Driving Vacation

Roads

We followed Mexican Interstate 15 all the way south from the Arizona border. Our destination is a small town located about 20 miles off I-15 on a smaller intersecting highway. Generally speaking, the interstate is thoroughly modern and in good condition; however, at the time of our travels, hundreds of miles of it were under construction. In most cases the old road is being torn out and a completely new road being built. Delays were minimized by working on one side of the road at a time and having two-way traffic on the other side. We noticed that the highways are remarkably free of litter.

A rural segment of Interstate 15

Once you leave the interstate, the condition of the local roads is much more variable, but nearly always in fairly poor condition. There are frequent potholes; lanes damaged by heavy truck use; animals (individual and herds), pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists on the side.

A lesser thoroughfare at the intersection with a small town

Then there are the speed bumps – “velocity reducers”, as the signs call them. These are used with great frequency, and actually a pretty good tool for controlling motorists’ speed. For example, when approaching a town, an intersection, a dangerous curve, etc., one or more speed bumps are used to slow traffic for safety purposes. On the other hand, though, they are often poorly marked, e.g., there’s not always a warning sign and, although they were painted when they were installed, that paint has worn off and now the bump blends in with the rest of the road. Also, the speed bumps tend to be very tall, so you really have to slow down – especially when you’re driving a minivan loaded with a lifetime of belongings and with a tow hitch on the back!

The Drive South

At the time of our decision to drive to Mexico, the US State Department had standing warnings advising American citizens to avoid travel to parts of Mexico due to dangerous conditions. In particular, five Mexican states were identified as “Do not Travel” zones, and the level of risk was compared with travel in Syria, which is in the midst of a civil war. Our route was going to take us through three of these states, and our final destination was within one of them.

US State Department advisory map

This was of concern to us of course, and perhaps more-so to our friends and family. But we did not want to let fear stop us from this life-changing trip. We had successfully traveled a number of times before in Mexico, so we felt a certain level of comfort. Not to mention that my wife and I are both fluent in Spanish.

In an effort to heed the safety warnings for driving in Mexico (not counting the advisory to not travel in Mexico!), which advise to only drive during the daytime, we spread our 1,300-mile trip over four days. We headed out around 9 or 10 each morning, and arrived at our next stop around 6 or 7 pm. That gave us enough time for a relaxed schedule, allowing us to get the rest we needed and to not have to rush along the way.

We enjoyed much beautiful scenery along the way

By the time we got settled into our hotel or Airbnb each day, it was early enough that even though it had gotten dark, we didn’t hesitate to walk around in the evening looking for places to eat. In some ways I feel we got lucky, especially when we booked Airbnb’s – since we are not familiar with any of the towns we passed through in Mexico, we had to use our best judgment when selecting places to stay. Ultimately we felt that all of our choices turned out well. We met many great hosts, and we never had any trouble finding good food at nearby restaurants or at local roadside stands.

Dinner at a roadside stand in Topolobampo

For the drive south we had no electronic navigation because we’re on a quirky phone plan and it would have been expensive to use it in Mexico. Instead, we plotted out each day’s drive on GoogleMaps, used our iPads to take screen shots of any important points along the route, and did our best to not get lost. For the most part we followed Mexican Interstate 15 all the way, we just had to make careful notes for how to get off the highway and into each of the towns we stopped at along the way. The interstate passes near some well-known places such as Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan, but we didn’t stop anywhere that would be recognized as an American tourist destination. We were focused on getting to our final destination as soon as we reasonably could. I acknowledge that “soon” is a relative term, since it took us about six weeks from the time we left California to the time we arrived at our destination in Mexico! Stay with us as we describe life in Mexico.

Introduction

In 2017 my wife and I elected early retirement from our jobs and went off in pursuit of a whole new adventure. Up until that point we had good, stable lives, with steady jobs, great families, good friends, a nice house. Yet we felt we were missing out on something – we had both worked since our teenage years, without a break (except for some “time off” for Maricela to raise our children). We had taken vacations over the years, but they were always limited to one or two weeks at a time, due to the demands of our jobs. As we looked forward, we could clearly imagine our next 10-15 years: continuing at our steady jobs, along with their long commutes and corresponding stress, and the hope of retirement some time in the future, along with the hope that we would still be healthy enough at that point to enjoy our retirement. That didn’t feel like enough for us, so we decided to take a risk: we sold or gave away most of our belongings, squeezed as much as we could into our newly acquired minivan, and hit the road.

At a campground during the drive across the US.
This is before the thunderstorm arrived and forced us into the van!

First we took several weeks to drive from California to Florida to drop our daughter off at university. Having just given up both of our jobs, we economized as much as possible, tent camping where we could, and staying at an AirBnB or hotel when the weather was bad.

As Californians, we are used to highly predictable summer weather: hot and dry, every day. We soon discovered that this is not the case everywhere. We frequently encountered thunderstorms or strong winds, which dampened our camping ideas. But we made the best of it.

After Florida we drove back to California over the next couple of weeks to pick up our dog who we had left behind for this portion of the trip.
Following nearly 8,000 miles crisscrossing the US, we drove another 1,300 miles south of the US-Mexico border from the crossing at Nogales, Arizona deep into the central Mexican state of Michoacan. Some people think we’re crazy to go travel so many miles by car, but it’s how we’ve always enjoyed traveling. We get to see more of the countryside, we get to stop and interact with people, and we have the freedom to make stops and detours according to our own schedule, not according to an airline schedule.

In a sense, that is the same reason we left behind our jobs – it’s not that they were bad, but we wanted the freedom to live life on our own terms. Making a long commute five days a week and working long hours puts a lot of constraints on living how we want. Of course it also provides financial resources that aid in living how we want. That is how we came up with the idea of moving to Mexico. We felt that with our small pension and our savings, we would have enough to afford a reasonably comfortable life there, more so than what we expected we could afford living in the US.

I have left out a lot of details here of our first two months of travel. This is because the initial focus of this blog will be on the move to Mexico and the transition to daily life there. Maybe I’ll go back later and write about our travels in the US. Stay tuned!

Leaving Pleasanton

What are we leaving?

Originally “Leaving Pleasanton” was going to be the title for this blog. I hesitated with that because our new adventure is not really about leaving anything – our home town of Pleasanton, our jobs, etc. It’s about where we’re headed – we’re headed to an entirely different lifestyle in another country. We’re looking for new experiences and the adventure of doing something completely different.

I’ll try to use descriptive titles for the posts. Browse through them to see if any sound interesting. We’ll be posting more over the coming days and weeks.

Oh, and why did I not go with “Leaving Pleasanton” for the title? It seemed too limiting, as leaving our hometown was just one of our adventures. I looked for an available web address that encompassed our initial adventure yet was broad enough to allow me to write on other topics. Please join us as we share our adventures here.