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Back to the land of Walmart!Feb 18, 2008
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First there was one line
...then two lines
Arizona desert
I-8 east of Yuma
It's been a great two weeks in Puerto Penasco, but some things define it as a "different country". One of these defining characteristics is the shopping. Beach vendors will bring you turtles, jewelry, ceramics, food, etc. and there are grocery stores and T-shirt shops and such. But everything is small scale. There is no Walmart in Pto Penasco! So today, we're on the road back to "the land of Walmart".
We got away from The Reef at a bit after 9am, and had an uneventful trip north on MEX-8 to the border town of Sonoyta. There must be lots of RV sites back in PP, since we counted over 100 RV's heading south, most of them in several caravans of up to 30 rigs. And most of the rigs were class A motor homes, with a few C's and big 5th wheels.
At Sonoyta, we joined the lineup for the border crossing around 10:30am, and the lineup was at least a mile and a half long! The road through town is one lane in each direction with narrow shoulders, but Mexican police directed northbound traffic into two lanes (the driving lane and the shoulder), while southbound traffic was using the southbound lane. However, northbound local traffic who were NOT going to the border were directed to use the southbound shoulder. What a mess! Thank goodness no one had mechanical difficulties or we would still be there.
An hour later, we actually arrived at the US border, and they pulled us over for 'special inspection'. That was actually a good thing, since it got us to the front of the inspection line. Two border patrol officers came aboard and while one looked through the fridge, the other gave a cursory examination of our passports. "Fridge guy" was going to take our eggs when Elaine pointed out that they were hardboiled and it said so on the egg carton. He apologized and put the eggs back and, his comment was that he has never seen someone boil eggs and label them, with a quick smile and wave, we were on our way. A short pause while they confirmed that we weren't carrying aliens or assault rifles (we were X-rayed) and we were back on the road, ahead of people who had been ahead of us in the pre-border lineup.
One of the things we didn't factor into our trip plan was that today is President's Day, and so rather than having normal Monday traffic, we have "end of the long weekend" traffic. We decided to stop at the Loves Truck Stop at Gila Bend, partly because we need to take on some gas and partly to get a burger for lunch. Loves has got to be one of the poorest designed gas stations in terms of moving large vehicles into and out of the gas pumps. There were lots of 5th wheels and other RV's (long weekend, remember?) and there was even an RV waste dump station, although it was located in the traffic lanes for getting away from the pumps. However, some skillful driving and we were out of Loves and parked at McDonalds.
After Gila Bend, it was a smooth trip west on I-8 to Yuma, arriving at the resort around 4pm.
Westwinds Golf and RV Resort seems like a nice place to spend a few days, and the neighbors introduced themselves right away. Gerry and Eileen are from Ontario and there are Albertans all over the place. As a matter of fact, Elaine was checking us in and Graham was unhooking the car when two guys showed up to chat, both from Alberta.
True to the title of this journal, we went shopping at Walmart for replenishment groceries and then went out to dinner at Applebees. Back to the motor home at about 9pm to watch TV in English for the first time in two weeks...Law and Order and CSI were on. What are the odds?
