Crossing Border into Mexico on Sunday

We said goodbye to the Priem’s at 6 AM, they are early risers like us. Leaving early in Houston is a good thing, there was very lite traffic all the way to Harlingen, TX. We got there at about noon but had a lot of stuff to do.

First thing since we have a new RV with a larger awning, we needed to have our patio mat enlarged by 4’. They don’t use the same color material anymore but luckily found a scrap wide enough to work for us.. This took about 2 hrs., so we bought a few things at the big flea market.

Next stop was to drive to the border at Progreso, TX. We parked on the USA side and walked to the Mexican customs to get our FMM’s (Mexican 180 day visa). This is the slowest place I’ve ever seen, instead of giving you the form so it could be filled out and then pay your 290 peso/person and have your passport stamped. She talked to everyone and it took over an hour. But we were glad we didn’t drive over, there were two lanes of cars backed up for a half mile that we walked past, but even the pedestrian line was long and they had 4 agents checking. I guess all the winter Texans go over to shop and have dental work done here.

By 4:30 we were back in Harlingen where Peggy got her fix of mall shopping while I checked my e-mails at a McDonald’s. We will stay the night at the big Wal-Mart and do some last minute grocery shopping. We hope to cross the border at 6:30 AM.

Here is a link to tomorrows plan, from there you can see each day’s plans.

Tomorrow's Plan

We made it to Houston

After two nights on the road in Wal-Mart parking lots, we finally made it to Rich & Tracey Priem’s house. Rich is my 2nd cousin and we have been close for years. He started kayaking 40 years ago at the same time I did. They have three sons who get bigger each time we visit.

      Cade                                                      Finn                             Dane

We will visit for a few days and hope to get an early start to TX/MX border on Saturday morning. We will get our camp patio mat enlarged to fit our new larger RV awning, and get our Mexico Visa so that we can cross the border early on Sunday morning.

RV Factory Repair

We pulled our RV into the Phoenix factory at 6 AM. The problem was a leaking rubber seal on the side-out which contains our refrigerator and dinette.

This is what the inside of our RV looked like at 6 AM.

One hour later the dinette was removed.

Then they removed the refrigerator.

 

The adhesive on the big rubber seal adhesive had failed and come loose from the rubber seal, not from the slide-out floor.

Here is the new seal.

They had to remove the slide-out to put the new seal in. Of course rather than just rely on the adhesive to hold they actually screwed down the new seal.

In their spare time they put in a new emergency exit window since when we tried to demo it, the window seal did not comeback together properly. They didn’t  know why, so they just installed a new window.

They completed everything and had us back together by 11 AM, a 5 hour job. They sure know what they are doing. A local RV sales place near us told us it was a 40 hr. job.

Minutes later, we were on the road to Houston. We will go via South Bend, Indianapolis, West Memphis, AR, Texarkana, AR, Marshall and Livingston, TX.  We will stop overnight at a Wal-Mart when I get tired.

I got tired at 4:30 PM and we stopped overnight in Salem, IL, and had a KFC dinner and a early sleep.

 

On Our Way

It was a rough week. Luckily we brought our new motor home early to pack for our Mexico trip. Super Storm Sandy hit the East coast of the USA on Monday morning. The storm was so large that all the way in Ohio the outer bands hit us hard. It had been raining hard for a few days and on Monday night the 70 mph winds hit the North coast communities. Trees were down everywhere and the power failed around 9 PM. Our power company had sent most of its trucks & crews to the east coast to help them out. Not realizing that our area would be hit hard. There was not enough help to remove trees that had fallen on the power lines. Crews from the far West USA were sent in. Of course it took them 3-4 days to arrive. We had no power, people’s basements were flooding, no sump pumps, food was spoiling in the refrigerators and no political commercials to watch on the blackened TV’s. That’s a good thing.

We had better luck, we had our RV home with a 4 KW generator and deep cycle batteries to run a inverter at night, so I didn’t need to run the generator. We hooked up the power with heavy long extension cords to our sump pump, refrigerator and one TV and a few lamps. When we needed to cook using the microwave we just stepped out to the RV microwave and used it. However it was obvious we wouldn’t be able to leave for our trip until the power came back on. We were also going to cancel our early Thanksgiving dinner that Peggy prepares before we leave for the Winter. 18 family members were expected.

Another weather concern we had was the big snowstorm they had at our cabin in WV. The power was out there also and the report was 24” of snow with lots of trees down. Bud Chavez our neighbor went down to check on everybody’s cabins, no big problems. He sent this picture.

Power was restored at our home on late Thursday afternoon, dinner plans were back on, trip plans back on. Now never mind my mask, here’s my plans (as the Lone Ranger used to say), dinner on for Saturday, clean up, finish getting house back in shape and leave before noon on Sunday. The trip is starting out with a trip back to the Phoenix RV Factory to repair a rubber seal on our slide-out. It’s west but about 2 hours out of the way heading to TX . Hopefully they can do the repair quickly so we can be on the road heading south before 12 noon.

We slept in their parking lot on Sunday night since they start work at 6 am Monday morning and we didn’t want to lose a minute.

Less than 3 weeks before we leave for our Winter trip.

2012-2013 Trip Planning

We bought a new Phoenix Cruiser RV for this year’s trip. We had two large Solar Panels (280W) installed on the front of the roof and our kayak rack and TV antenna mounted closer to the back so that we don’t get shadows on the solar arrays.

We also had 2 - 6V Trojan golf cart batteries installed to give us plenty of deep cycle capacity. These combined with an 1800W inverter will give us 110v power to watch TV and use our laptop at night. We included a system which keeps track of your batteries state of charge.

Power at RV parks in Mexico is always a problem. Even though some may have 30 amp outlets you will seldom find more that 10-15 amps available to your rig. Other problems are; many do not use a ground wire which could cause the outside of your RV to be 60v above ground. Some reverse the hot & neutral wires making it even worse. The last problem is that most of your electrical appliances and motors need to operate between 104 and 132V. We found that the voltage could drop as low as 80v and go as high as 150v in some campgrounds. This would really cause problems and blow circuit boards.

So we use an Energy Management System (Progressive Industries) that turns off the power when any of these conditions occur. I carry a copper ground rod and a adapter to switch polarity when needed.

We use the Internet and Skype to stay in touch with our friends. Telcel markets a USB modem which connects wherever you can pickup a cell signal. It is inexpensive and no contract is required. It is much faster than dialup service. Depending on how much bandwidth you use, the average cost is about $30-40 per month.

Our travel plans can be found on this link 2012 Mexico Trip Plan, with route maps for all our travel days. We hope to get out of Ohio by November 4th but like other years we will fly home for the Christmas holidays.