The drive North

Adios to Mazatlan until September. Janice, Ollie, and I packed the van up and started north Friday morning May 6th. It was bittersweet as Mazatlan is now our home and we were leaving home. It was also positive as the next four months promise more adventures and we will get to see the kids and grandkids.

Our gracious new neighbors agreed to water our plants, air out our home, pay any utility bills and look after our place while we are gone. We will make sure to do something special for them as this is above and beyond the call of duty.

Our first day was uneventful and we made it 550 miles to Hermisillo, Sonora which is about 175 miles south of the border. It was 104 degrees with 5% humidity. I noticed this shrunk the swelling in my arthritic right ankle almost to nothing and I was walking cane free. We stayed in the San Martin Hotel which had been recommended to us by former neighbors. It was clean and secure, so we had a good night there and got an early start on Saturday morning.

Day two also went well. We drove to the border at Nogales and after a half hour wait in line were cleared to cross the border. We stopped in Green Valley, Arizona around 11:00 and stopped at a Denny's and had an American style breakfast. It was a treat after so long. We then resumed our travels through Tucson and then on I-10 into New Mexico. We stopped at New Mexico welcome center as we had not been there before. We saw a winery in Deming, New Mexico that sounded interesting. We stopped there, tasted wine and bought four bottles. They recommended an Italian Restaurant that turned out to be one of the best we have ever eaten in. It was a family place and the owner/chef came out of the kitchen and sang ala Frank Sinatra to everyone. The entries were from $7-$12, generous and tasty.
After the wine tasting and heavy dinner we decided to drive no further and stayed the night in Deming.

Day three we started out early and arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico around 12:30. We spent about 2 1/2 hours prowling around the historic central area of town with many art galleries, art shows and Indian jewelry. We then headed up to Taos, New Mexico and stayed the night in Taos.

                                                                       Taos Pueblo

Town of Taos

Day four we slept in a little and then spent about an hour prowling downtown Taos, which was a disappointment. It is a town that is sleepy until Memorial day when it comes alive. A high point was the Taos Pueblo just outside of Taos. The Pueblo had been there from at least 900 A.D. and was interesting to tour. We enjoyed some indian fry bread while there. We started out for Colorado Springs from Taos around 11:15 and made good time until we were about to turn on to the highway that would take us to I-25. Cars and trucks were backed up. It turned out that a head on collision had killed two people and the road was totally blocked. After two hours of waiting our sister-in-law Ruth called us with an alternate route that took us 25 miles out of the way but we were able to make progress and arrived in Colorado Springs around 6:15. Fate might have been at work here as the detour took us through Alamosa, Colorado. My grandfather, aged 5, and his family had been put off the by the railroad near Alamosa in 1896 to homestead. They had come from The Netherlands. They were with a party of over 50 people. The first winter was hard with deaths from Cholera of which my grandfather was almost a victim. As none knew how to farm and this was non-irrigated sod land, all abandoned Alamosa and were taken in by fellow Dutchmen in Pella, Iowa. Sorry about the digression, but it was interesting to me.

Now is a time to rest and recover before we drive the rest of the way to Spokane, Washington. As of this writing, Joel, Janice, and Ollie are healthy and in good spirits and glad for a break.
                                                  

This is the way Ollie was on the drive. Either laying

by my feet or on a pillow inbetween us.

                   View of the snow capped Rockies on the way into Colorado Springs, CO.