Welcome to the Two Wheeled Texans community! 
Feel free to hang out and lurk as long as you like. However, we would like to encourage you to 
RedPill
0
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2007
- Messages
- 10,274
- Reaction score
- 1,817
- Location
- Fort Worth
- First Name
- Dan
- Last Name
- Gill
My wife, daughter, and I got back from Leon on July 27th, and I thought the Two Wheeled Texans might like to see a few pictures. No, we didn't ride motorcycles to Leon. We took two rental vans. This trip was a mission effort to do interior work on a church there. We took 13 teens (mostly high school sophomores) and 8 adults on the trip.
We left North Richland Hills early on Friday, July 18. The plan was to cross the border at Piedras Negras and spend the night in Monclova. It's a LONG way to Monclova from here. We ended up spending about 15 hours on the road that first day.
Welcome to Mexico!
The Piedras Negras stop was very quick - they told us to go to Allende to get our visas. Seems a strange way to do things to me, but it's their country. Processing 21 of us through in Allende took a while, and it was getting dark by the time we were finished. One of the young ladies fainted while in line (I told you it was a long trip), but that probably worked to our advantage. One of the officials, Roberto, became very concerned and let several of us take her into the air-conditioned office, then worked to make sure we got through as quickly as possible. He got to use his English on us, and one of the adults, who teaches high school Spanish, got to use her Spanish with him. Quite the gentleman, Roberto. We ate al fresco at our mobile restaurant outside the customs station.
The Allende Restaurant
I forgot to tell you that the trailer had no lights, and we never got them working on the trip. In Monclova we got stopped by the local police (armed with what looked to me like FN FAL Rifles). A few pesos changed hands and we got a police escort to our hotel.
Monclova Street
The drive from Monclova to Leon was 12 hours, and we ended up on a road we hadn't intended to take. We had only one map among us, and it may have been out of date. The thing is, we had Shawn Gary with us, the missionary who lives in Leon. But he was going by a route that was new to him, and that was a little interesting. Road signs are kind of limited in Mexico. Although they have thousands of signs that say "Don't throw rocks on the road," "Don't set fires on the road," and "Don't mistreat the signs." Odd.
We went through some beautiful, mountainous country, but it was kind of rainy and misty in the mountains, so I didn't get many pictures. We did see several of these:
Dude, where's my truck?
Apparently the chassis and engine are made in the U.S., and they drive them down to put on the bodywork in Mexico. Saltillo, I think.
I also got this shot at one of our stops.
You have to watch out for those church gang signs:
Leon is about 6000 feet in elevation, and the temps were great while we were there. We stayed in a downtown hotel. Aside from the cathedral towers, it's about the highest point in town, and the view is great.
From the 6th floor
Here's the church where we were working:
We were painting, cleaning, and fixing, but mostly we planned to stucco the 4th floor and stairwell, which was plain block with really ugly mortar. We got all that done in our 4 days of work. The kids were great! If they finished something, they'd come and ask what else they could do. And those boys carried every sack of stucco up 4 flights of stairs. My wife and I did the cooking for the team, enabling us to stay and work longer instead of leaving to eat breakfast and lunch each day.
Thursday we managed to get done early enough to take a tour of the city, see a couple of cathedrals, and visit the leather market. Leon is known for leather products, and we saw more shoes than Immelda Marcos ever dreamed of.
Here are a few shots from our tour.
Lion Arch
The Big Cathedral
Reflection in Cathedral Floor
A Scooter
There were lots of scooters, and lot of little 125 cc bikes that we don't see in the States. Unfortunately, most of them were whipping in and out of traffic and I didn't get any pics. One that was very prevalent was a Honda Cargo, with a solo seat and either a rack or a big square cargo box on the back.
Police Bike
These were fairly common. A Virago?
And Leon has Squids:
That was in the leather market.
Friday we headed home. The mountains were even prettier going through this time.
It was a great trip, but seeing one of these in English was a treat:
We stopped in San Marcos coming home to break the trip up a bit more. The original plan was to float the Guadalupe, but we got in too late. It was good to be in the land of free restrooms with toilet seats and toilet paper.
All in all a great trip. I didn't cover all of it, just a few points. I'd go back in a heartbeat. This was the first time I'd been deep into Mexico since 1970.
We left North Richland Hills early on Friday, July 18. The plan was to cross the border at Piedras Negras and spend the night in Monclova. It's a LONG way to Monclova from here. We ended up spending about 15 hours on the road that first day.
Welcome to Mexico!
The Piedras Negras stop was very quick - they told us to go to Allende to get our visas. Seems a strange way to do things to me, but it's their country. Processing 21 of us through in Allende took a while, and it was getting dark by the time we were finished. One of the young ladies fainted while in line (I told you it was a long trip), but that probably worked to our advantage. One of the officials, Roberto, became very concerned and let several of us take her into the air-conditioned office, then worked to make sure we got through as quickly as possible. He got to use his English on us, and one of the adults, who teaches high school Spanish, got to use her Spanish with him. Quite the gentleman, Roberto. We ate al fresco at our mobile restaurant outside the customs station.
The Allende Restaurant
I forgot to tell you that the trailer had no lights, and we never got them working on the trip. In Monclova we got stopped by the local police (armed with what looked to me like FN FAL Rifles). A few pesos changed hands and we got a police escort to our hotel.
Monclova Street
The drive from Monclova to Leon was 12 hours, and we ended up on a road we hadn't intended to take. We had only one map among us, and it may have been out of date. The thing is, we had Shawn Gary with us, the missionary who lives in Leon. But he was going by a route that was new to him, and that was a little interesting. Road signs are kind of limited in Mexico. Although they have thousands of signs that say "Don't throw rocks on the road," "Don't set fires on the road," and "Don't mistreat the signs." Odd.
We went through some beautiful, mountainous country, but it was kind of rainy and misty in the mountains, so I didn't get many pictures. We did see several of these:
Dude, where's my truck?
Apparently the chassis and engine are made in the U.S., and they drive them down to put on the bodywork in Mexico. Saltillo, I think.
I also got this shot at one of our stops.
You have to watch out for those church gang signs:
Leon is about 6000 feet in elevation, and the temps were great while we were there. We stayed in a downtown hotel. Aside from the cathedral towers, it's about the highest point in town, and the view is great.
From the 6th floor
Here's the church where we were working:
We were painting, cleaning, and fixing, but mostly we planned to stucco the 4th floor and stairwell, which was plain block with really ugly mortar. We got all that done in our 4 days of work. The kids were great! If they finished something, they'd come and ask what else they could do. And those boys carried every sack of stucco up 4 flights of stairs. My wife and I did the cooking for the team, enabling us to stay and work longer instead of leaving to eat breakfast and lunch each day.
Thursday we managed to get done early enough to take a tour of the city, see a couple of cathedrals, and visit the leather market. Leon is known for leather products, and we saw more shoes than Immelda Marcos ever dreamed of.
Here are a few shots from our tour.
Lion Arch
The Big Cathedral
Reflection in Cathedral Floor
A Scooter
There were lots of scooters, and lot of little 125 cc bikes that we don't see in the States. Unfortunately, most of them were whipping in and out of traffic and I didn't get any pics. One that was very prevalent was a Honda Cargo, with a solo seat and either a rack or a big square cargo box on the back.
Police Bike
These were fairly common. A Virago?
And Leon has Squids:
That was in the leather market.
Friday we headed home. The mountains were even prettier going through this time.
It was a great trip, but seeing one of these in English was a treat:
We stopped in San Marcos coming home to break the trip up a bit more. The original plan was to float the Guadalupe, but we got in too late. It was good to be in the land of free restrooms with toilet seats and toilet paper.
All in all a great trip. I didn't cover all of it, just a few points. I'd go back in a heartbeat. This was the first time I'd been deep into Mexico since 1970.
