May 7, Ciudad Jimenez, MX to Ft. Davis, Texas - 395 Miles

Hurrah, Hurrah

We're back in the good old USA!

Today's ride from Mexico's Ciudad Jimenez to the border took us two times through the Military roadblocks, and the second time they did make Jim and Alex open their bags on the bikes.  The military guy I had seemed more interested in looking at the motorcycle and listening to my little description of where we had traveled, and didn't make me open the bags.

We reached the border towns of Ojinaga on the Mexico side and Presidio, Texas on the U.S. side with no problems.  There we had to check out with the Mexican immigration, which meant standing in line for awhile, getting an official to take our official entry papers and the identification sticker from our bike's windshields, and give us an official exit certificate.  Getting through U.S. customs was easy, and there we were - back in the U.S.A.

The first thing we wanted was a U.S. style Hamburger - the Mexican "Hamburgesa" just doesn't cut it.  However, there was not a single U.S. style fast food place in the border town of Presidio, so the hamburger had to wait until evening provided a really good restaurant in the little town of Ft. Davis, Texas.

From Presidio we took a Texas highway that wound along the Rio Grande river, including tremendously rugged rock canyons with the river way down in the gorge.  The road was fun because it had a lot of "roller coaster" ups and downs.  The ups were a hundred or more feet in elevation change and so steep that when we approached the tops, we didn't know whether there was a road down the other side until we actually plunged down.  It was a thriller!

We did have one problem along that highway.  I was in the lead and chose a place to stop to view the river gorge, but the parking there was on a bad slope, and Alex's bike tipped over.  In the process, one of his foot pegs got broken off, and we had to rig a substitute.  Fortunately, Jim had a set of "highway boards" installed on his bike, for stretching his legs while riding, and we took one of them off to substitute for Alex's foot peg.  It worked all right, and let us keep riding.

On the way to Ft. Davis we hit quite a heavy rainstorm, and had difficulty just seeing the road for the downpour.  However, we came through none the worse for wear, and had a nice cool afternoon to ride on to our destination.

We chose a little "Mom & Pop" older motel in Ft. Davis, but it was like the Tajmahal, compared to some of the Mexican hotels we had stayed in.

In crossing the border, we had ridden 4,700 miles within Mexico, with our mileage to and from Albuquerque to the border to add to that.  That will add on the order of 1200 miles, and I'll report on that when we are home.

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