love going and doing our weekly Saturday shopping! First stop is the little store on the way in to town where I picked up a box of 24 beer for 205 pesos ($16.40). That alone is enough to make my day!

November expenses

November was actually a pretty good month, with one exception. Our regular readers will remember back in September when 20 year old cat Molly was sick and had an emergency visit to the vet. Well we finally got around to reimbursing my sister for some of the expenses and so that got lumped into November's bills.

October expenses

Here we are at the end of November and we haven't even posted October's expenses yet. I was thinking about not doing it anymore, but obviously some people are interested because we've had a couple of reminders. So we'll keep posting them every month.

They had the parts!

Yesterday morning, we went into Mazamitla to go to the bank, and on the way back we stopped in at a little auto parts store to see about getting new brake pads for Sherman. There's another store in nearby Valle de Juarez, but we figured we would stop at this place because we were driving right by it.

Playing mechanic

Well day two of playing mechanic didn't go quite so smoothly. I found out what was causing the brake squealing noise, and I'm going to need some parts.

I must be a pretty good mechanic!

Woke up to a bit of a misty morning yesterday, but by the time we finished our power walk and exercises the sun had burned through and it became a nice day.

Happy Birthday Ruth!

A week or so ago, I took apart the front brakes on the little blue car because the slide on one of the calipers was seized. Cleaned and lubricated where it was needed and put everything back together. No problem.

Weekend happenings

Saturday was market day, and we went back to the same vendor that we always go to for our weeks supply of fruits and veggies. This week's order came to 110 pesos ($8.80).

Back to Iceland

It's hard to believe that it was only seven weeks ago that we were in Iceland. We were thinking about that yesterday and Ruth reminded me that we never presented part two of our day trip to the Snaefellsnes Peninsula. So for today, we're going to take you back to Iceland!

Drive to Guadalajara

Yesterday we took Sal to the Guadalajara airport. Fortunately, the airport is on the south side of the city, so we didn't really have to drive in the city itself. And we've been to the airport twice before so we were familiar with the area.

The Queen goes RV'ing

Rainy season is pretty much over, and it wouldn't have surprised us not to see any more rain until spring. But we've had some clouds hanging around the last two days, and yesterday it finally opened up on us!

I Can't Stand Graffiti!

We've been in a lot of different cities this year and one of the things we notice is graffiti. In fact, we even notice it when there's a lack of it! We really noticed it in the city of Pittsburgh. Why? Because there isn't any!

Well that was a fun parade!

Yesterday morning, we had planned on going for a walk along one of the back roads near here. But when we spoke to Sal, he said that there was going to be a parade in town starting at 9:00am, so we decided to take the little blue car into town and see what was going on.

Hacienda Contreras RV Park

Most of our long time readers know that we're not really "RV park" kind of people. Two things turn us off the idea. One, most RV parks are overpriced for what you get. And two, most RV parks have you stuffed together like sardines. We like our space! We think that there is nothing worse than opening your blinds in the morning only to see another RV parked 10 feet away!

What a drive!

We took the little blue car for a drive in the mountains yesterday. We had done this drive in March of 2009, but we were with another couple who had a Jeep 4x4. We remembered the road was pretty rough then, but we figured the little blue car could do it!

Market day

Saturdays are market day in the nearby town of Valle de Juarez. So we went in and got our weekly supply of fruits and veggies, and we stopped at the carneceria (butcher) in the central plaza.

Drive to Sahuayo

We took the little blue car for a drive yesterday. The nearest large grocery stores are located in the city of Sahuayo (pop 60,000), about a 43 km (27 mile) drive from here. There is a large Bodega Aurrera (owned by Walmart) store there as well as a Soriana grocery store.

A post from Ruth...

Ok, you asked for it, now you are going to get it!  My gluten free chocolate chip cookie recipe that is!

Many of you that have been reading our blog for a long time know that I (Ruth) am "Gluten Free" but I don't let that stop me from enjoying some good homemade food.  I have now been gluten free for two years so I have a little practice at it and we don't really eat any different than before. And the food, in our opinion doesn't taste any different.

Ten things you may not know about Kevin and Ruth

We've been writing this blog for over five years now, and we've shared a lot of our personal day to day stories. But there are some things that you probably don't know. Some of them are important to who we are and how we came to be at this stage in our lives. Some of them are pretty random, and not important at all!

We have the best, most loyal readers ever!

Many of you have been with us since we started doing this in the fall of 2007, and we are grateful to have met quite a few of our readers. We have been treated so well by so many of you that when we get the opportunity to give back, we want to do whatever we can!

Busy relaxing.

Keeping busy while relaxing? Relaxing in between keeping busy? Either way, the day seems to fly by even though we aren't doing very much. We are happy not worrying about anything right now!

Cookies and pizza and homemade RV's!.

Now that we have a full tank of propane, Ruth can use the oven. Many RV's don't even come with a decent size oven, but Ruth really enjoys using ours. Yesterday afternoon, she made some gluten free chocolate chip cookies!

Sherman fired right up!

We've been running our fridge off electricity since we got here, because our propane tank was nearly empty. But propane is much cheaper and RV refrigerators are more efficient when switched over to "gas " mode. We could have had a propane truck come into the campground to fill us up, but Sherman has been sitting for more than six months and it would do him good to go for a drive.

We love market day!

We love going into the local Saturday market to pick up our fruits and veggies for the week. There's one popular stand where the guy adds everything up so quickly that you can't understand what he says. He pretty much sounds like an auctioneer!

Relaxing

Well, our first day of relaxing went very well!

We are getting right back into routine, and did our morning power walk around the perimeter of the property here. Ruth did eight laps which is 4 miles (6.5 kms) , and I did six laps, or 3 miles (4.8 kms). I also began doing some push ups and other arm/chest/back exercises.

Happy to be Home!

We left Zacatecas around 9:30am yesterday morning. We've done this exact drive before with the motorhome so we knew what to expect and where to turn. However we had to go through the city of Aguascalientes and there are several ways to do that. The route we had done with Sherman last year was terrible and full of potholes, so we chose a different route. Got lucky, because it was all fresh, brand new pavement!

The City of Zacatecas

Thanks for all of your comments and concern everybody, we're totally fine. We had an email last night from the Comandante at the municipal police saying that the photo I emailed her was going to be very helpful. So maybe they will catch the bad guys yet!

Mugged!

Okay, sorry for the dramatic title but it's true, we did get mugged today.

We're both fine, and the bad guys got away with very little. In hindsight, we think we did almost everything right so we're going to tell you the story in the hope that someone else can learn from what we did. We also learned from the experience, so we are trying to take away some good from something that is not so good!

Monterrey to Zacatecas

We were trying to figure our route from Chris and Jaun's place in Santiago. They live south of Monterrey, and we didn't want to deal with the traffic in both Monterrey and Saltillo. But there's this narrow road that goes through the mountains, and we figured the little blue car was up to the task. Are we ever glad we did!

Some nice views of Monterrey

Juan was working yesterday, but Chris took us up to the mountains surrounding Monterrey. There's a national park called Chipinque Parque Ecologico and Chris had been there many years ago and wanted to see what it was like now.

The strange things you see on a hike!

We haven't gone for a good hike for quite a while, so Chris and Juan took us to the nearby La Estanzuela State Park yesterday. But first, we had to have a good breakfast. Ruth made some of her good maiz flour pancakes, and we had a tin of real Canadian maple syrup to use with them. That, and a couple of slices of bacon and fresh squeezed orange juice made for a great start to the day!

Hello, Mexico!

We wanted to cross the border early, and Mexico had a time change a week before the United States so the border station didn't open until 9:00am Texas time, although it was 8:00am in Mexico. We did one last stop at the Walmart to pick up some gluten free Chex cereal for Ruth, and then we did the 18 mile (28 km) drive northwest to the Columbia bridge crossing.