Road Trip to San Miguel (7)

El Pegaso San Miguel

We made it! Web put on over 3,400 to the Clampett mobile. For a 2001 Tribute, loaded to the gills with our stuff, she ran like a top averaging somewhere between 25 and 28 MPG at speeds of 75 to 90 miles per hour, hour after hour.

We arrived in San Miguel in the sun at 4:30 local time, having spent 8 hours driving. Going through customs and getting the car permit were a piece of cake. It just took three hours. We hit Bridge One at 5:30am,  It's not an easy place to navigate. We made some false starts, but the girly navigator (Bev) got us all the way here.

First thing we did was go out to and have pizza for Bev and pasta for me.This morning we awoke to the sounds of maybe a dozen different birds, singing in the morning sun. The bells called Catholics to prayer, and we thanked God for the safe trip, our health, our friends, this beautiful city,and our marriage. This morning coffee at El Cafe de La Mancha

Road to San Miguel (6)

We arrived in Laredo last night at 9:00pm we lost two hours from time change. The Clampett mobile now has over 2800 miles on it since leaving PDXland. We drove at 80 mph much of the time from El Paso to Laredo. That's the speed limit most of the way! I was tired when we arrived. Bev spelled me for an hour and then another hour negotiating San Antonio. She really helped. I think I nodded off when I was driving for a brief second. It scared me. I said, "Whoa, I need you to take over, babe."

We are staying at La Posada, hotel with a colorful history. Erected in 1916. La Posada has 206 rooms and is the largest hotel in Laredo. It originally was Laredo's first high school, then an elementary school and finally purchased in 1961 for a hotel.

La Posada Hotel in Laredo

Sunday morning we cross the border and head south for over 500 miles.See you there!

Road to San Miguel (5)

We have put on 2,000 miles on the Clampett mobile and are spending the night in El Paso. We left Scottsdale at 10:00 and pulled into El Paso at 5:00. That was probably the most boring drive. You drive along at 75 to 80 MPH, for mile after mile through mostly flat country of desert and cacti. The nice thing was the sun and the temperature.

We are getting homesick for our our new home and fixing the terraces up with plants and hammock. We read the weather is great. Lots of activities scheduled for the festivities of holy week. Both of us are yearning for the new adventure.

Tomorrow we arrive a day early in Laredo and get ready the crossing and looking forward to seeing our San Miguel friends again.

We had a wonderful time at Sandi and Gerry's house. The backyard is a show stopper. A pool and beautiful desert plants, plenty of seating in the sun and shade, palms, tangello and orange trees, and grapefruit larger than two fists growing on the tree. A treat was a shared meal with Donya Wiland. Gerry and Sandi fixed ribs and while Gerry was disappointed, I thought they were very tasty.

We will be in San Miguel on Sunday the 29th. praying all goes well at the border crossing.

Road Trip to San Miguel (2)

We spent the night in Las Vegas. We are now just 30 miles shy of 1,000 miles on the Clampet Mobile since PDXland. We arrived a day earlier than I planned. My schedule had us in LV on the 18th, not the 17th. So now do we spend four nights here before trekking on to Sedona, or four nights in Sedona instead of three? We lean toward the latter.


Did some investigation of the geology of Northern Nevada and found this:

Nevada is unique. Consider the Himalaya region, where two continents are colliding and creating an area of very thick crust. Nevada is the opposite, where a continent is stretching apart and leaving the crust exceptionally thin.

Between the Sierra Nevada to the west in California and the Wasatch Range in Utah to the east, the crust has been extended by some 50 percent over the last 40 million years. In the upper crust, the brittle surface rocks broke into long blocks, while in the hotter, softer lower crust there was more plastic deformation, allowing these blocks to tilt. The upward-tilting parts of the blocks are mountain ranges and the downward-tilting parts are basins. These filled with sediments, topped with dry lake beds and playas in the arid climate.

The mantle responded to the crustal extension by melting and expanding and lifted Nevada into a plateau more than a kilometer high. Volcanism and magma intrusions covered the state deep in lava and ash, also injecting hot fluids in many places to leave metal ores behind. All this, coupled with spectacular rock exposures, makes Nevada a hard-rock geologist's paradise.

Northern Nevada's young volcanic deposits are associated with the Yellowstone hotspot track, running from Washington to Wyoming. Southwestern Nevada is where the most crustal extension is occurring these days, along with recent volcanism. The Walker Lane, a wide zone of tectonic activity, parallels the diagonal border with southern California.

Before this period of extension, Nevada was a convergent zone similar to South America or Kamchatka today with an oceanic plate sweeping in from the west and being subducted. Exotic terranes rode in on this plate and slowly built the land of California. In Nevada, large bodies of rock moved eastward in great thrust sheets on several occasions during Paleozoic and Mesozoic time.