Welcome to Casa Den

Hi,

We're moving on to new technology for our Mexico trip log this year. We'll see how this goes.
This year there's a new wrinkle, as you probably know: building a vacation home in Puerto Escondido, on one of the three small lots I bought last winter, on the east side of PE, 500 meters up from the point (La Punta) that marks the end of Zicatela, the main surfer beach which is about 2 1/2 miles (4 kM) long. The black rectangle on this partial map of PE mark the lots, 20 M wide x 15 M deep each.

Here's the trip plan for 2008-9. Liz, Sophie and I will leave Port Hope in an overloaded 1996 Nissan Sentra sedan with 159,000 miles and a recently-changed engine, on Sunday, November 17, to spent our last northern night at Melville's home in Pickering. We'll leave early Monday morning in possible snow showers and be on our way. I think we'll take the Windsor-Detroit-Cincinnati-Nashville route to Memphis, where I have a free room reserved at the La Quinta. I have a pile of La Quinta credit points from my time in Texas last spring. It's about a 15 hour drive, 1010 miles, so if we get going by 5:00 am we should be there at 8 PM of we can average 70 MPH on smooth, fast, free US Interstates. We'll pass through Ontario, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennesee, (and not quite Indiana, across the Ohio river).

From Memphis we cross Arkansas, Texas, Texas, and Texas. Our second night is planned for the La Quinta in Kyle, Tx, 700 miles down the road, a bit past Austin. If we get a good start and feel like continuing, we could stay at LQ's in Corpus Christi or even Brownsville instead. So if all goes well, we'll enter Mexico sometime Wednesday, and start driving shorter days. I have yet to choose a route through Mexico. I like the gulf coast route but have read that it is in pretty bad shape this year so it might be a good time to go inland.