Brian’s Microblog

March 07, 2026

We got up early and had a huge breakfast at the Best Western.

We got on the road a few minutes after eight and headed north. It was cool, around 55 degrees, and slowly warmed to the low sixties. We took the toll roads to save some time. It slowly got windier the closer we got to Juarez. There is a lot of sagebrush and rocks, but also some agriculture, including a lot of pecan trees.

There was a military checkpoint where we had to stop and a guy went through our luggage. The sign looks like a computer translation of the Spanish equivalent.

We completed our temporary vehicle import permits and terminated our tourist permit and got exit stamps on our passports at a low-traffic customs station on the outskirts of Juarez. Then we skirted Juarez and headed back to the Santa Teresa border station where we entered Mexico. Unfortunately the line was really long. We spent two hours slowly creeping to the U.S. entry station.

From there it was less than an hour to Ross and Maryanne’s house. It took about an hour and a half to get the bikes loaded up and sort out what would stay in the truck and what Gustavo would fly home with. Then we drove a short distance to Gary and Shannon’s house to pick up a gas tank needing transport to Portland for our friend Tony. Catching up with them took a while - eventually said our farewells and found a place to eat dinner and got on the road to Albuquerque, where the motorcycle adventure part of this trip ends.

This trip was a really fun ride and adventure. We saw a lot of neat stuff, ate great food, and found excellent curvy roads, but we could wish for better pavement on many of the roads.

March 06, 2026

We slept in a little and then walked down to the end of the block to have breakfast at Tío Molcas, a restaurant with its own hotel attached. The rooms at the Valles Inn Plus are much larger and newer - in general nicer and more spacious than most we have stayed in on this trip, but the bathroom has absolutely no towel racks or hooks. We had a nice breakfast at Tío Molcas - I tried their chilaquiles which were a different style, but still good.

We returned to the room without any hurry - the temperature was only in the forties. We packed up and left at ten when it got to fifty degrees. My tire was still holding air. We left Creel and, despite it feeling like Creel is high in the mountains at 7,700 feet we began climbing, eventually at least a thousand feet higher. While the roads curved around and over ridges, unfortunately the pavement quality was really bad for much of the ride out of the mountains.

We turned off at San Juanito to go to Basaseachi falls. On the road to the falls we could see the cabin where we stayed nineteen years earlier. The bad pavement we rode on today from the turnoff was just sixty-some miles of gravel road back then, and we spent most of the day going from Basaseachi to Creel, but with a few detours and side roads along the way.

We stopped at an Oxxo in La Junta after one thirty to get some cold drinks and a few snacks for lunch. By that time we were out of the mountains and on the plains, although the altitude is still 6,700 feet. The roads got straighter and there was a lot of agriculture in this area, most strikingly big apple orchards arrangements to cover the entire orchards with a net or mesh to keep birds out, and they also help ward off frost.

We arrived in Chihuahua a bit before five and checked in to the Best Western Plus. This is a very upscale Best Western, fancier than any Best Western I remember in the U.S. It is our most expensive hotel in Mexico of the trip on this final night in Mexico, a little over a hundred dollars (we have been between $50 and $60 in most places for a room with two beds). Still cheaper than the much less nice Ramada where we stayed in Las Cruces.

After unpacking lubricating the chains we made our way a few miles further to Gustavo’s sister-in-law’s house. She made us a very tasty dinner using hibiscus, chiles, and nuts with beans and tortillas. We talked for a while with her mother and aunt, and then went to run an errand for them again - a more than fair trade for the delicious dinner.

March 05, 2026

We got on the road around nine after a buffet breakfast at the American Inn hotel. It was starting to warm up in Parral, but as soon as we got out of town and started heading up into the mountains it stayed pretty cool. It even felt pretty chilly above 7,500 feet.

We headed west from Parral first on MX 24, then on MX 23/25. The pavement on most of the roads we took today was in poor to terrible condition which was too bad because these roads are curvy and have fantastic views.

We did eventually find a construction crew doing some paving, and then we got about three miles of brand new pavement, but that was one percent of the distance we rode.

We got to Guachochi and rode down a short bit of badly eroded gravel road to the Cascada el Salto. There is a nice park there and we ate some bananas taken from the breakfast buffet, cookies, and granola bars for lunch.

We weren’t sure whether there would be a gas station before we turned off towards Divisadero so we decided to fill up on the way out of Guachochi. But this guy in the truck was using both sides of the pump, and filling a couple big barrels like that takes a fair amount of time.

I was especially happy in this photo at the Copper Canyon overlook in Divisadero because I just saw that Kristi Noem was going to lose her cabinet position.

After looking at the canyon for a while and walking through the mostly-closed vendor area, the train arrived while we were getting ready to leave. We headed back on MX 77 to Creel.

We saw a sign about a Tarahumara sewing center and went down a dirt road to see what they had. They have a lot of the traditional women’s outfits and some other crafts. I got a neat keychain.

We arrived at our hotel around five. After unpacking and lubricating the chains we walked up and down the main street in Creel before settling on The Lodge for dinner.

After dinner we spotted this armored vehicle at a hotel.

It belongs to the state investigative bureau. While we were checking it out Omar, one of the AEI guys, showed up and talked to us about it and let us look inside. It’s based on a Ford F350 chassis but it looked to me like the suspension had been beefed up. Omar seems like a nice guy and I hope he doesn’t end up needing all that armor.

We walked back to the plaza because I wanted to stop at Ice Creel, an ice cream shop with a fun name.

March 04, 2026

We got up and had a nice breakfast at the hotel restaurant, then got on the road around nine. My tire was still holding air, so maybe the “fix a flat” stuff actually made its way to the right place.

It was a pretty straightforward day of riding north and west to Parral. We started on the main highways, 45 and then 49, but then we tried some different roads, taking Highway 33 from Nazas to 30 de Noviembre. It was warm most of the time and hot in some areas. There were some clouds once we got north of Cuencamé de Ceniceros and we got sprinkled on a few times which helped cool things down to the low eighties.

The more main highways in Mexico often have these shoulders that are almost a lane wide. There are no signs about this, but slower traffic typically either just drives on the shoulder, or moves over when they see you approaching in their mirrors. This way you can pass even with oncoming traffic. Even semis will do this - they just rely on oncoming traffic to move to the right since they typically have to be part way over the center line to pass.

We arrived in Parral at five and were very happy that the hotel room had an air conditioner.

After catching up on email and news for a while we walked a couple blocks to the Taco Factory. We had some very tasty tacos that came with every fixing you could think of.

March 03, 2026

Morning in Jalpan de Serra found us a bit groggy because the beds and the pillows in the hotel seemed to be more for show than function - these were the firmest pillows I have ever tried to sleep on. We had some protein bars and cookies as a light breakfast and left Jalpan around nine. My tire still had good pressure this morning. Highway 69 initially follows some rivers going north-west from Jalpan and we didn’t gain much elevation, but we did get to cross some low ridges and curve along with the rivers. Some good riding in the morning.

We stopped in Ríoverde at Hotel Renzzo for brunch - chilaquiles again. The food was good, and the service was stellar.

From Ríoverde we headed toward San Luis Potosí on MX 70. There were a few more decent curves on this road going over some ridges.

The roads started getting straighter as we passed through San Luis Potosí and got on MX 45, which goes through some other bigger towns. We were slowly climbing all this time, though, eventually getting up to 8,000 feet in Zacatecas.

These straight roads didn’t need much communication, so we switched our helmet intercoms out of intercom mode and I listened to an audiobook for a while and Gustavo played some music.

We arrived in Zacatecas around four and checked in to the Hotel Meson de la Merced again - we liked it last time. We got a slightly nicer room this time and I did a little sink laundry to get me through the last few days of this trip. Then we walked around the town. Last time it was getting dark by the time we wandered around, so I took a few photos with better lighting, and we wandered a bit further.

We walked by the Museum of Abstract Art and then started back in the direction of the hotel on a parallel street to see some different things. There are a fair number of little plazas with fountains or monuments. We were a little intrigued by the “Tacos Enveninados” (“poison tacos”) place, but not intrigued enough to eat them! Our guess is that they are super spicy.

Eventually we arrived at a plaza with a monument celebrating 100 years since the 1810 Mexican Revolution. This would have been erected just a few years before a second revolution in 1914. I was tired so we sat on a bench for a while and listened to to the very loud Grackles there. According to Wikipedia When grackles are in a group, they are referred to as a “plague” - I can believe it after listening to them for a while.

Gustavo did some research on nearby restaurants and found some good reviews for Comida Casero at Rincón Típico. It’s a tiny place at the end of a little alley. They do most of the business for breakfast and lunch, and only the owner and his friend were there talking. We were invited to join them at their table, then the owner got busy in the kitchen. We told him we did not want much, but what we got was a ton of food. He cooked while his friend talked to us for a while, then when the food started arriving his friend left and we talked to the owner while we ate. Imagine Bilbo Baggins in the Fellowship of the Rings movies, then make him Mexican and you get Jesus, the owner. He had a sort of halo of white hair, prominent nose, and the manner of Bilbo. We did enjoy it, but it was way too much food. While we ate, Jesus told us about some of his life, and it was clear that his dream for the past several years has been to make great food and watch people enjoy it. The green chile enchiladas are probably the best I have ever had.

And all that food came after a big bowl of Sopa Fideo (a simple noodle soup).

March 02, 2026

We got up around seven and just started getting ready to go. We have been eating so much that we decided to try having only brunch and dinner today. The morning light was pretty from our east-facing hotel room.

We got on the road a bit before nine. My rear tire held air again this time. It was already getting pretty warm but we started climbing toward the big cliff up in the clouds on Mexico Highway 120.

We went up and over a pass and left the state of San Luis Potosí and entered the state of Querétaro. It was wild to see and feel how the climate, the plants, and the geology all seemed to change right around the state line. The temperature dropped almost ten degrees, it got drier, and instead of jungle there were pine trees. As we descended, the pine trees gave way to stuff more like sage brush and it slowly got warmer. We stopped at La Terraza Restaurante just short of Jalpan de Serra and had a big breakfast around ten thirty.

Then we continued on 120, climbing up and over another mountain range, then back down and up again, finally coming out into a big, dry valley surrounded by mountains. We turned off 120 to go through Peñamiller. From there we took a little side road that goes west. This had some absolutely terrible pavement for the first several miles, so bad that I rode it like a gravel road.

Eventually, though, we reached a long section that had great pavement, but did have rock fall and bushes growing into the road. Still, it was very curvy and lots of fun. Finally we returned to Highway 120 in San Pablo Tolimán and started heading back towards Jalpan de Serra where we would spend the night. Gustavo had his bike’s motor traction control in off-road mode, and when he grabbed some throttle to pass a slow car in Tolimán the road was dusty or something and his rear tire slide a couple feet to the side - this is the closest we have been to having an accident so far on the trip. We stopped in Pinal de Amoles to drink some sodas and rest in the shade since even being at seven thousand feet elevation was not keeping the temperatures down.

We checked in to the hotel in Jalpan de Serra around five thirty and then changed clothes and walked around the town a bit. There is a big church that also appears to be an active convent.

The founders of the church also were big fans of the Camino de Santiago Compostela and have their own 127 kilometer Camino, at least if I understood the interpretive sign.

We got some ice cream and looked at a few restaurants, eventually selecting Serra Bonita where we had beer in frosted mugs and had a good dinner. I had a huarache (“sandal” - a thick corn tortilla shaped like the sole of a shoe) with nopalitos (prickly pear cactus) that was really good.

There was a really striking painting displayed near the main plaza.

After dinner we picked up some water and cookies to have for breakfast and watched the Thai MotoGP highlights. They also had a Tuk-Tuk challenge race which was pretty hilarious - the GP riders had to ride “two up”, one as a passenger and the other as driver, for a lap and then stop and switch drivers for the second lap.

March 01, 2026 We left around 8:30 after a quick breakfast of bananas and bread. My rear tire had still been full the morning before, giving hope that the sealant had worked, but this morning it needed some air. It was pleasantly cool in the morning and we climbed up into the mountains as the morning went on, so we stayed cool for a while. The mountain roads were really curvy but with varying pavement quality. The road goes through Los Mármoles National Park, but there are lots of tiny towns and houses built here and there alongside the road. The road crosses over ridges and feels like it spans a couple different mountain ranges. In the higher parts we looked down at valleys filled with clouds below.

After three hours of endless curves we stopped to have lunch just outside the city of Taman. I ordered enchiladas rellenas con huevos y cecina. What I expected was two or three enchiladas with eggs and meat inside, but what I got was six tiny taco-ish enchiladas filled with scrambled eggs and a huge but thin slice of grilled meat - really tasty, and enough food for almost two lunches.

By the time we stopped for lunch we had descended quite a bit and it was warm and humid. We continued going down into denser agriculture and more frequent settlements. The views were still impressive, but for part of it we were in the clouds (which felt cool) then we got out of the clouds and everything was very hazy. I have too many photos of mountains and valleys already so I didn’t take more photos, but I really enjoyed the glances I got when there was a chance to take your eyes off the road. We got down to some flatter areas. For a lot of the morning we had been between five and seven thousand feet, but now we were below five hundred. We had followed MX 85 from near Tasquillo north-west and then later north-east and finally we turned off and rode a couple dozen miles to Xilitla. We arrived around 1:30 so that we could check in to our hotel and get a taxi to the Edward James' Garden for their only English language tour of the day at three. Per Wikipedia, Edward James was the son of William James (who had inherited a fortune from his father, merchant Daniel James) and Evelyn Forbes (think Forbes Magazine). He was incredibly wealthy and he spent his life as a patron of the surrealist art movement, a dabbler in mysticism, a poet, and a drug user. He traveled a lot and became entranced with this valley and over the forty years from 1944 until his death in 1984 he lived here for a few months every year and hired artisans and workers to create physical representations of some of the surreal visions he had while using drugs as well as adapting designs and art from other contemporaries in the surrealist movement. Our guide Carlos did a nice job explaining some of the history and helped give some context to the wild and impractical constructions here.

After the tour we had run out of cash for the taxi and had started walking the hilly few miles back to the hotel, but we stuck a thumb out and got a ride from a couple who were on a road trip and had taken the Spanish language version of the tour. Gustavo later found them in one of the photos we had taken. We washed up a little at the hotel and did some route planning for the next few days, then we hiked up the hill to the center of town, wandering around a little before settling on a restaurant. I ordered some enchiladas for dinner that, despite having a different name, were quite similar to my lunch - the lunch was a bit better.

February 28, 2026

I think today’s loop from Tasquillo was the most epic day of riding of my life!

At nine we walked over to a street with a couple of laundry services. The one we’d heard good things about did not open, but the one across the street opened a few minutes after nine. We dropped some laundry off, then headed back to the hotel where the restaurant was to open at nine thirty. We had a very good breakfast of chilaquiles and scrambled eggs, but it was not included in the room rate. The chilaquiles came with green sauce instead of the red I had seen elsewhere.

We got on the road around ten thirty and headed north to Zimapán through some interesting twisties, but we ended up taking the wrong road out of Zimapán. It started as a twisty road with a lot of potholes that were patched with gravel, then turned into a very rough gravel road. After about twenty kilometers we realized we had the wrong road, but we did get some great views and some good practice on rough, rocky roads. We returned to Zimapán and got some gas because we weren’t sure if the extra forty kilometers would make it so we couldn’t complete the loop we had planned.

Once on the correct road we headed north-west (instead of south-west like the first time) and over a ridge, then on gravel roads down toward some mines in Arroyo Chipinque. The road got rougher and then the switchbacks got crazy. Mining trucks coming up the hill have the right of way, so we had to be careful to pull over in one of the occasional wide spots if we saw one coming up.

We saw a group of bikers down at the bottom of the switchbacks. We eventually caught up with them, but then as we started driving down the road that follows the creek, they ended up passing us when we stopped to take photos. This road is seasonal, and every year after the rainy season it has to be rebuilt by the mining company. The water was higher than what we expected because it is still the dry season here. When we got to this slot canyon we might have turned around if the other group of motorcyclists hadn’t gone through first.

Me entering the first of the slot canyon sections.

A big group of locals with side-by-sides were waiting on the other side of this slot section and one driver had posed his vehicle against the canyon wall for photo opportunities.

We both made it through despite stopping because of the crazy side-by-side. After another mile or so we stopped for a break in the shade.

There were only a few slot sections - most of the seven miles or so of this canyon bottom route was more like this:

We caught up to the big group of riders at a tiny store in Las Adjuntas, a tiny town. There were about ten guys from various parts of Mexico and one Irishman who had been living in Mexico for the past several years. We had some Cokes and a salty snack while we talked to the Irish guy - he is planning to ride up through Oregon in April. They took off, then we left ten minutes or so later.

There were a few more miles of rough gravel roads to get out to a highway (MX 120) where we quickly crossed the big river that the creek in Arroyo Chepinque joined up with. The bridge ran right into a short tunnel which was fun. Then this highway started climbing. We climbed about three thousand feet in a couple dozen miles. We caught the group again as they were heading to an un-marked scenic overlook on a ridge top.

This highway is absolutely epic motorcycle riding. Eventually it came to an end and we turned to get back to Zimapán by way of La Presa Zimapán, a huge reservoir (presa means dam or reservoir).

Finally it was back through Zimapán to Tasquillo and our hotel, arriving around six thirty. We were both exhausted despite it only being around two hundred miles for the day - the dirt riding, especially all the water crossings, was stressful and the road sections were so twisty that it was just intense all day long.

We walked back to COBA for dinner and had the Hawaiian pizza - was also really delicious, but I liked the smoky flavor of the barbecue sauce on the California pizza better. On the way back to the hotel we picked up some bananas and pan dulces (sweet breads) to have for breakfast tomorrow since we need to get an early start.

February 27, 2026

We got up around seven again after another night of good sleep. Letitia made us another great breakfast, then we said our goodbyes. It took a while - we didn’t get on the road until ten thirty.

We headed north and east and stopped in Tlalpujahua to look at the church and main plaza there.

Gustavo remembered there was a Christmas Village in the town and we walked toward where he thought it was, but we didn’t find it. It was hot, so we turned around and stopped for a Coke at a restaurant on the main plaza. We got back on the bikes and rode a few blocks further than we walked and found the Christmas Village - it looked like it was open, but we didn’t stop.

We got back on the road and stopped for lunch at Aculco. A plate of five small but delicious tacos al pastor at Julio’s Taqueria was only 85 pesos, less than five dollars.

We followed some smaller roads to avoid the toll highway. Before the lunch stop we came down from a ridge into a big valley and found a sequence of descending hairpin turns with hardly any straight in between them - that was really fun! Later we ended up taking some definite back roads - narrow and very rural.

We spent the whole day traveling across wide valleys and going over ridges of small mountains to the next one. Eventually we neared our destination for the night, as well as some bigger mountains.

We checked in to the Hotel Casona Marshei in Tasquillo and got a huge room.

The hotel has a lot of interesting artwork in the rooms and in the hallways. We washed up a bit and then walked around town a little bit, eventually finding COBA, a great patio restaurant only because Gustavo found it on Google Maps. From the street it just looks like an entry to some parking in the back or something, but instead you find yourself in a small patio with a big pizza oven. The owner and crew are friendly and the pizza was among the best I’ve had.

February 26, 2026 I slept well - it was chilly in the cabin because our hosts only use the heat when really necessary, but I had an extra blanket. We got up around seven and Letty made a breakfast of fruit and pan dulce (sweet bread). I think they usually only have a very light snack and coffee but Letty made sure we had as much as we could eat. We showered and talked for a bit, then we went riding with Jose Luis. He led us across the Lago de Cuitzeo to the small city of Cuitzeo. We found some parking near what I think was the main plaza, then Jose Luis took us to the Convento de Santa Maria Magdalena de Cuitzeo. However, the building was made by the Augustinian monks, and I don’t think they had nuns, so this was properly a monastery not a convent. It is a big building that appears to have been added on to several times since it was first constructed in the mid 1500’s. It has some art, and there was a ‘guest museum’ display of medically useful herbs, but the main point is just to see how the monks lived and the architecture and decorations of the building.

In the monastery there was still some elaborate painting on the walls and ceilings in places.

We walked a couple blocks to a rooftop buffet restaurant to have lunch. From there we got a good view of one of the main streets in Cuitzeo.

We headed back toward Jose Luis’s house and then continued beyond and turned up a winding mountain road that goes to an area of sulphuric hot springs called Azufres.

There are at least a couple dozen thermoelectric power generation plants here, and the different pipe types tell me things have changed over time as they added more generation capacity.

We went to a lake high on the mountain which appears to be a big domestic tourist destination during the summer.

We went back down the mountain and stopped at a llantería (tire shop) that Jose Luis has worked with before to see if they could figure out why my rear tire has a slow leak.

They put the whole wheel in a tank of water and discovered that the air is leaking from where the spokes go through the rim. KTM has a sort of cheesy method of making tubeless wheels - they just take a fairly normal dirt bike wheel and add something like a giant rubber band to cover the holes where the spokes go through. Apparently mine got damaged when I changed the tire. The guys at this shop did not have any way to fix or replace it so we ended up putting some liquid sealant in the tire hoping that some would get to where it needs to be. Then we headed back to Jose Luis’s house. I think I mentioned last time that Jose Luis lives on a primitive road.

Letitia had been busy while we were away and soon after we returned she had another delicious dinner ready for us.