It takes about 5 hours to drive across the tiny country of Belize. We stayed 3 days for good measure. Passing countless fields of sugar cane, you’ll eventually reach a processing plant or two, where the wafting smell of burnt sugar fills the air. Belize is the last Central American country we’re visiting before heading back to Mexico, kind of like dessert at the end of a long Central American meal!
We’re back in Mexico, a country full of topes (speedbumps) and delightfully large supermarkets! After being in remote areas of Central America for 8 months, nothing says Welcome Back To Mexico like being launched into space by an unmarked surprise tope, or stepping into a giant Wal-Mart Supermercado and having your brain explode with how much stuff there is. In this post we cruise through the Yucatán Peninsula, swim in a Cenote, see the relatively unknown Salto de Eyipantla waterfall, and climb some amazing Mayan temples.
Mexico. Land without chocolate chips or sunglasses. If you think you can find gafas de sol easily in Mexico, think again. Mexicans don’t wear sunglasses! Sharing one pair between the two of us is no way to live. And then the chocolate. In the absence of other desserts, we usually keep chocolate chips on hand for a dose of sweet. The ones we had from Costa Rica lasted until Mexico, where we promptly found out that Mexicans don’t bake with chocolate chips! The avocados, though: plentiful and cheap. Almost makes you forget you’re having sugar withdrawal while squinting into the sun.
When you’re living out of a sixteen year old truck, home just happens to be wherever you stop for the night. Now that we’re rolling in Texas, Bruno has discovered a new amazing place to sleep at night: state-sponsored rest stops! Wonderfully clean and safe, they have great restrooms and spacious picnic table areas for cooking your meals. We could plan a whole other road trip trying to hit every rest stop in Texas, but that’s an entirely different trip. Welcome to Texas!
Without a job dictating where we’ll live, we’re able to develop our own criteria. We’d like to live somewhere with a happening downtown core, reasonable cost of living, good weather, bike friendly, open-minded people, decent public schools, and lots of nice trees. Quite the list, right? For our 50th post and the one-year anniversary of this blog, we’re sharing our hunt for a U.S. city to settle down in, with Bruno of course. A place to hang our hat until the next trip starts to take shape.
Asheville, NC (Joe Franklin)
We modified the tail end of our road trip and decided to spend more time in the country of our birth. It was two weeks packed full of love before reaching our final destination in Nova Scotia. A memorial for a cousin who left us too soon. Reconnection with family and quality time with old friends. After being on the road for a year, the visits filled our hearts and reminded us how much we cherish our relationships. There were also plenty of cute kiddies to enjoy without taking them home! Bruno has not been child-proofed.
He’s adopted a sedentary lifestyle for the past year and made an asphalt driveway his home. He’s hauled lumber, rocks, mulch, and our sorry asses around town, but Bruno the 4Runner hasn’t gone more than 450 miles from home in over a year. He was proud to roll us over to the Women’s March on Washington back in January, but we didn’t even camp! All Bruno’s dreams are about to come true, as we pack up to leave NorCar for the summer.
Well, it took us all of four days to complete the horizontal leg of our trip. We reached the Rio Grande in Albuquerque, New Mexico and set out to follow it northbound. Since our trip to Central America, we’ve significantly improved our camping arsenal. We added a secondhand tent, propane fuel burner, and killer Klymet Static V air mattresses. Swapping our 12V refrigerator for a plastic cooler alleviates auxiliary battery headaches, but requires constant monitoring of the ice situation. After a few days, our food tends to float like a raft on Tennessee’s Ocoee River…
Off-roading is one of Bruno’s great loves and something I had been looking forward to on this trip. Southeastern Utah is where we let it all hang loose! And speaking of, we’ve been seeing a lot of Smokey Bear signs along the road. If there’s one thing we’re learning, it’s that Smokey doesn’t like shirts. He only likes pants. Dislikes shoes and absolutely no socks.
Bryce Canyon National Park is smaller and more subtle than its Park neighbors. What grabs you is the varying shades of rust color and how fragile it all seems. Over in Zion Canyon, we experienced our first taste of Disneyland – National Park style. Most memorable was hiking 4 miles up a river through a narrow canyon. We then finished off our tour of Utah by gettin’ down with The Book of Mormon. We’re impressed!
“That’s so Yellowstone” could be heard several times inside Bruno over the last few days in Wyoming. We had a marvelous time in the Jackson Hole Valley: beautiful free campsites and snow hikes in Grand Teton National Park. Further north we encountered a buncha crazy Yellowstoners in Los Angeles-level gridlock. Technically not gridlock. It was Bison-lock.
As with any travel adventure, you often see the best and the worst of people. We heard strangers giving words of encouragement on a difficult hike in the snow. People picking up litter out of the goodness of their hearts (this was usually Travis) or giving a jump to someone on the side of the road. On the flip side, we witnessed road rage (sometimes Amanda’s) and pure unkindness towards fellow man (to which Travis left a note asking to “help make America great again” by not stealing other people’s parking spots). Bruno had an unfortunate run-in with a bozo, but remains optimistic about the future.
Amanda and I have really enjoyed the start of our “3 Months in Europe” trip. We loved our time in Lisbon and now we’ve just had the wonderful pleasure of spending two weeks in Barcelona. This being my first time to Europe, I can’t help being truly wowed by how well designed the cities are. My overall experience in Barcelona left me wondering: Dang, why can’t American cities be this delightfully livable!?
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
With the glorious help of credit card churning, Amanda and I (and now our 1 Year Old Kiddo) made another trip to Europe this summer and we had a splendid trip soaking in the beauty of these cities: Oslo, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Copenhagen. Our total out of pocket cost for the entire 2-month trip was around $2,040. We run a tight ship here!
