12/19/08

I left Carson early in the AM. Since I had been stalling for some time, the truck and trailer were packed to the gills. For the niños I have around fifty mini teddy bears, stickies by the thousand, and pads, pens, and crayons galore.

I planned on looking up some old friends on my way through Las Vegas. Circus Circus in LV had sent me a two free nights comp as a result of my having spent some hours at their black jack tables during a recent billiards tournament that I participated in. I came out winners by about $2k and I guess that they were planning on getting it back. It didn't happen. This time I nicked them for another $3k. Dumb luck but they aren't going to get it back!

While in LV I noticed that I had a slight diesel leak from around the engine so my first order of business in Phoenix (Peoria actually) was to get it handled. Their Duramax mechanic found that one of the injector feeds needed replacing. We had it overnighted and it was fixed Tuesday morning.

Mom's doing better than can be expected given her age. She keeps telling me that she will be "going upstairs" any day now. I keep responding that she's going to live longer than me. Might well be the case.

12/24/08

I left Phoenix early and cut south to the border at Tucson. Just short of the border I checked my maps ad realized that I dumbed out. I've got bundles of maps, books of maps, and gigabytes of map images but I didn't bother looking at them. Duh!! If I crossed the border at Nogales, in order to then get to Creel, a committed stop, I would have to travel east on maybe the worst paved road in Mexico (every 10 miles per GPS equals 30 miles by road). So I flipped east and covered some new territory to the next crossing, Agua Prieta. I lost an hour but it turned out OK. I entered the "Nothing To Declare" line and made it through without getting out of the truck. Yahoo! The paperwork also went without a hitch and with no lines. Maybe a first.

My target for the day was an RV park in Nuevos Casas Grandes. I made it in time to fix some food before dark. This place is noted for putting out some collectors grade pottery. I've been here before and have a piece sitting on a shelf at home.

I hooked up my water system so I would have water but, out of fear of running into freezing conditions, I'm holding off putting the espresso machine in the system. I was in Creel at Christmas a few years ago and it was very cold and got a foot of snow overnight.

I fueled up for the first time. Diesel here is about US$2.10 per US gallon. Not bad.

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