A fix for the photo junkies

Ok, we brought the camera along! Click on pictures to enlarge:

Here is our local Mercado- not the closest, but only six blocks away and great stuff.

We went out to the old port (Malecon)


Which Restaurant should we pick?


We went to Senor Shrimp, also known as the BooBar, and had a Baja Shrimp cocktail (yum!) and a margarita. The shrimp cocktail sort of looks like this:
Spicy cocktail juice, onions, tomatoes, avocado and fresh shrimp!


There's a lot of this going on down here:
After Carl took this, he called, "I'll send you a copy!" And as they drove off, she yelled back, "YAH! MySpace, baby!!!......"


Carl very much approves of this:



This flying skiff went by the window of the BooBar.


What IS a BooBar, you might well ask? Hopefully you can enlarge this enough to see:

This is an art display we went by- I quite like these enameled steel sculptures.


There are lots of brown pelicans down here, they're great fun to watch:


Back to household stuff- with the furniture and etcetera we bought for the condo, we got pots and pans. Turns out they're GREAT!! These are Kirkland non-stick cookware, and I love them. We also got a bunch of Kitchen aid utensils, and a ton of other stuff. Christmas in August.

Relaxed Sunday

Up at 5:45 to give Shadow his constitutional walk on the beach. Tide is really low at that hour right now. We walked out to water's edge, where Shadow went wading and chased gulls. Didn't take the camera, sorry everyone! It was 6 AM, did I mention that? We'll try to remember tomorrow, through our daze. We did see about a 3-inch sculpin fish in the tide pool:

Now Shadow is resting comfortably:


Here's Carl's new desk, he wanted everyone to see it before it gets incredibly messy.


Soon to be on sale on Kijiji.mx, one shell mirror:



Either that or it will be in the guest room. It's quite intricately done, but not really for us.

Oswaldo and his wife Mary-Sol came by this morning. They took us to a used appliances place, and it looks like we'll get a washer-dryer for under $300, plus a fridge for about the same amount. New washers and fridges are in the $800 range, so this was great.

OK, I will go out soon with my camera and get a few shots around town, some of yesterday's stores, our area, like that.

3 smart Gringos

Quite a day today, everyone! First, here are a couple of shots of Shadow in Cedar City:



Got up at 6:15 this morning to get the boy for a walk before it got too hot, might try for 5:30 tomorrow. We took him down to the local beach and he loved it. We got home and Carl climbed up on the roof to feed a phone line down to me. We needed to get communication going, fast! The old phone jack was the kind you solder, which I'd never seen before. So I found an electrical parts store and bought a newer one. Then I held the two wires to different posts on the jack and had Carl check the phone until he said, "That sort of sounds like a dial tone!".

I secured the wires and made a local call, and sure enough it worked. Eureka!! Then we went though hooking up the DSL, the router, the vonage device, etc, and soon everything was working, with really a minimum of pain. Except the directions for configuring the device are all in Spanish. But I got past that.

So now we had everything for our office working, we needed desks! I remembered we had seen a place that sold the rustic furniture on the main drag, exactly where I couldn't remember. We found it and had a couple of maybes, but weren't sure. Then we went to the department store in town, and there was one there that we kind of liked, but nothing we were locked into.

By the way, all this driving and looking was in about 35 degree heat- not the hottest it gets, but plenty sweaty for two gringos from Calgary- and our doggy sweat towel was at home! Anyway, we needed bottles for our water cooler, and had just about decided that Mexicans were given one at birth but that they couldn't be purchased, but we finally found a couple. And some garlic, etc. for dinner plans.

I had an idea to go into the tourist area and find some locals to see if we could get some advice on where to look, and that worked well. The fourth place we tried, we bought a desk for Carl and a bookshelf- the first bookshelf of many!! That was at a cool "Importada" place I'd seen and said we should check out. We also got some really nice bath towels there for cheap!!

The fifth and final place had an office chair and a possibility of a desk for Mel. We bought the office chair and are pondering a desk from place one and place 5 for Mel. So home with all this, and by then it was after 5 PM. Local fish store was still open, so had a huge dinner of shrimp and salad. Now we are relaxing, listening to the only radio station we can pull in, a local Mexican station that varies between good Mexican tunes, old American tunes, and this very odd dancebeat Spanish music that indicates it's time to turn the radio off.

We're loving our new place, and have met a few of the neighbors, who seem very nice. Just big smiles and "Buenos Dias" for now, but soon whole conversations. That will be in January when Cheryl and Dan and their big brains get here.

Our first breakfast in the new place:



We'll post more pictures of the house as we get it more in order. Upcoming events:

-Stampede Barbecue- Imagine our surprise! Saturday Sept 6th.
-pool party at Laguna Beach-Mon 1st
-Jazz by the Sea- October 4th
-Monday 15th -big celebration for Independence Day 11 PM
-Tuesday 16th- Independence day parade
-Red Hat ladies luncheon Tues 23rd

Ok, so our phone number is the same as it was in Calgary, so call anytime- it's a local call! We'll be sending out our new mailing address, if we miss anyone you can call us and we'll tell you what it is!

Buenos Noches!

Shadow is the best, best boy. 4 real.

3 dumb Gringos are home!

Hi, all, we arrived yesterday, having some small problems getting internet hooked up, but we're safe, sound, warm and happy. By the way, that WAS snow, but I got that shot off the internet, so it's probably from January or something, there was no snow when we came through. Temperature here is 37, had a little rainstorm last night, went out for Polla Asado (roasted chicken), pictures and more to come.

Random thoughts and observations:

-Headline in Great Falls newspaper: "McCain sews discord in democrats." I wonder what kind of thread he used? That was the top headline on the first page.

-For simpsons fans: They drive, they drive, they drive and drive and drive, drivedrivedrive, drivedrivedrive, the Melody and Carlo shooo-ww-ww!

-our new favorite phrase: Habla solamente un poco Espagnol. (i only speak a little Spanish)

- In the US, they don't clear their roadkill off the highways, and it's just GROSS!!

-Shadow makes an excellent sweat towel. So absorbent!

Take care, all, thanks for all the good wishes, we miss you and can't wait to get back online.

3 dumb gringos go scenic

Well, it was a very different drive today- first, we got 8 hours sleep. Bliss!! Secondly, we have to recommend both highway 14 and highway 89 in UT. Red rock canyons, beautiful mountain roads, quaint towns.



Arizona surprised us from this direction. We expected desert from the moment we entered the state, but the area around Flagstaff looks more like Banff, and we were at 6000-7000 feet most of the day.

Once we came down into the Phoenix area, it was 97 degrees (36 C). Shadow handled it like a pro!! It took us a while to find the motel, and he was not even bothered by the heat. Neither were we, but he's got that fur coat.

The time zone here and in Puerto Penasco is an hour earlier than Calgary, because they don't use DST. So we'll be an hour earlier until..until... ah, I don't know, until the US president decides DST is over.

I have more pictures, and more details, but we are beat, and still have a couple of things to deal with like the fact that we're getting charged twice for our room here, and our pallets of goods are in Phoenix but we can't get them to Mexico. I can say that Carl's navigation today was awesome, and saved us from sitting in traffic for what might have been hours. He said it's easier to navigate here than in Romania, Bulgaria or Greece. Signs in English are apparently helpful, and signs in the same alphabet also very useful.

We may not be able to blog tomorrow, it may take until next week to get our DSL up, but tomorrow we reach our new home!!!

3 dumb Gringos in three states

Our Route today- through MT, cut the corner off ID, and go to southern UT:



Insomnia raged, and we both got about 3 hours, but adrenaline and energy drinks got us through nicely. The I15 remains a nice quiet highway, except through the Salt Lake City area, which is eight lanes of hell for about three hours.

Shadow gets his teeth brushed today, since we can tell when he's sitting up by his breath. PU!! He's doing great with the heat, though, it's been in the 30s and he is a happy boy. Tomorrow we've decided to go the mountain route, from Cedar City east and down to Flagstaff instead of west to Las Vegas on the I15. It takes about the same amount of time, and it's going to be 38 in Las Vegas and 30 in Flagstaff. So we could do basically 8 hours of 38 degrees or 5 hours of 30 degrees and then 3 hours of 35-38.

Highlights of today's drive: This kind of scenery:



Pocatello, ID looked like a pretty town as we zoomed by, in a river valley. You'll have to take my word for it because I can't find a picture. We also zoomed by Great Basin national park: http://www.nps.gov/grba/ and Salt Lake City, as I said, a hellish drive.

Now it's dinner time and hopefully a good sleep tonight. We're in the Holiday Inn Express in Cedar City UT, which is also a lovely little town:


By the way, I've been meaning to thank Cheryl for the blog idea, and also for the idea of going south this winter.

General note- US has better hotel rooms and lousier restaurants. Generally speaking. Two hotel rooms in a row that don't stink!! Some kind of record, that is.

Day one

Our route so far:

We left Calgary at 7:50 AM, after a restless night, as you might imagine. We never thought the day would arrive, but time marches inexorably onwards, and here we are!! Shadow settles right into his new den, and was remarkably good the whole way.

We stopped for gas at Granum AB, where we saw this on our back window:


Mexico or bust, for anyone who can't read it. We LOVE it!!! But who did it? Had to have been Dan or Paul, but we're betting on Dan, it has a Dan-ness about it. A Dan-icity. It's Dan-o-licious. This is not getting washed off!!



Carl at Granum:


We waited 45 minutes at the U.S. Border, it was quite a surprising line of cars. But there was no hassle, and we got right through. Here we are in the good old USA:




It got hotter as we drove south- hey, you can go 120 KM an hour here!!! Traffic has been minimal, so very easy driving so far. By the time we reached Great Falls it was about 92 degrees. (33 C). As we got into the Big Belt mountains heading towards Helena, it cooled off somewhat, and it was pretty!


We got a little lost in Helena after I missed the turn-off, which Shadow thought was the most exciting part of the trip. Then, as we continued climbing and climbing, we lost our front roofrack about 10 miles out of Butte, which I thought was the most exciting part of the trip.



Once we got to Butte we both needed a pick-me-up. Thankfully, the gas station we stopped at had a solid wall of energy drinks, pick-me-up pills, and wake-up potions. I got a JAVA MONSTER. Do we even have these in Canada? Coffee AND an energy drink. Works, that much I can tell you.



That's all for today, we're signing off and grabbing some supper. We are very very glad to be on the road at last!! Here is our very nice hotel room:

Ready to go

Hi, all, we've created this blog for those who want to keep track of our Mexican journey. We'll post along the way on the drive if there's time, and once we get down there we'll try to chronicle the day-to-day experiences of living there. Let us know about any details you'd particularly like to know. We leave in 48 hours....tick...tick...tick...

Hasta Pronto,

Mel and Carl