An early travel day to Patzcuaro

This group is great because they don't mind early travel days, even when it's a short drive.

We made a plan to leave Uruapan's Hotel Pie de la Sierra RV park at our leisure and meet at the nearby gas station with a goal of being able to leave the gas station with everybody filled up by 7:30am.

And that's exactly what happened!

Maintenance day

One of the things we worked into this year's Mexico RV Caravan trip is lots of down time at each location. This gives the group the ability to get their rigs washed, do whatever maintenance is requires, do some laundry, or simply relax and read a book!

So yesterday was one such day!

Beautiful day to take the group to the Paricutin Volcano

In 1943, a farmer was working in a corn field when he saw the ground start to crack and steam, and a fissure broke open. By the next day, lava had been flowing out of the fissure, and  there was now a cone the size of a house. This was the first ever recorded human witness of the birth of a volcano. The Paricutin Volcano continued to erupt for nine years until February of 1952 when it stopped as abruptly as it began.

There were two villages buried in the lava flow over the 9 years of eruptions. One of the villages was almost finished building a new church at the time when the village was overtaken by the lava.

Mexico's smallest National Park

The city of Uruapan itself isn't really anything special. But, there are a couple of special things in the area, and that's why we're here.

The first, is Mexico's smallest National Park. And, the fact that this National Park is located right in the city, only 2.5 kms (1 mile) from where we are parked up at Hotel Pie de la Sierra.

Interesting driving day in Mexico, and the Tzararacua Waterfalls

With lots of beautiful scenery.

Always with a plan to arrive at our destination by 2:00pm at the latest, we set off from Ixtapa RV Park at 7:00am. We made a gasoline stop early, and then hit the toll highway heading up into the mountains and the city of Uruapan.

Bike ride, Zihuatanejo and the Crazy Potato

Sorry for the delay! We were on the road at 7:00am to get our driving day completed as early as possible. You can read more about that on Thursday morning!

Yesterday (Tuesday), in the morning, Ruth and I went for a bike ride! There haven't been many opportunities on this trip to get the bikes off, but Ixtapa has a fantastic cyclopista (bike path) that we wanted to take advantage of.

La Barrita to Ixtapa

A short driving day yesterday and so we didn't get on the road until 10:00am or so. Still, it took us about 45 minutes just to maneuver our eight rigs out of the Casa Rayo del Sol RV Park in La Barrita. Nice spot, and we will stop in again the next time our travels bring us to this part of the coastline.

But, despite the short distance of 69 kms (43 miles), it took us almost two hours to arrive at our destination.

Our beach time is coming to an end

We've said it many times... we are not beach people.

After traveling all over Mexico including all of the coastline of the entire country, we have learned that we are happiest where the temperature is a little less hot. Sure, it's pretty and it's nice to stare at the ocean and watch for sea life. But if you want to get any exercise, you have to do it at 7:00am in the morning. And then, what do you do all day?

After lunch, I figured I had better do something productive

It's not very often that we just sit around and do nothing. The blog posts would be pretty boring if that was all we did every day!

But as I said yesterday... it's pretty easy to be lazy around here!

"Hey, there's a whale!"

We are about 50 kms (30 miles) south of the tourist area at Ixtapa - Zihuatanejo at the town of La Barrita. La Barrita is not actually a town, as such. There are about 100 people living here... a few beachfront restaurants and a couple more out on the highway... and an elementary school. That's about it.

There isn't much in the way of shopping available, although there is a fruit and vegetable truck that comes in every couple of days. Yesterday, Ruth and I went with our host Lorraine into the small city (pop 20,000) of Petatlán.