Back in the USA

See Map 8

We left Neptuno Campground around 6:30 AM on Tuesday. Our plans were to make it beyond Tampico. Well, when we got to Alamo, a nice bypass of Tuxpan, we found that they are rebuilding the toll bridge. This backed up the North bound traffic for 2 miles and it was just parked. We sat there for an hour before it even moved one car. Lots of traffic was moving southbound. Finally after an hour and a half we made it. The roads to Tampico were rough but no big chuckholes. We decided to chance driving straight through Tampico instead of the bypass. We figured if anyone stopped us we would say we were going to or from the airport which is on that route.
We made it all the way to where the bypass comes back into MX-180. We overshot a crosswalk stopping for a red light but stopped well before the intersection. Just as the light turned green again a motorcycle cop rolls up and pulls us over. He says we were blocking the crosswalk and he needed to give me a ticket. He asked me to come back by his bike and kept saying I could pay him directly, I told him no, give me a ticket. He finally gave me my license back and said go. NEVER PAY A BRIBE, that’s all they want. He did ask if we drove through town, I said only to the airport and he said OK.
Even with these two stops we passed our first possible camp spot, Country Road Inn, at 2PM. Too early to stop ,so we drove to Soto la Marina where we had camped before at a Pemex. The road gets better each year and was fast with no traffic, It was now 4:15PM but the temperature was in the 90’s, so we said lets drive another hour to the big Pemex we camped at last year at the intersection of MX-101/MX-180. Not a soul around, everything was closed. Was the drug violence the problem? We found several more Pemex’s closed past this one.
We were beginning to wonder where we could stop, finally at the MX-97/MX-180 intersection there is another 24 hr Pemex, a big restaurant and a nice hotel. Not many people around, we got there at 6PM and the restaurant closed at 7PM. Turned out to be a nice quiet stop and only an easy 2 hr drive to the border.
On Wednesday, after our border crossing we went to the Trojan Battery Distributer in Harlingen, TX and purchased two new batteries for the RV. My 3 yr old batteries were shot. We then headed to the Donna Flea Market to have the place we bought our patio mat fix the bad job they did installing the grommets. The mat itself was great, as it lets the water drain through and keeps the sand out of the RV. They fixed it free while we shopped.
On Thursday we head up to Houston to see my cousin Rich and his wife Tracey and their three boys.