On Tuesday morning, we jumped on the ATV to check out some of the trails behind our campsite.  Stilla carried our dog, Coach along for the ride.

We ran into a lot of “dead end” trails:

At one point, we rode down through the “wash” below our camp site.  You can see our Coach on the hilltop.

The Urban Escape Vehicle is 2nd from the left.

We found a lot of hidden campsites… some occupied, some not.

We even found a Pet Cemetery.  We stopped to look around and pay our respects.  It was rather unexpected to find this as we were riding along one of the more improved roads.  Some folks put a lot of work into their pets’ final resting place.

There were even a couple gravesites marked “Unknown” that some caring folks took the time and effort to do.  I thought that was nice.

One of the trails we followed ended abruptly at a cliff-edge overlooking the canal.

After backtracking a ways… we got on a trail that went as far as the border which you can see in the pictures below.  The parking lot is the one we paid our $6 to park in when we visited Los Algodones last Saturday.

We had worked up an appetite, so we decided to spend the afternoon on another trip into Los Algodones, Mexico for a late lunch.  We left little Coach in the big Coach with some windows and vents open for cool air circulation, and took the Silverado to the $6 dollar parking lot, which is just a couple minutes down the road from our campsite.

It wasn’t long before we were sitting in the shade at one of the restaurants in Los Algodones, Mexico.

I took pictures of the menu in case any of you “blog-readers” want to place an order for delivery… might take a while tho 🙂

I ordered a Pacifico beer with my meal expecting to get a normal size one… this guy was huge, but it was OK, Stilla helped me finish it.

Stilla ordered one of the combo plates – burrito, enchilada, and tostada.

Stilla also ordered the tortilla soup that we shared.

I had the fish tacos, they were delicious.  I’m becoming a fan of these.

After, lunch we ran the gauntlet of vendors again… I couldn’t count the number of times we heard; “look here – almost free”.

I was thinking of Cheryl and my brother Steve when I saw this horse sculpture:

I was thinking of myself when I took a picture of these neat stained glass items:

When we had enough of the vendors and peddler’s, we headed back to the border crossing, which to our surprise and amazement, had a line that stretched for blocks… it wasn’t at all like this last Saturday!  We walked right out as quickly as we walked in the last time we were here.  We overheard some folks say that they hadn’t seen it this busy since 2008… it was like some sort of weird star alignment and everyone decided to come visit at once on this Tuesday.

Here’s a picture of the front of the line.  The border crossing building  is at the end of this covered walkway and to the right where there is still more covered walkway up to the checkpoint.

Here’s a picture of the middle of the line.  You can see more vendors and peddlers trying to get everyone’s last dollar up to the last minute.

And here’s a picture of the end of the line… way back in the distance is the end of the line.  As you can probably tell from these pictures… Stilla and I sat at the outside bar section of one of the restaurants, took pictures, and waited until the line became more reasonable.  We sat there for almost two hours while we nursed a margarita.  Sometimes, you just have to do, what you got to do 🙂

It was almost dusk again by the time we got back to little Coach.  He was just fine again.  What a good guard dog.  Sadly, we missed “Happy Hour” with our neighbors today since it took so long to get back out of Mexico.

And that’s all for now… it’s late morning on Wednesday as I finish up this journal entry.  We’ll probably hang around the Coach today and maybe go check out the casino at some point later this evening.

Stay tuned…