Mexico...character and culture.

  So when I was traveling last week, I popped across the Mexican border with Merida to Naco, Sonora to grab breakfast and spend some time relaxing in a park. On the way back to the US, I stopped into a little family-run store to buy some Mezcal to take home. The woman running the store has to call her husband on the phone to get the price because none of the bottles were marked, and the price she recited to me seemed expensive, kind of like I was buying it back in the US, but I still thought it a bargain so I paid it.

I left and headed for the border crossing three blocks away. Just as I got there the owner’s son ran up and asked me to please go back to the store as there was “a problem”. He didn’t know what it was. I checked my wallet and saw that she gave me the correct change. What was this, some new sort of scam? Why did they want me back in their store? I was literally fifteen feet from the border walkway and the turnstile that I could go through but he could not. What should I do? Tell the kid no and just cross? Go back and see what the angle was?

I thought about it for a second. I really didn’t have a bad feeling in that store and didn't get the idea that the senora was trying to pull anything so I went back to see what the problem was. As it turned out. she’d mistakenly charged me double on the bottle that I bought and she wanted to apologize and return the overage.

She could have kept it and I’d never have known.

I was so impressed that I bought a second bottle in lieu of a refund.

There are scams aplenty in Mexico like everywhere else but time and again I get reminders like this that the average Mexican is damned honest. That's why I'm really getting to be fond of these people and their country.

So I'm back

 And I realize that it's been hella long, but the old electronic gear wasn't doing it, and trying to do Blogger from an iPhone was quite the exercise in frustration. But now I have a new computer that runs something more modern than Windows 7 (Don't judge me!) and it plays nice with the new phone I had to buy last week when the iPhone 5 finally bit the dust.  In sum, I'm reasonably modernized and connected again.

So...where to start?  The three doggoes are still here and doing fine. Murphy had a toe removed last month do to an infection that wouldn't stop, and he also had a fractured tooth with an underlying abscess removed and fixed, so he's feeling fine again and I'm feeling poor. (Vet bill for him alone last month was higher than my mortgage payment.) But he's my pal, so...

"Three-toed Murphy" he shall be known as. 

And it was worth it to see how much better he walked and ate after doing all this work. Apparently he'd been masking it well but it had been impeding him a lot.

Belle's just Belle--a sweet, gentle, fairly obedient dog.

And Merida...Sigh. There's always one.

Don't let the cute face fool you...Baby Murder Dog has killed four chickens and a pigeon in recent months. but when not slaughtering domestic livestock, she's really quite cuddly. 

There's a new van project here too. Meet Rocinante.

I picked this up  at auction a couple months back. It's diesel and 4-wheel drive and it's factory built for off-road use. I'm converting it into a camper and I just finished a first trial trip with it, going from Louisiana to the California desert and back, Stopping to visit friends along the way, of course. It's still a work in progress, but it's performance was flawless this time out, between pulling 16mpg hwy and clawing up jeep trails in the desert, it did everything I asked of it. Right now there's a bed in the back but a kitchen and solar power system are coming next. Merida came along with me on this trip and while she's not exactly an adventure dog (she prefers to sleep in or under the truck), she nonetheless had a good time, being it "standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona"

or hanging out at Hoover Dam

Or melting in the California Desert

She even saw Mexico and had a real taco.

Not an unhappy dog.

But now we're home and I've got 21st century tech finally and blogging shall resume, with stories and pics and other musings on our pre-apocalyptic days. But I'm only sticking around so long as I get the idea that I'm not just posting for the same six readers. If you're still out there, let me know, eh?

 

Horsing around

And these are some of the wild horses that I saw while driving or hiking around in Nevada. Some were way out in the desert, others right in town. Wild horses. They go where they want.

Alas, even a horse's days in the sun are limited. Via con Dios, horse.

Lake Tahoe

After Donner Pass, I had to go see Lake Tahoe. It was as pretty as everyone says, but it's totally surrounded by rich people and there's virtually no access to it and not much hiking to be done there.

Still, there was beauty to be seen, such as this dam at Tahoe City where water is released into the Truckee river.

And there was a small step hiking trail to the top of Eagle Rock, which was worth the effort as it was a good test of my brand new leg.

Yep. Made it up. New leg rocked!

I drove around the rest of the lake and saw what there was to be seen. Some scenery, like this spot where a massive rockfall had come down some years ago and cut the highway for months.

Lots of nice views, especially on the south end.

Scenic to be sure, but crowded and mostly all owned by other people, so I wasn't too sad to bid it farewell.

Next morning, I met up with Mike, a blog fan from Texas who just happened to be in Reno for the day himself. We did some pawn shop gun shopping and saw some neat stuff, but alas, it was all trashed and overpriced and they wouldn't meet my offers even though I offered more than I should have for a couple. (Low-number 1903 Springfield, sporterized stock and WW2 rebarrel. They wanted a grand. I offered $500. The manager would only come down to $650. Also a Winchester 1895 in .30-40, an early one. COLD-BLUED and messed-up front sight. The guy still wanted $3,000 and didn't seem to think $600 was even worth asking the manager about.) So we hit a casino for coffee, and then I had to do the urgent care thing for medicine before I could head up into the mountains to start mine-hunting.

Reno, the first days

The first day, after nearly missing my flight because my alarm clock died and consequently making a record-setting dash from my bed to the airport via Uber and onto the plane in just a tad over 50 minutes, I managed to arrive in Reno. And talk about service! Within twenty minutes of me getting off the plane, I was driving out of the airport with my rental, everything taken care of. Vegas, kiss my ass--Reno knows w to do it.
I next grabbed a horrible Chinese lunch and a room in a rather crappy two-star motel for the night, and then I got cleaned up, took a nap, and went to see the sights:

It's not the Vegas strip by any means, but then it doesn't have all that Vegas crap revolving around it either. I liked it.

Next morning, it was off to get some warmer clothes and then invaded California and headed up to Donner Pass.

I did stop at the state park there and saw where the Donner Party had their epic cook-out in 1846, and then I headed up to the pass proper where I parked and hiked up to the old original transcontinental railway line, which is now a hiking trail overlooking Donner Lake.

The first hill climb and the look back to my car down on the road:

Chest pain, but what a view!

Donner Lake.

Support wall for the rail bed built by the Chinese laborers with just hand tools in the early 1860's:

The rail bed. The trail here passes through a mile and a half of concrete show sheds to keep the snow off the tracks lest it derail the trains. The original line was abandoned and is now a historic hiking trail, but because it's in California, everybody's kids have spray-painted graffiti on just about every inch of it.

Snow sheds and tunnel, outside:

And inside:

All that history, ruined by punks. There should be a law forbidding the sale or possession of spray paint by anyone under 30. But the Californians hiking here seem to think that it's "art" and somehow ok.

The snowshed, viewed from outside:

And more Donner Lake. Just because I'm up here, dammit.