Laredo, Texas!

Monday February 18…9:15pm

Set the alarm for 6am this morning. We wanted to get through the town of Garcia well before morning rush hour traffic started, so got up early and had our coffee and tea while on the road. Drove around Monterrey and then
north on the Mex 85 toll road towards Nuevo Laredo. We had wanted to take the toll road for two reasons…one, to get us to the border as early in the day as possible because we had no idea how long that would take…and two, because we were tired of driving on bumpy roads and thought this would be better. Which it was. The toll road was pretty much a normal four lane highway…two lanes in each direction, seperated by a median, and it was in good condition, and there was hardly anybody on it. When we got to the toll booth, we realized why there was nobody on it. It cost us about $25 to go 102 km’s. It now made sense why there were so many truckers using the free road. We quickly got off the toll road and continued to Nuevo Laredo on the free road.

Found our way to the Columbia Bridge. This crossing is relatively new, and was designed to get the trucks and congestion away from the two crossings that are in the city area. We were expecting a big bridge across the Rio Grande, but we paid another $4.80 to cross this little tiny bridge across a narrow section of the river. The U.S. border guards questioned me a little, and then waived us on our way. I guess with the millions of Mexicans in the U.S. illegally, they weren’t too worried about the paperwork problems of a couple of white Canadians!

And so we are back in the great U.S. of A. We will head slowly east over the next 3 weeks towards Florida where we look forward to meeting up with Lindsey and Justin. And I will be taking a little side trip up to Boston to meet with Alex and his new coach where he hopes to go to school this fall at Salem State College.

Total Nights Sleeping in the RV… 124…

February Fuel $ 300.00

February Grocery $ 125.57

February Overnight Costs $ 25.00