This is in the bakery, nothing modern here. The fire has been burning for over 30 years and they are still baking like thy did 100 yrs ago. We did try some samples....delicious.

One of the many shrimp boats out in the bay. We are sick of shrimp after eating our fill this week.

Buenas tardes

That is good afternoon to those that don't hablo Espanol (speak spanish). We have been in Mexico for over a week and we are starting to get used to the garbage, dust and mangy dogs. Puerto Penasco is a great place, there is an old fishing port where you can charter boats for fishing (Richard didn't bother because they are only catching trigger fish ). There are 3 different market areas, a bakery with a dirt floor, grocery stores and lots of dusty roads. The weather keeps getting warmer.....we like that!! We are camped right along the beach so the kids have had fun exploring and looking for shells. There are lots of older people here who seem to miss their grandchildren because they give our kids balls, chocolate bars and love to chat with them. One constant here in Mexico is the peddlers. They are everywhere on the beach and in town, selling jewellry, shirts, braiding hair, jackets and everything else you don't need. We have enjoyed bargaining. Tomorrow we will be heading back into the States and I think we will be going to Phoenix but we aren't sure yet.

We liked seeing what kinds of shapes we could give the cactus. They looked very cool.

Hot tubbing with Kayley Morch in Arizona.

Puerto Penasco, Mexico

Ola, we are in Mexico. Our first impression is that it is ugly and dirty with garbage and mangy dogs running everywhere. It is especially a huge contrast to the 5 star rv resorts we were staying in in New Mexico and Arizona. We will be staying here for about 2 weeks I think and then head back into the states, this isn't really Richard's cup of tea. We get mobbed by Mexicans when we go on the beach.....the girls may get their hair braided.

In Tuscon, AZ we stayed at a nice rv park with our own personal hot tub on our site. We didn't see any of Tuscon really because we were busy doing school and going in the hot tub. On our way down to Mexico we passed through Organ Pipe National Monument which is a desert full of those big huge cacti.

Sandman

White Sands National Monument

Market in Juarez

Balloon Rally

Las Cruces, New Mexico

We travelled from San Antonio to New Mexico. The scenery changed from low scrub forest to flat tumble weeds to hilly arid slopes to beautiful arid mountains. It does my heart good to see the mountains again, personally I was getting a little tired of flat land. We made it to Las Cruces (just past El Paso, TX) in 2 days from San Antonio. At one point the highway goes right along the Mexican border. We are so close to the border that we are planning to take a trolley to Cuidad Juarez in Mexico tomorrow.
Today we went to White Sands National Monument. We were really happy to see that it was close to our campsite. I had pretty much given up seeing it so it was a special treat. We had lots of fun surfing and sliding on the dunes. There was a large group of MP's about to be deployed to Afganistan. They gave the kids saucers for sliding so they had lots of fun. The sand is as white as snow and it just so beautiful to see the different shapes of the sand dunes. The sand is gypsum which comes from the mountains in the streams and since there are no rivers or streams out of the valley it stays there when the water evaporates.
We love the camp we are staying at so much we are staying here till Monday. We get a free breakfast every morning....that will save us on cereal and milk!! The breakfast is awesome, muffins, waffles, eggs, fruit, juice and cereal. Then on Friday it is margarita night...free margaritas yahoo!! There is also a free newspaper every morning so Richard can get his news fix.
It is now Sunday. On Friday we went to Juarez. It is a big, smoggy, dirty and crowded city but we loved it. We took a cab to the main market instead of doing the trolley like we had planned. At the market we were of course pestered to no end. Catherine was interested in cowboy hats but we didn't find any we loved and we plan to be in Mexico by next week so the need wasn't immediate. We then walked around town looking for boots for the kids but we couldn't find anyone that hablo English. Finally we found a store that sold boots and spoke English so we stopped in and bought boots for the girls and Richard. You can't beat the prices in Mexico.
On Saturday we headed over to Brown's Field to take in the annual Balloon Rally. It was so beautiful to see all the hot-air balloons up in the sky and lifting off. There were 70 balloons all together.
The kids are a little laid up right now with bad colds with a cough so we skipped church today. Tomorrow we are heading into Arizona.

San Antonio pictures

The church at the mission by the campground.

In front of the Alamo

A portion of the riverwalk

One of the columns and some stalagmites in the caverns

We thought this flow stone looked like a jelly fish.

San Antonio

We are ready to leave San Antonio today so let me just tell you what we did here. Our first day we went to the Alamo, the riverwalk and to a mission down the road from our campsite. The riverwalk is a series of sidewalks along the river with veranda seating for lots of restaurants, the perfect place to people watch. The Alamo is where Davey Crockett died along with 186 other Texans fighting against the Mexicans. The mission was very interesting, it became the home for the indigenous people in the area to protect them from the Apache and starvation. There was a church and a grist mill and in the wall were all the 2 room 'houses' of the inhabitants.

Yesterday we went to see Natural Bridge Caverns. This was a really neat cave system that was just full of columns, stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws and flow stone which looks like curtains. It was 21C and 99% humidity inside the cave. The kids found it really interesting. Today is a travel day and we hope to be in El Paso by the weekend (9 hr drive) so we will do that in 2 days.

Johnson Space Center

This is the Apollo 18. You can't see the module from here but trust me, it is really small and sits at the tip of these huge fuel tanks.

Mission control exactly as it looked when they landed on the moon. Jenna bought a badge that was designed by the astronauts. It has an eagle holding an olive branch.

This is inside Building #9 looking at the simulator for the International Space Center. Right now there are 3 astronauts in the center, we watched them on a live camera at the space center.

Houston, Texas

On Tuesday we arrived in Houston, Texas. One of our first impressions of Texas was traffic jams because we sat in one for about an hour waiting for road work....it was a good thing we had a bathroom and food at our disposal. We spent our first day in Houston catching up on some school and then today we headed to Johnson Space Center. It was very interesting and educational. We watched movies of all the past Apollo and Gemini rockets. There were old lunar modules to look into and also moon rocks to touch. There was a display on the life of an astronaut while in the space station, eating, sleeping and hygiene (special toilets that suck if you were wondering). The kids enjoyed the Martian Matrix which was essentially a huge playplace. We also took a tram to Mission Control and also into the building with all the simulators (Space Station, Shuttles and CanadaArm) which the astronauts train in. Our last stop on the tram was seeing the actual Apollo 17 rocket which was the last Apollo built before the program was scrubbed in the 70's. The rocket was huge. 9/10ths of the rocket was just fuel, with the lunar module stuck onto the top looking very tiny for 3 people. This was the last Apollo rocket completely built but never used.
Tomorrow the kids will eat astronaut food that I couldn't resist buying. Freeze dried ice cream....Yum.

Pictures finally

This is the beach in Destin, FL where we spent Christmas. The beach was just so gorgeous. This is what the locals call sugar sand because it is so white.

One of our many beautiful sunset pictures.....so many pictures.......

Gulfport,MS about 6 blocks from the beach....the orange paint underneath the message 'not coming back' says 'all out and ok' this was written by the first rescue crews that came through.

This picture is taken about 4 blocks from Beach Dr. looking towards the ocean. As you can see, there is nothing left except some old oak trees.