On our way

The Guadalahara Restaurant

The Frontier at Algodones, MX

Fran bargaining for a purse!

ON OUR WAY TO PIO PICO

Getting an early start to our Summer Trip on Monday, we made a stop at Algodones, MX, to buy our stock of medications (don’t call ‘em drugs) and booze, a candy wrapper purse for Roseann, and finally lunch on the terrace of the Guadalajara Restaurant.

“Algodones” means Cotton in English and has only one reason for being; that is to furnish cheap medications, booze, eye glasses, dental care and native items to Americans who make the trip into this small Mexican border town, where there are many dozens of each type of store. Of course, the winter snowbirds from all the northern states and Canada bring hoards of customers in the winter months; but by the time of our visit in May there are few visitors left and what was once a two plus hour wait to re-enter the States is now down to only a few minutes. We have been visiting Algodones for over twelve years and have watched it grow and clean-up its act to improve its appeal to the Gringos.

After a few hours in old Mexico we continued westbound on I-8 toward our destination of the Thousand Trails Preserve at Pio Pico, California where we will kick back for a week. However, this was the first time we tried cutting off the Interstate to California Highway 94 which parallels the Mexican border for some forty miles, often to within 1/4 mile. This gave us a good view of the new border fence which is quite impressive in places. Far from being the simple fence that most people envision, the fence is built through some extremely mountainous areas with massive granite outcrops. This all requires extensive grading and moving many tons of earth and rock. Also along this road at Campos we found the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum, a very large railroad museum complex with railcars and track all over the valley. We will try to find out more when we have a connection to the internet which is sadly lacking at the moment.

That’s all for now folks!