Monday, March 19, 2018

U S A

We are in Amado, AZ. About 20 miles north of Nogales. This is our go to campground. Mountain View RV Ranch. We stop here on the way down and on the way home. Not sure how long we'll be here. 
Today we did 286 miles from campground to campground. We got started at 6:30, but stopped to fill tank so really started drive at 7:00 and got to Amado around 2:30. [7 1/2 hours - and that is a part of the reason this was a strange day/drive.] Got set up and went across the highway to the Cow Palace for a late lunch. 
This morning's sunrise in San Carlos.
Lots of construction going on around the gas station at the San Carlos turn off of the 15. Looks like there will be off and on ramps to the redone highway. Hope so. Now it is a pain to get in and out of.
Forgot to get the park's wifi password so am using my Verizon MiFi. It is fast and we haven't used any of our GBs this month. We've hooked up to the parks cable TV - but right now the TV is turned off. Just listening to peace and quiet. Bill is "reading" his book in the back. 
Went through three toll booths today around US 26 dollars. The road was good up to Santa Ana. From there it was iffy. Part was really good and part was really bad. Construction continues from Santa Ana to just before Km 21 on road to Nogales. 
When we got to Km21 to turn in the papers for the car, we had a little wait for the RV in front of us to get things straightened out. In fact, he had miss the booth and had to turn around and come back and he made it there just in front of us. 
Our turn came and zip, zip. All done. About a mile north of there we ran into a traffic JAM. Trucks backed up as far as we could see, in both lanes. While we inched along we saw some incredible moves by other vehicles. One was a motorcycle coming towards us down between the two rows of trucks??? We also saw a few trucks try to make a third lane on the far right side of the trucks in line. That caused a few problems when they ran out of pavement and wanted back in line. Don't think so. But the best was...we were in left lane next to the center divider when suddenly up comes a truck on the south bound lanes, just lickity split heading north. A few minutes later three trucks were roaring up the wrong lane into on coming traffic. I guess they all made it to somewhere 'cause we didn't see any wrecks. It took us 1 and 1/4 hours to get to the area where cars, buses and RVs could split off just before the northbound Mexican check point. 1 and 1/4 hours!!!
Once we got to the split we zipped through the check point, just slowing down enough to squeeze through the tight aisles.
I should add that where you can see the backs of a couple of trucks in the front, that area of the way out is rough ragged dirt with lots of truck traffic. There was a solder there but he didn't seem to be doing too much to help.
Then the last toll booth, a line up to get through it too. 
No problem getting into the left lane to go to the bus lane at the US border. The vendors are always happy to help direct traffic. The 40 motorhome towing a 20 foot trailer had a harder time getting into that lane. He had to back up a little to make the curve. Again the vendors were holding up traffic and directing him. You can see the back of his trailer.
From stopping at the border booth until we were on our way again took 20 minutes. 
Then we stopped for gas at the Pilot in Rio Rico. Over a dollar cheaper per gallon then in Mexico. So we got there with a mostly empty tank. A longer, in hours, than necessary day so I'm glad we got an early start. 

1 comment:

Contessa said...

This is why we always leave via Lukeville.