Back in San Carlos Mexico
15 October 2016 | Marina San Carlos, Sonora Mexico
Pat and Melodie
How I spent my summer vacation.
Well we are back on the boat in San Carlos Mexico and have been since October 1. It still feels like summer here, with 90’s in the day and 70’s at night. We are using the A/C a lot. It’s sunny almost all of the time and was nice to have one day where it was partly cloudy. The hordes of crickets surprised us. There are tons of them when you walk around in the evening. There were even 3 in the bilge. We brought a bunch of parts down with us, most notably a new BBQ. We’ve spent the last two weeks completing various projects. We got the BBQ installed, fixed a few leaks and cleaned up the boat. She’s really looking good and we can actually cook on our BBQ now.
Hurricane Newton blew through in early September. Starshine faired really well. We have new friends on S/V Shameless who were here the night the storm came through. They spent the night tending to various boats on our dock. One dock, across the fairway from us, actually came apart during the night. That dock is much more exposed and vulnerable to wind and waves than ours is. You can see a video of the storm if you search on You Tube for svashameless/newton. They said Starshine didn’t need any help, unlike other boats on our dock. They explained the wind was not too bad, but the surge had the boats getting tossed about and they didn’t film during the worst of it.
So what did we do all summer? Let me summarize. We housesat again in Dewey AZ. I got my finger fixed on my right hand. I chose a less invasive procedure that did not require so much Physical Therapy afterward. Melodie went back to Wisconsin for a few weeks. I made it back for a visit while she was there. We took care of medical appointments, new glasses, and physicals, thoroughly poked and prodded. I made two trips to the Bay Area, one to attend a Coast Guard class for my Captain License renewal, the other to babysit my nephew Johnnie. We rented a 28-foot RV for a week and went camping in Northern AZ and Southern UT. All part of our plan to buy an RV next spring and spend the summer seeing the sights with it. We are currently leaning toward a pickup camper. We made it up to the Bay Area and couch surfed at our friends in Santa Cruz for a week. We were in San Jose at Melodie’s brother’s house for a week. We attended the 20th Annual Snakes to the Lake trip to Lake Tahoe in our Cobra. On the way back to AZ we stopped at Joshua Tree National Park, one of Melodie’s favorite places. We got the car all loaded up and drove down to San Carlos. We received our first “Red Light” crossing the border. Luckily the Mexican Officials only searched our car for about 30 seconds, so no hassles there.
We leave tomorrow for our first land tour in Mexico. We are spending a week visiting Copper Canyon in Chihuahua. Copper Canyon is the second largest canyon in the world; the Grand Canyon in AZ is # 3. We’re taking a five-hour bus ride to Los Mochis, and then we take a taxi to El Fuerte where we’ll stay two nights. Then we’ll take a train to Divisidero and stay two nights. Finally we are at Creel for two more nights (another train trip). On our way back we’ll stay one more night in El Fuerte before taking the bus back to Guaymas. We leave on a Sunday and return on a Sunday. We are really looking forward to it. Our next blog posting we’ll tell you about it.