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Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Playa de Cortes to Los Mochis and it wasn’t a terrible day!

We were packed up and on the road by 9:20 am. today.   228 miles to go to our stop at the gated Pemex about 5km south of Los Mochis. 

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Coming through downtown Guaymas and the traffic isn’t too heavy but they are bobbing and weaving around us. 

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Heading toward Empalme.

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Narrow on the stretch before we join up with 15D south.

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We are on and the construction starts.

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Just dandy….crappy pavement and it’s in our lane.

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Luckily it didn’t last too long and now we have the new concrete.  One lane….but it’s a big one on our side.

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Lots of areas of the new concrete are already patched and have potholes.  It will be a horror if the concrete breaks up and they have to deal with broken areas.

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Here you can see how wide the new highway is ….and look at that nice big wide shoulder. 

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The Yaqui Indian statue up ahead.

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We are almost into Obregon and we are sharing the southbound lane with the northbound traffic.  Still concrete. 

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Getting ready to make the left turn to the bypass around Obregon.  Last year this was a horror as it was all under construction.  

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Turn left and follow that truck!

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Wow….it’s concrete and even though we will soon share it with the northbound traffic it’s nice and wide. 

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This will be great when it’s all finished.

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A bit of chaos just as you come off the bypass and join 15D south.

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Around we go.

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And really crappy pavement here.

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This is a monstrous bucket for some monstrous machine that is part of a huge oversized load.  We are hurrying by as the toll booth is coming up and we don’t want to be stuck behind it. 

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Coming into Navojoa and these cattle are being herded along the edge of the road.

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The thermometer says 38C!  Hot. At one point it got up to 40C.  We’re getting ready to pull into the Pemex at the north end of Navojoa and have lunch. 

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We got parked and as I looked out the window there were the cows from the edge of the road. 

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I wondered if they’d come up and join us for lunch.

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The cowboy was right on them and moved them all back.  The horse bumped them back and the cowboy gave them a little slap with his rope.  All very quietly done and no panic at all. 

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Pretty warm while we ate lunch.

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Coming through Navojoa.  In the earlier years we took the truck bypass around the main street but it was so rough we started going right through town.  It looks like the bypass might be all repaved.  Has anyone gone that way lately?

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Navojoa is a really pretty little town.

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Horses at the base of the Navojoa sign. 

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On the last stretch of Sonora pavement before Sinaloa and the toll booth we hit an area of about 10kms of really bad pavement.  Our speed was only about 30 kms per hour.  It was all on a shared two lane stretch and although some people passed us many didn’t. 

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Welcome to Sinaloa.  No concrete highways here but the pavement is pretty good.

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Sinaloa has huge areas of agriculture.  Pretty here and when I checked the altimeter we were –104 ft. in elevation.  We had no idea this was so low.

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Need a new tractor?  Mahindra is from India and this was a huge sign. 

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Getting closer to Los Mochis.

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Nice and green here.

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The statue at Los Mochis.  Seems to be a horse pulling a plow.  A bad shot….but you get the idea. 

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Dust or smoke up ahead where we’ll be spending the night in the Pemex.  It’s quite windy so maybe it will all blow away.  We’ll park on the north end of the lot because the wind always blows towards the south and all the big trucks kick up a lot of dust as they turn in the gravel. 

We were in and parked just after 4pm. A seven hour day but there was were quite a few areas were we had to got really slow and there was lots of switching back and forth from one side to the other.  We are never in a hurry and always leave time for unfortunate incidents.  Today we didn’t have any and in the end it was a pretty good day!

The generator is running, the A/C is on and Eric is watching a saved show on the PVR while I work on the blog.  We’ve had beer and huebos rancheros for dinner and the dishes are done.  A darn fine evening.

Tomorrow….off to Mazatlan.   

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