The quota road south of Chihuahua is in excellent shape and I had an easy day of it. I was a little worried about my trip plans for the day because to reach the only available RV park in Lardo, I had to negotiate some difficult narrow roads and sharp turns right in the middle of that big town. Then the park was really just a hotel with some 15amp outlets where they often forgot about the RV’ers and turned off the outlets when they closed for the night. And their price seemed a little high for the facilities and the crowded, probably noisy, area. Just a parking lot really, according to the guide book. But I had committed my brain to staying there so it came as a surprise that I got to the decision-to-enter-the-city-or-not point so early in the day, shortly before 2pm, when I prefer to travel to 5pm. Well, it’s an adventure so I passed the turnoff to the hotel and crossed my fingers that I’d be able to find a RV park in Zacatecas. I figured if I couldn’t, I could always stay at another 24 hour Pemex. According to my calculations, I should be able to get there before 7pm, it was the time of year that dusk occurred at 6:30pm. I didn’t care to be driving in Mexico in the dark but I felt a Pemex would be available just before town.
But after around 60 miles I’m shocked to discover that I’d missed my turn onto Mex 49 and was heading toward Durango instead of Zacatecas! I’d stayed on Mex 40 instead of taking the Mex 49 ramp. My laptop on the dash had yelled at me, ‘Off Route’, several times but I’d ignored it’s pleas until it calculated a new route and shut up. I had no plans to go to Durango, it was not anywhere in my pre-arranged destination maps in MS Streets & Trips and I didn’t know anything about RV parks there but here I was heading for it. When I discovered my error, I was too far along to turn back so crossed my fingers and hoped there would be a place to stay for the night.
Late in the day, around 5:30, I come upon a nice 24 hour Pemex just outside Durango and just a couple miles from a turn off that I now knew would be the road I’d need to take the next morning. I filled up and got help from the attendant to get cash from my debit card, which wasn’t working at the ATM machine. This happens sometimes in Mexico since the ATM’s are not all tied into each others networks. What the attendant did was have me pay for my diesel first (the Pemex system took my card fine) then had the gal rerun it for another $400 pesos. Then he took that paper and kept it but handed me the $400. Now with cash, I could get some dinner. I already had a little but not enough to be comfortable if I needed fuel at a Pemex that only took cash.
The Pemex was so convenient I didn’t even need to go into town. Nice restroom, a store, and a restaurant. And the weather wasn’t very nice, not the kind of day to walk around town, so I parked with the truckers. Ate a nice dinner in the little restaurant there for $70 pesos and wandered around for a bit. Came back to the RV and recalculated a new route to Guadalajara from Durango. While doing that I found that the accidental Durango excursion would add 70 miles to my trip. Couldn’t really find anything in the guidebooks about Durango that was very interesting so didn’t feel any need to visit. Turned in at 10pm and read for a couple hours. I don’t use the heat usually because of the energy used makes it a hassle but I do have two heavy blankets to keep warm. It is pretty cool in the evenings here, dipping down to 40°F at night but getting up to 75°F during the day. I am in the mountains and that’s not a surprise, though many I’ve talked to about Mexico think that the entire country is hot all the time. Not true.
That morning was dark and cold. But little rain fell on me this portion of the trip.
I’m around 4500 feet where the above picture was taken. It’s a four lane highway with few villages along the way. It’s surprising considering how good the countryside looks, I’d have expected many villages along the way but that wasn’t the case. But the towns I passed, like Chihuahua, were huge, spreading out over vast areas. But they have lots of room, so, no worries.
Here I am parked with the truckers around 6pm.
As night fell, more and more trucks eventually boxed me in so I couldn’t have gone anywhere if I’d wanted to. But that’s OK, I wasn’t in that big of a hurry anyway, though the next day I’d be getting to Guadalajara late in the day, I felt I had it under control with a S&T map showing a new route.
Next morning, dew drips off the RV. And there is almost room for me to get out.
I was boxed in pretty well, so I had to back up 60-80 feet to get out of there but a couple Mexican drivers were behind me talking so they gave me directions during the maneuvers.
One of the small villages along the road south.
Finally, some nice weather. But I'm at 6,000 feet here. Can't last.
Ahh, there we go...snow on the ground. At this point I'm at 7700 feet.
Heading towards Guadalajara I kept getting higher and higher (the GPS sensor shows altitude), and it kept getting colder and colder. Storm clouds kept rolling in and I began to wonder if I shouldn’t have just gone down the west coast to Mazatlan and enjoyed balmy weather instead?
Eventually, I got to Guadalajara and sure enough, the poor road signs and MS S&T led me astray so I got lost and ended going close to downtown. One of the guide book warnings was to stay on the periferico around the city, what there is of it, because the Guad cops like to ticket RV’s for being in the wrong place. Guad doesn’t have a circle road all the way around like most Mexican towns do so I must have missed an exit or something. I was trying to skirt the town by following the Airport signs but that was only a minor help. Eventually, the S&T program with the GPS got me on the right road (after putting me on the wrong one to begin with) and I headed south of town trying to find the San Jose RV Park. Because of the trouble, I got there around 5:30 and there was a fiesta going on around the couple of small restaurants that are there on the park grounds so I got boxed in by cars and confused by the lack of signs and made a turn onto the road that went to the exit. The highway was one way, I hadn’t found the entrance to the park, but I did see signs that indicated I was in the right place, the only road that could have been the entrance was marked ‘Private’, and since I thought I knew where the next park was, I just skipped trying to loop around to find the San Jose park and headed out of town towards the Chimulco Trailer Park in Villa Corona. Now my GPS program was doing well and I followed that as it got dark.
What I didn’t know was that the program was leading me to the wrong place…as given me by the park. I’d emailed them about what were incorrect GPS coordinates in my guide book, I could tell from the map that they put me in the middle of a town but the description did not say that would happen, and they sent back what they said were GPS coordinates from Google Earth. Well, when plugged into the mapping program they did take me up a road, not to the middle of a field so I trusted them. Although it was dark, I kept on until I got where S&T sent me and found…nothing but a power relay station. No houses, no RV park, no street lights, no traffic, out in the boondocks. In the dark, in Mexico.
Well, thinking it was just a mile or two beyond, I headed up the road and could see the lights of a small village against the hills off in the distance. I knew I was not going to find the RV park there. So I looked for a turn around spot. When I found it, I turned in, started to back up across the narrow two lane road and felt the RV sink in the back end. Aware of the dangerous cliffs next to roads all over Mexico, I jump out of the RV and ran back and looked…too dark to be sure of anything, and I didn’t want to attempt backing up any further. I’d already tried to drive out and couldn’t so I just grabbed my flashlight and waved down the cars that started to arrive, guiding them around the front of the RV. One guy stopped and told me in English that he’d come back to help. Then the traffic started to get heavy and it’s all I can do to keep it moving around the front of the RV where there was just enough room for one vehicle at a time.
Then two guys in a pickup pull up and offered to help. One of the guys spoke English and he started directing traffic while his friend wandered back to the back of my still running rig to check things out. My flashlight was growing dim so I asked the guy if he could call a tow truck, a big one, and the cops to direct traffic. He did and let me know that the tow truck would take 2 hours to get there and the cops in a half hour. About that time I started to smell something burning and worried that the engine heat was starting the tall grass near the rear of the rig on fire. That’s all I needed, to burn up my RV. While I was looking for flames the friend poking around the back came up and told us that I could back up some more, that it was flat back there…to get a run at getting the RV up the ledge along the side of the road. The other guy volunteered to try it, jumped in the drivers seat and with my directions for shifting, worried the RV up the incline and over into the turn around spot. There we parked for a few minutes while all the traffic cleared both lanes and it grew dark & quiet again. I asked him where all those people came from all of a sudden and he tells me that a big race had just finished and everyone was going home. Just my luck. I explain I’m looking for an RV park and he tells me to follow him, it’s only 5 kilometers away.
Off we go to Villa Corona and they stop at a turn and tell me to go to the ‘T’ turn right and it’s up the road. Not ‘just up the road’ but ‘up the road’. I should have asked because I thought it was 3-4 miles. They also mentioned it would probably be closed now that it was 8:30 or so. Well, I tried to find it in the darkness, but drove by the place and went beyond by 3 miles, turning in a steep driveway, the RV slowwwwwly climbing back up the driveways hill making me sweat a little. Who wants to get stuck twice in one night?
By now I’m not in a good mood, hungry, tired of driving, and flustered, and I stop in front of a darkened, gated business to get my bearings. It turned out to be the RV park when I returned the next day. It was closed, but I’d just have had to wander in and find someone to unlock the gate. But from where I was, it all looked so dark I couldn’t tell it was an RV park. And their sign did not ring any bells. I couldn’t find the right page in my guide book either. So after 10 minutes of frustration, I figured I could drive back and stay at a Pemex I’d spotted on the way in.
Backtracking to the highway, I found I was forced to turn right and soon I was at a Quota station. I tried to get though but discovered I hadn’t enough pesos. But as luck would have it, there were some cops there, one spoke English, I found from him that the ATM I needed was 5 kilometers back towards Guad, and that I could spend the night there at the quota station (toll booth).
Since I was very hungry, I decided to just spend the night there and try again in the morning. That would allow me to find the ATM (which was at a Pemex) in the daylight and then find the RV park too. And I needed the cash. After a nice dinner, I just read and turned in early.
Parked at the toll station for the night. This is the next morning after that double semi boxed me in so tight I had to wait for him to move.
As luck would have it, the next morning I was a little boxed in by all the truckers taking a break. I noticed a sign that said parking one hour but nobody had disturbed me during the night so I just expect people exceed the limit as needed. I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast of eggs and bacon while I waited for the trucks to clear, but if they didn’t I did have an escape route, until a double semi drove in and parked right next to me. I’d just started eating and since it was 9:30am, I expected he was there for the banos (bathroom) and wouldn’t stay long. He didn’t leave until 11.
When he cleared out, off I went to the Pemex with it’s ATM, following the new directions S&T was showing me. And the picture signs along the way. With food in my belly and cash in my hand, I headed back to Villa Corona and back down the street I’d been on the night before, turned at the ‘T’ and a couple yards later could see the RV’s all parked inside the fence. It had been to dark the night before to see any of that. Finally, my destination, sort of. And I spent the next two weeks at Chimulco. Nice spot except for the huge welts I got from whatever kind of superbug mosquito they have here. Even the Deet didn’t phase them. More on this park later.