in trying to avoid the toll roads we ended up also avoiding the Perimeter Road in Durango so that we missed the hotel that we wanted to stay at. Instead we ended up on Highway 45 headed North toward Parral which was a place we wanted to go to anyway so we decided to continue. It got very very hot and dry as we drove through the hills. There was nothing but scrub and cactai on the hillsides. The Sun was shining and the sky was blue and the temperature was about 34 degrees Centigrade. It was a very beautiful drive along the road. Lots of winding and smooth pavement. Very good.As we continued along this road it was strange because there were new sections of road that were nice and wide and smooth and then it would change back to this small two lane road although still paved. We speculated about why the road went from bad to good and back to bad again but we really couldn’t figure it out. We thought maybe it was changing counties but that didn’t seem to work. Or maybe it had to do with the terrain. Paving flats is relatively easy. If it was in the mountains we thought perhaps it was too hard to make a nice wide road so they left the old one.There is not much of anything along this road. We thought that we could find a small size town and maybe stay in a hotel there but there weren’t any! There were some small towns but no hotels in them. We stopped at a Pemex and an Oxxo to get food and gas. And we decided we would just continue on and try to reach Parral. About 200 kilometers from Parral the road got absolutely straight and flat. Sometimes it was the good payment sometimes it was the old pavement. But it went on and on and on for at least 100 kilometers before we reached more Hills. It was nice to get back into the hills because it was somewhat cooler. Sunny 29
