Return to Tucson

We're back in Tucson now. We left our RV park in San Carlos at about 7:45 am on Monday, and headed north, stopping at a truck stop to fill up with gas. The highway to Hermosillo is very good, and we make good time on this 120 Km leg of the drive. After Hermosillo the road turns rough, with huge pot holes to try to avoid.

We are pulled over at a military checkpoint, and the motorhome is searched. Don't know what they're looking for, but we smile and wait, and eventually they send us on our way. Then we start pounding and crashing our way towards Nogales. Wow, the road is rough!

Nearing Nogales we come to the back end of the line of trucks waiting to cross the border. They have at least a 43 hour wait! The line stretches on and on, and we are wondering how long the line for passenger vehicles will be. Turns out, over 2 hours! The line-up crawls forward a few feet at a time, while industrious vendors walk up and down the line selling everything from chips, to saddles, to ukuleles, to maps. Eventually we reach the US border, produce our passports and are taken out of line for a secondary inspection. Another search! We willingly surrender the avocado we forgot to eat, and answer a lot of questions about what we have on board. Finally, we are released and continue to the interstate highway.

About half way between Nogales and Tucson we are stopped again, this time at a border patrol checkpoint. Again we produce our passports, answer a few questions, and we are released. We arrive at Desert Pueblo RV park at 5:15, to find that we cannot move onto our site because we must be assisted by maintenance staff. So we park in the club house parking lot, set up camp, and have a light supper before hitting the hay. Marlene has now come down with a nasty cold!

In the morning we check in at the office, then drop off the Echo and our tow dolly. Time to go and pick up Armageddon at the storage yard. We get hooked up to the trailer, and find we have no right signal light! Apparently the short in the tow dolly has also shorted out something in the motorhome trailer wiring. For an hour I mess around underneath to jury rig the wiring to give us a right signal light. Finally we are rolling again, and head to the truck wash to give the rig a bath. We end up waiting an hour in the line there, before getting served. Old Georgie Boy looks good, and the trailer is sparkling!

We head back to Desert Pueblo, and are sent to move onto our site with a helpful (and chatty) maintenance guy to assist us. One of the nice things about this place is we can have Armageddon with us on the site, so we can work on the car without having to go anywhere. We're also saving on storage charges.

After setting up, and devouring a quick lunch, its off to do a big grocery shop. Must stock up on food and liquor. Now we find prices here high, after our time in Mexico! Of course, they are much cheaper than in Canada. We finally get everything back to the rig, and squared away, and we can relax.

We have no TV, because we don't want to spring for cable hook-up for just one month, and the on air stations are all digital now so we can't receive them. I've ordered a DTV converter box from Amazon, and it should be here today. We were going to get a satellite system, but after reviewing the channels we would get, and how few of them interest us, we decided to forgo the expense and just try the on air channels.

Our plan is to spend this month visiting with Miranda and Dustin here, as well as continuing our marketing efforts. Then we'll probably head to Lake Havasu for a week or so in early March to visit Marlene's sister Veronica, then go to Vegas for a week or two, before returning to Tucson for our first job of the season. Stay tuned....