4 November ‘09 It seemed a little strange waking up to an empty campground… Lukeville really doesn’t have a lot around it except the border crossing, gas station, small grocery store/restaurant/insurance office, the campground, and a motel that has closed down awhile back. That’s ok, all we wanted we received, enough electricity to run our air-conditioner and make my coffee in the morning. We were up and ready early and across the border into Mexico by 9. 15 miles down the road we stopped at the immigration office and took care of our travel papers and importation sticker for the Minnie Winnie. I really don’t mind all the paper work that it takes to travel here in Mexico, but it’s all the running back and forth from one building to another and then back again to the first. Then once that’s all done, you’ve got to run to another to have copies made of all that has been done and returned to the first again…anyone make any sense out of that???? We did get “ripped off” at the copy shop, that will qualify for the first “ripped” opportunity here in Mexico and it only took being here a couple of hours. 3 pieces of paper copied (one copy each) and it was $5 US!!! I probably could have avoided the opportunity if I had smaller peso change available, but all I had were $200 peso’s (about $15+) and they didn’t have any change (but the $5 would work PERFECTLY!!!). OK, boo-hoo… We drove the rest of the way to our next stop of Santa Ana on really nice wide roads that were lined with the desert hills and mountains on both sides.
These were quite a surprise to us, as we had expected much the same as we’ve experienced driving the Baja, narrow, very narrow at times, and no shoulder…the roads to day were reminiscent of roads we drove in Poland. These are nice 2 lane roads with a “driving” shoulder. When a car, bus, or truck comes up from behind, you move over onto this shoulder area and let them pass…it could be that there are 4 vehicles that meet side-by-side with the two inner lanes being the passing lanes. Anyway it works and I’m grateful that we only had 3 abreast while passing or being passed… Our campground here in Santa Ana is one of the smaller campgrounds we’ve camped in but the couple that own it are wonderful….Ana and Edger.
We’re using the “Mexico Camping” book by the Church’s and they recommended this one to us and their recommendation was spot on. There is only room enough for 8 to 10 RV's parked here so when your here your "Like family"... Most of their customers are "return" RV'ers and we will be as well when we come out in April. We also used the Church European Camping Guide when we did our journey through Europe…we wouldn’t be without one. Just before going to dinner, we took a walk into town. Santa Ana sits down below us so we started our walking journey walking down hill…the town is a wonderful little town with great Spanish architecture that dates back to 1790 or before. It’s not new, and it’s not all that well taken care of, but it’s great! In the center of the town is the Catholic Church with a wonderful green grass park to one side. Further up on the hill we came across this large cemetery that was all decorated up from the “Day of the Dead” celebration.
Over-all we walked about 2 to 3 miles before getting back in the dark and then we had to find our “taco stand”…
Taco’s, a cerveza, all taken care of we head back to the coach (Minnie Winnie) and enjoy a warm and beautiful night under our awning.