![\"tucson-caravan-group.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/tucson-caravan-group.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI was actually sorry to leave. \u00a0 The past few days have been terrifically fun with our friends, the weather has been spectacular, and the house is becoming very comfortable. \u00a0 Bert advised me that this was a good thing, because it meant I’d be happy to come back to home base. \u00a0 He’s got a point there. \u00a0 Adam said the same thing in a different way, “We miss every place we leave. \u00a0 There are too many great places. It’s a good problem to have.”<\/p>\n
The “loose caravan” style worked well for our drive down to Nogales, 79 miles away. \u00a0 Crossing the border was a non-event, as it was the last time we entered Mexico. \u00a0 They use a red\/green light system, and once again we got the green light, which means “drive on through.” \u00a0 The downtown border station is narrow and riddled with speedbumps so that you can only creep through at 5 MPH for a couple hundred yards. \u00a0 After that, we navigated the gauntlet of Nogales, dodging double-parked cars, \u00a0 slamming on the brakes for various obstacles (people, motorcycles, potholes), and hoping fervently that we made it through the town without any new scratches.<\/p>\n
Once out of Nogales the drive is easy, even pleasant, and very scenic at times. \u00a0 We hung together, communicating by walkie-talkie, just because we weren’t sure where we’d stop. \u00a0 Highway 15 is a four-lane divided route, but the roughness of it meant that most of the time we were unable to match the posted 100 kph (62 MPH) speed limit. Only toward Hermosillo did the road smooth out, but by then it was getting late and so we decided to stop here rather than press on to Bahia Kino. \u00a0 Our total trip time: 6.5 hours, including innumerable bathroom stops for the kids, border crossing, fuel stop, one organizational meeting, and one wrong turn. \u00a0 That’s a lot of time to go about 250 miles, by US Interstate standards.<\/p>\n
A tip for those coming down for the first time: bring lots of cash. \u00a0 The Pemex stations did not accept credit cards and ATM machines (el cajero automatico<\/em>) were nowhere to be found. \u00a0 Also, to get to Hermosillo we passed through two tollbooths (cuotas<\/em>) which totaled 156 pesos (about US$15). \u00a0 The campground here in Hermosillo also accepts only cash (US$20), so I ran through about US$100 in no time at all. \u00a0 Tomorrow I’ll find an ATM and get a pile of pesos out.<\/p>\n Tonight all three Airstreams are parked in a small (10-site) campground just off Rt 15 in Hermosillo. \u00a0 We can hear the highway, but the sites are modern, the utilities work just fine, and the wi-fi works. \u00a0 For $20 we’re all satisfied with it.<\/p>\n It looks like wi-fi will be the salvation of this blog. \u00a0 It’s very common in campgrounds here, probably because Americans really like it. \u00a0 It certainly gets my attention when the campground says “wi-fi”, even though I’m accustomed to it not working in the US campgrounds. \u00a0 Tomorrow we’ll head about 70 miles over to Bahia Kino and if we have wi-fi there, the blog will get updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our departure from Tucson was dramatic. \u00a0 We cleared the driveway and street in front of our house of all vehicles except the two Airstreams, then parked Adam & Susan’s motorhome to the right, and David & Ariadna’s Safari 28 slide-out (identical to Bert & Janie’s) to the left. \u00a0 It’s a good thing we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}