Day 6---February 14th, 2004

We were up early and it was a nice sunny day out again. You can see the nice room we stayed in at the Dolisa motel in Alamos. I highly recommend staying here. We couldn't make the fireplace burn--but we really didn't need the heat anyway--lots of nice hot water, which we didn't always have.
We went to the central plaza--every town in Mexico it seems has a central plaza and had a great breakfast at the Las Pameras restaurante. I highly recommend eating here.

I wished we had ate out here on the patio. While here we learned that Carroll O'Connor of "All in The Family" fame lived and died here. A man told us he use to see him come to the Las Pameras and eat wearing a sombrero and sandals. His descendants still live here and have lots of property.

He was a guide in town and told us of the big old historic jail on the hill above the plaza. I told him me and Kenny better not get near it as they might keep us----he laughed and told us they didn't except tourists.

There were many crafts for sale on the plaza---sold by the Tarahumara Indians.
On the North side of the plaza was this huge beautiful church with so many bells in the bell tower.
We did not want to leave this town it was so beautiful. We sat on a bench and just kicked backed and relaxed.
We headed East out of Alamos toward Navajoa (Navahoa). We tired of the pavement pretty quickly and I tried to take a short cut across the desert but had to backtrack to the highway where we saw a guy on a horse trying to get his herd of goats across the highway.
I found another dirt road out in the Senora desert towards Batacosa---now this was my kind of riding. Nobody was out here.
These signs pointed us to wherever we wanted to go. We headed for Quiriego, a very tiny village.

Here is the town plaza in Quiriego. We could not find the road leading out of town to the North going to Rosario. We went around in circles for quite a while when I saw the weirdest thing. There was an old gas water heater leaning up against a house and it was all black and smoking. I looked closely and they had built a wood fire in the bottom of the water heater where the gas burner used to be. I wanted a picture, but everybody was peering at us and we quietly left.

The road North was closed for repairs and we thought we couldn't get through---finally someone directed us to a by--pass, right thru his torn down fence across some barb wire, thru his yard and left to the road. It didn't look like he was leading us to anywhere but his backyard, but we made it through.

Kenny just had to go the hard way !!!!

We rode for miles through one ranch after another on a one lane dirt road crossing a dozen cattle crossings. It was beautiful out in the desert this time of year.

The ranch road North of Quiriego led us to Rosario (Rose---are--eee--o). We we ran into two of the nicest guys. We talked motorcycles for a 1/2 hour. They spoke no English so we just grunted and pointed but it's hard to explain how we talked for so long.

One of our new friends had roared into the Pemex on this 60's model Honda 65cc step through. It ran like a top---looks like he had some huge truck mirrors mounted on his bike. He had a carpet cleaning business in town and really enjoyed our company. I turned on my heated grips for him and put his hand on them-----he smiled the biggest smile---bueno (good)---yes bueno !!

This is the only road going motorcycle me and Kenny seen the whole time we were in Mexico besides the American adventure riders we saw.

More very curvy blacktop towards Yecora (Ya--kor-a). We rose to an elevation of 5,000 ft. on this road and it was gettin cold
A street in downtown Yecora. Yecora was at about 5,000 ft. in elevation.

Well this motel has quite a story. It was about 42° outside----43° in the motel room. No heat----again, I don't mean it didn't work---there was no heat--none--nada. The water really never got hot in the shower as the hot water line had to come 150 ft. to our room and was barely buried under the cold ground and the ground would just soak up all the heat out of the hot water. Me and Kenny got out our sleeping bags and slept in them with all the cover on the bed on top of that. We kept warm tho--kind of like camping out--inside !!!

I took a shower--but it was tough, and Kenny said he wasn't going to take one in the cold room and went to bed. He snored all night like a freight train

The next morning Kenny woke up and was just sore all over--all his bones were aching---no wonder he had slept on a concrete bed !!!! With no box springs.

We laughed till we choked again !!

We could see our breath in the room that morning as it was about 32° in the room. The standing water outside the motel room was frozen solid. We couldnt't wait to start riding and turn on all our heated gear and be warm and toasty !!

"Ahhhh--Mexico"

Day 7