Leaving Arroyo Seco for the bright lights of Puerto Vallarta

NUEVO VALLARTA, Nayarit, Mexico - The Admiral and I loaded up the Toyota Tundra Friday for a flash visit to son Dustin's casa here, with a quick stop at the 2,500-elevation city of El Tuito to visit new amigos Joni and Greg.

The El Tuito house that Joni and Greg live in is so neat, I forgot to take a single photo. I'll try to remedy that on our next swing through, probably Monday morning when we head back to Arroyo Seco to help with the Great Sod On project (also known as Operation Dust Off) back at the Pink Flamingo.

Here in the metropolis that is Puerto Vallarta (and Nuevo Vallarta to the north) we pack in all the visiting we can with granddaughter Sasha, son Dustin and daughter-in-law Cami during our three or four day stays.


Sasha at rest

But, in addition, I frequently check in with my city doctor and, of course, the Admiral and I make pilgrimages to two consumer high shrines in the city: Costco and Home Depot.

Costco is almost always worth the visit, Home Depot less so. Home Depot is not the Home Depot of the U.S. - though outward appearances lead you to think so. Most of the Home Depot prices are relatively high for materials. And many fairly common household articles are not available at all.

But like many places Mexican, the Home Depot here doesn't follow all the protocols of its U.S. counterpart stores. Today the garden section in Puerto Vallarta was scene of a big art project involving children and store staff, with materials all donated by the store.

The kids were having a ball.


Students make - and paint - flowers

But more important for us this trip was finding bar stools at - four simple stainless-steel beauties at a near U.S. Home Depot price. The stools will now grace the bar made by a welder amigo in Arroyo Seco for us. We might test the stools out at son Dustin's breakfast bar tonight, with a bottle of Spanish wine we bought yesterday, at Costco, of course.

Who knows? We might need to pick up a couple of more stools on our way out of town when we hit Costco - to get a few more bottles of the Spanish Rueda wine.


A bottle of Rueda