Out of Mexico…

My rent at Campo San Felipe was to be up on January 28th so I planned that date for my departure from Mexico. I would have liked to stay longer but…

First though, I did a bit more sightseeing around SF. And here’s one of my adventures heading up the coast road (north) from SF. This is just a mile or so from Kiki’s RV park where I’ve stayed in years past.

I like these old fashioned fences. Note the text up on the hill. High school kids. Meh.

Several coves along the way with RV’s set up. This one is actually an RV park. I’ve checked and they have poor Wifi. Stopped in there once to check it out. Nothing much to recommend it except it’s right above the beach with a view for each RV spot. Only had 20 amp.Kind of sparsely populated out here. Can’t easily walk into town from here either. Turns out there’s a school up here in the hills. Not expected. A technical school. Saw many students walking home and they were all teenagers. So I think it’s a secondary school where a student can come by choice. This one’s name is “Fisheries Technical School“.

And then it was time to head back to the US. The night before departure, went out to Padrino’s on the main street in San Felipe…just across the street from Fat Boys. Had a nice dinner and a beer or two.

Nice place. Like so many places in North America, it’s now non-smoking. But even then there are owners and regulars on up in years that still sit here at the bar and smoke. Usually where those employees are sitting in the picture. If they’re regulars (or the owners), the staff doesn’t bother them about it. Most of the time, I’ve noticed that the smokers that smoke anyway are really getting older. Young people seem to accept the non-smoking aspect of it without complaint. Pleasant place. The next day, I had left Campo SF and was on the road north by 8 AM. I decide this trip I was going to cross at San Luis which is due east of Mexicali. It’s only 80 miles from where the north/south Mx-5 freeway crosses the east/west Mx-2D freeway. First up is the military check point. A soldier comes aboard and checks several of my overhead cabinets and then leaves. Not much to it. Building? What building? And when I got to Mexicali, where MX-2D crosses MX-5 and heads for San Luis, I looked for and found the large vehicle rubber tire marks in the roadway where it’s best to make the U turn. Here’s the street view that showed me where I needed to turn. In this link, the left side comes from San Felipe and the shot is looking south, the rubber marks on the roadway show big vehicles turn here in order to head back to that overpass. You go under the overpass, and take the San Luis freeway entrance. It’s the only way to get on 2D going east from 5. Freeway Mx-2D Entrance Check out the street view and then fly over to the overpass.

Once I’d made it onto Mx-2D, headed straight to San Luis. Only takes 70-80 minutes so you can take your time if you came from SF early. Arriving in San Luis, you find the Mx-2D highway parallels the border crossing approach street, Captn Carlos. So the plan after I get to town is to drive east while looking left to see where the border crossing line of cars ended, then make a left turn on one of the many cross streets to join them. I went to Calle 19 before turning. And than another left to get onto Captn Carlos street. Two 180 degree turns on this trip.

And here’s where I joined the others in a line up to the border. I didn’t know it at the time, but I should have been in the middle lane. The signage at border crossings is piss poor every crossing I’ve been to.

From this shot you can see how narrow the lanes are and how nerve racking crossing the Mexican border can be for those of us in giant RVs. And in the next picture I am in the proper lane. I was originally in the lane just over to the right and a border guard from the US side ran out to move me into the far left lane. He got cocky with me about being in the wrong lane and I asked how I was suppose to know since the Mexican side signs had me in the lane he’d spotted me in. And he points (without looking) at the big electric billboards over the crossing lanes and explains that they tell drivers. I pointed out that they weren’t even on. He shut up and got nicer after that. Later I saw that he talked to someone and there were turned on finally. One of the electric signs told RV’ers to be in the far left lane. It was around 2:15 when I’d gotten to this point so that traffic line up took 2 hours to go just a couple miles.

If you note in the next picture, there’s a big ass post right were I’m suppose to make a fairly sharp right into the crowded and narrow crossing. With my RV and car…60 feet long. That’s where I got the RV kinked, couldn’t go forward or backward without unhooking the car. And since there’s a slight downgrade there, it wasn’t easy. I couldn’t get to my tools because the metal post blocked my tool cabinet door, so the guard had to run around to find a big hammer to get the tow bar connection gear loose from the tow bar. And it was an 87F day too.

I am NOT going to crunch my RV just because they want me to hurry, so I just ignored the border guard who wanted to get tough with me. Didn’t work. The other border guards blocked traffic and rerouted numerous cars so I could maneuver and get my finally disconnected car past the border into a waiting/holding area just beyond. Then I walked back and got my RV adjusted to make that stupid tight turn and finally drove up to the border kiosk, present my documents, drove on to a different staging area for RVs while they inspected with dogs and whatnot.Then had to go get my car from the holding area and reattach it to the RV. What a fuk’in bitch. I’m kinda pissed with our congress that they refuse to release money for infrastructure but there’s always enough for big ass tax cuts and funds for the military, but no money to help or improve these border crossings. The guards are harried and worn out too since they’re overworked and underpaid. And chronically understaffed. It’s not their fault the crossings were designed and built in the ’70’s and don’t work anymore. But you’d think someone with the INS would work on getting the crossings better suited for the millions of giant RVs the manufacturers are making for the baby boomers right now. Many of them will be visiting Mexico and returning. Put up better signage, widen a couple lanes, that sort of thing. Only one crossing has that that I know of…Nogales.

It was 3:30 before I got out of there. Three and a quarter hours. Wow. Not fun at all. I was headed to Yuma for reasons I’ll cover next installment. Preplanned the crossing of course and planned my first stop to be at the Southern Mesa RV park south of Yuma, but close to San Luis. I didn’t have a reservation, I just knew they were low cost…like $299/month plus electric. Most other parks in town I’d previously checked are $325 and up plus electric. Southern Mesa is also a Passport America park so I signed up for 3 nights just to check them out. I planned on using that time to scout the other RV parks to find the best one. Something with shade since this is the desert after all. While talking to the staff there, I mentioned I write a travel blog, and suddenly they decided they could change the monthly rate to $199. Whoa. Hey, I can put up with a bunch of issues at that price. I found out later that they’ve had that special price for new visitors for a while so I’m deflated now. Thought it was due to my writings on the blog but nope…

Here’s where they put me. That palm tree did provide some shade too. I had a very hard time picking up decent wifi here in this spot. Finally rode my bike around and determined where the wifi towers were and moved my high gain antenna to my bedroom window where I could see the nearest antenna. Really jumped the reception speed so I decided I’d take advantage of the $199/mo offer and stay here.

But at the site I was at the ground was not compacted so over the three nights, my landing pads sunk into the ground too far, as shown here, so I couldn’t keep it level:

This picture is after I’d lifted the landing pad of course. But look how far into the soft dirt I’d sunk overnight. But there are many other empty sites in the park and I went around until I found one I liked…site #102. Nice solid ground, drivers side bordered the interior park road so no neighbors, front of the RV faced north the way I like it, and has a direct line view of the wifi tower from the front window. And it will be my home for the next 2 months.

So next time here on the blog we’ll have an adventure in Yuma. Turns out there are 10’s of thousands of RV’ers and mobile homes there scattered all over the desert. It’s a big town so lots of opportunities for adventure.

See you next time! Thanks for reading!