We finally had a chance to take the camper out this weekend – with very poor planning and last minute prep. Even so, leaving last night at sunset from the house, we made our way an hour and some south to Las Cienagas and a few thousand acres of BLM. Somehow in the pitch dark, we stumbled upon a pretty spectacular location.
Although yesterday was in the high 80s in Tucson, it was freezing throughout the night. We were somewhat prepared for that, but still a rough night and Yun ended up sleeping the truck.
I’m sitting by the fire while the dogs roam free. I was awoken this morning by cattle traveling through our area.
We have been wanting to travel with Chad and Bailey for a while now. Chad is an old friend and my current employer. We have worked together now since 2004. This is the first time we traveled together and it turned out to be a lot of fun.
We rented a couple apartments in Zapopan in Guadalajara for a long weekend. I arranged a driver to be with us for our entire trip – available when needed. It was a great trip.
We flew in on Friday (direct flight from PHX, 2 hours) – rushed from the airport to a private cooking class where we learned to make a Oaxacan dish.
As we were running late – and the airport was about an hour to our destination, we had to do about twice the speed limit to make it in time. Fortunately, we made it in time (I figured we had a 50/50 chance we’d make it alive).
The meal was great. Also, our class came with unlimited tequila, which probably guaranteed whatever we made would end up great.
Next day we decided to travel north to the little village of Tequila. Yun and I have been here before years ago and it was a lot of fun. We ended up doing the same tour at the Jose Cuervo distillery that we had done before. It was just as much fun as the first time.
We had a great lunch and then toured around the town. There was an indigenous festival where a group of men swing upside down from a pole. Odd, but fun.
Tequila is such a fun place to visit. It’s maybe an hour north of GDL, but with traffic, it can take some time and we mostly slept on the way home. Well, they slept and I kept our driver entertained.
On Sunday, we did some charro lessons. Charros are Mexico’s attempt at a sort of knight class. They look like mariachi on a horse. We got some horse riding and lasso lessons and a lot of history. It was actually fun (I wasn’t much optimistic).
After watching the charro club do their thing – we departed to head downtown and tour around the center of town. I don’t recall ever doing this before – even though I once stayed in GDL by myself for months.
Later in the evening, we ended up going to an Atlas soccer game. I’m not much into the futbol, but it turned out to be quite a lot of fun. We had pretty spectacular seats and it was a great game. I would do it again for sure.
This was a really fun trip. A bit exhausting as no time for rest, but a really helpful distraction.
Mostly done. Orlando came up to work this weekend. Since I got the truck this last week, I wanted to try and get the camper done as quickly as possible.
There’s always something more but we really did make progress this weekend.
45 today. We had a nice dinner at Sulivans. Tim and Kim happened to be there at the same time, so we got a drink together after dinner. The treated us to some spectacular tequila.
We are taking my boss and his wife to Guadalajara in a couple weeks to celebrate both Yun and his birthdays. That trip will include a visit to the small town of Tequila. We have been there before and loved touring the Cuervo distillery.
We spent last weekend at a cabin we rented in Elgin. It was a really nice break from the work madness. I slept a lot – 4 hour naps daily. It was all so very refreshing.
This was our first trip we these new dogs. We had so much space to ourselves these guys could run endlessly without leashes. They seemed maximally happy.
Elgin is an hour and change SE from Tucson, so it makes for a fun trip with little travel. I’d go back for sure.
