Final Post...New Beginning

Well, here we are, back in Maine.  After five years in Mexico, we have returned to Maine to live for most of the year.  But we plan to return to Mexico every winter.  We are staying in Waldoboro, about an hour and a half north of Portland, in my late dad's and step-mom's house.  We will be here for a couple of months until my step-mom, Joy, arrives and gets settled in.  Then we plan to move to an apartment in Portland where we will find a new UU congregation and make our life. We are missing all our friends in Mexico and look forward to returning for three months after Christmas!  


In the meantime, we are living in a nice home in Waldoboro.  here is a photo of the house...

 Here is a view from the house of the Medomak River...

And when we walk down to the tidal river, here's what we see...

So we will be happily living here for a couple of months.  Chuy is happy to be out of the car, and we are enjoying just living and cooking our own meals.  


Before we left Philadelphia, we had a wonderful family gathering on Easter.  Here are some photos:


My brother Fred and me...

 Our niece, Alissa and Chuy...

Our brother-in-law Brian and Chuy...

 Brian and my step-sister, Beth...

 My step-mom, Joy and my brother, Fred...

 Our niece, Nora...

 And, finally, our nephew, Eric, brother Fred, nephew Mark, and niece Alissa...

So this brings us to the end of Maine to Mexico.  I have enjoyed documenting our expatriate life in Mexico and our regular return trips to Maine and Indiana.  But now that we are located in Maine for nine months a year, the purpose for this blog has ended, so, indeed has this blog.  


I have started a new blog, Mainely Common Sense which is a spin-off from my monthly column in the Mexican magazine, El Ojo del Lago (the Eye of the Lake).  In this new blog I will take my blogging in a different direction and, from time to time also comment on our life in Maine and Mexico.  I invite you to join me in this new venture at http://mainelycommonsense.blogspot.com (see link in left-hand column at top of page).


And, I would like to thank all of my loyal readers over the last five years.  Maine to Mexico will stay online as long as Google permits it.  

Still Slowly Makin' it Back to Maine

Here are Pixie and Lynn Cleek.  We met Lynn shortly after our migration to Mexico in 2007.  She and her dear husband, Gary, had to un-retire and go back to work for a few years.  They live in Washington D.C. When we went to visit, though, Gary was working in Arizona and was unable to return for our visit.  We spent five days with Lynn and saw many sights in he Capital.  Here are some photos.  Most are obvious, but the first is the 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon.  

 Here I am with my hero, FDR, at his memorial...

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 The library of Congress and the National Botanical Garden...

Now we are in Philadelphia visiting my family and preparing to head to Maine on Monday, ending our long journey.  Here is my step-mom, Joy.

and my step-sister, Joanne, with her husband, Brent.  They graciously watched Chuy when we were in DC.  They have a little dog, Chester, who poses here with Joanne's son, Eric...

Before arriving in Philadelphia, we stopped in Centerburg, Ohio to visit my long-time friend from Brown, Dennis, and his wife, Deb.  We enjoyed a wonderful evening and look forward to connecting again soon.  Here's a photo of Dennis and Deb...

Now we're looking forward to celebrating Easter here, then we're off to Maine, finally!  

Taking a Break in Indiana

We are spending a relaxing week in Muncie, Indiana with our son Eric and his family.  While Eric and Crystal are working this week, we are able to have much extended time with our grand daughter, Isabelle. As you can see, she is bonding with Chuy and he with her.  Here are more photos.  The first two are of Isabelle emulating and angel and the devil: 

"Grannie" always loves unstructured moments with her sweet grand daughter...

 Dad has to attend to the fatherly chores, like making sure her face is squeaky clean...

We stopped in Little Rock on the way north to get some new tires and visit the Clinton Library.  Little Rock is a nice city.  We found a room at the La Quinta in downtown, free for Chuy, for $71.  Not bad. We visited the library and had dinner down by the River Market area.  Of course, I forgot to bring my camera to the Clinton Library, but here is a photo of the post card at least!  

 Back in 1972, my friends from Brown and I traveled through Louisiana.  As a blues and Dylan fan, I posed next to the legendary "Highway 61" signs.  On this trip, we followed the highway for a time in Arkansas, so I posed again in what I might shamelessly refer to as "Highway 61 Revisited." 

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 When we arrived in Indianapolis on Friday, I had a chance to visit my cousins, Rod and Martha, children of my father's 94 year-old sister Alice.  It was Rod's birthday, so we had a small celebration.  Here are Rod and his wife, Deb, with their dogs, Gracie and Bochi...

 Martha, with her fiance, CE...

 Chuy loved hanging out with Gracie and Bochi, even though he was at a disadvantage in terms of size...

Here are Rod with his mom, my aunt, Alice.  Although she is suffering from several maladies, she just published a memoir and gave me a copy on our visit.  She is a painter, sculptor, and writer.  She even has an architectural detail on Westminster Abbey in London.  A remarkable woman, in every respect and my Dad's beloved sister...

Next week, we will be heading to Columbus Ohio to visit my friend from Brown, Dennis, and then on to Philadelphia...

On the Road Again

No new photos now, but I wanted to post an update to our adventures in San Antonio.  We spent three rainy days in the hotel without a car, eating at the Denny's next door, waiting for the windows on our car to be repaired.  When we got the car back, we packed up 15 boxes of stuff and took them to FedEx to ship them to Maine.  We shipped them to our good friends, Curt and Judy, who readers of this blog may remember visited us three times in Mexico.  Anyway, the boxes will likely be stacked in their garage in Auburn, Maine when we arrive. And our car, although still packed with plenty of stuff, no longer poses such a delicious target for a would-be thief!


We are now in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, planning to go into Little Rock today to get some new tires for the RAV4 and to stay in town overnight and, hopefully, check out the Clinton Library this afternoon.  We are now planning to be in Indianapolis by Friday and stay with my cousin Rod and hopefully visit Alice, one of my dad's older sisters while we are there.  Then, off to Muncie, for a week with Our son, Eric, and his wife, Crystal, and our grand daughter, Isabelle.  Then we'll visit my old Brown friend, Dennis, in Ohio, on our way to Philadelphia.  


So, with few clothes, and albeit a bit poorer, we're whole again and enjoying the trip.  Chuy's been a good little traveler.  He likes to explore the crabgrass and litter around each motel.  Next time I'll have some photos to post as well.  We miss all our wonderful friends from Ajijic while, at the same time, are looking forward to establishing our life in Maine again.   

Trouble in Paradise; no, no, I mean TEXAS!

These photos were taken about 4AM Thursday morning outside the LaQuinta Inn in San Antonio.  We were sleeping peacefully, when Chuy started barking.  When I looked out the window, I noticed a young man who had already cut open our canvas roof carrier and taken all our clothes and shoes, and had just smashed our driver's side window and our passenger's side rear window and was in the process of trying to take more items out of the car. Thanks to Chuy, I ran out and chased him away.  The police came and interviewed us, and an evidence cop came and took blood samples (the idiot had apparently broken the glass with his hand and bled all over the dash board).  I doubt they'll find him though.


So we were left with trying to figure out what to do.  We figured that our car was so obviously loaded with stuff, especially with the canvas carrier on top, that we were an obvious target.  We decided to unload the entire car into a new ground-floor room.  This took us till about 6AM.  To make the rest of our trip better, we decided to ship some of our stuff from San Antonio to Maine.  And our car is at the local Toyota dealer being repaired.  We're hoping to get it back this afternoon, ship our boxes, and get the hell out of Texas!  


Overall, we lost a bunch of our clothes and shoes, but none of our other Mexican treasures, and, of course, no one was hurt, except for the young thief (no sympathy here!).  So we were fortunate, and we hope the rest of our trip will be less eventful.  


We'll keep reporting from the road, hopefully about a lot of boring days!

Crossing the Border

Here we are, yesterday morning, on Zaragoza in front of Ron and Jean's house, ready to head north with our car packed and Chuy ready to go in his crate.  I am happy to report that, after a couple of long days, we have crossed the border into Laredo, Texas.  We collapsed into a La Quinta Inn and ate dinner at Denny's next door.  Tomorrow we're off to San Antonio, where we need to have some work done on our car, so we'll likely be 2 or 3 days there.  


Mike and Christi were there to send us off, along with Ron and Jean, of course. (Although Jean did not want her photo taken, as she was still in her PJ's).  

  Last Saturday, right before we left, we had a wonderful evening with our close friends Fred and Mardele and Jeanne and Paul.  We enjoyed cocktails at Fred and Mardele's, then they all treated us to dinner at Simply Thai, and we returned to Fred and Mardele's for a late night swim and dessert, coffee and liqueurs.  A wonderful evening!

The drive through northern Mexico was interesting.  It is very dry, with few people living there.  We saw some interesting sights, including several fires burning with no one attending them, many beautiful joshua trees, and long stretches of flat land with few inhabitants:

Chuy has been riding in a crate, right behind the front seats, surrounded by boxes.  He's been doing great.  We get out about every hour so I can exercise my leg and he can get out of the crate.  Here he is in his crate: 

We spent about an hour and a half in line at Neueva Laredo crossing the border.  It was very tedious, but we made it, although we had to pay $16 for tax for the five bottles of wine we brought with us!  Here is our view of the line we waited in:

And, finally, here is Chuy, in the motel in Laredo, his first day as a US resident!

We'll keep posting throughout the rest of the trip...