Crazy Car Conversations on a Long Drive

Two Months of RV Travel

For the months of May and June we plan to hook up the travel trailer (Annie) and hit the road. Our plan is to explore the entire East coast.

Here is our route as of right now. I had to break it into two maps as Google Maps would only allow so many stops... It's like they don't realize people may want to track A LOT of routes, as in a vacation that has many stops. I know we aren't the first to come up with this idea.

Here is Route 1 from Ocala, FL to the Portland/Boothbay Harbor, ME area.

Here is part 2 of our trip from Portland/Boothbay Harbor, ME back to Ocala, FL.

We plan to see several friends along the way. If you are on our route, let us know!!

Visiting Friends in Ft.Myers

Keith and I have been staying with my Mom for several weeks so we decided to give them a break, and us, and head South to see friends for the weekend. The dogs even came along... Gotta love La Quintas!

We arrived on Saturday afternoon, checked into our hotel and then headed straight to Hector and Tricia's house to meet up. Their daughter Naomi had a dance competition all weekend so we decided to tag along. We had no idea what we were in for... LOL! 

We met Michelle at the school and grabbed seats for everyone. The competition had over 300+ girls dancing to various styles of dance. I believe the first night was mostly solos, but I'm not positive. Naomi did an amazing contemporary dance solo - we were so proud of her! 

After all the dancing, we headed back to their place to chill out, socialize while enjoying pizza and wine. Michelle's boyfriend, Rafael, met up with us and the night turned out to be a lot of fun! FYI: I have known these ladies since 4th grade!!

Sunday we headed to Cape Coral to see Michelle's new home, which is beautiful! Then back to dance competition. It was groups on this day and there were hundreds of performances... Naomi's last was was number 410. Her team won several platinum's and did an amazing job! 

After dance we all just went to dinner and ended the night with tons of hugs and pictures. We love those guys so much - we look forward to seeing them again in late March for 2 weeks.

Driving Through Mexico

For Keith and I to start our 15 month journey, we needed to drive 4 days through Mexico back to the US. We were both a bit nervous of the unknown as we've heard good and bad reports from friends who have done the drive before. I was most worried about being pulled over by the police and shaken down for money. I prepped for the worst and I am happy to report, we had zero issues. When we do this again, we will do exactly what we did, drive over the weekend and leave super early in the mornings and be done by 4pm.

We started in Akumal and drove the first day for about 10 hours. After seeing thousands of animals (dogs, goats, bulls, monkeys...), an encounter with 2 street dogs that I lured away from us with milk bones, many cenote sized potholes, overcast skies, lots of rain, 4 security checkpoints (none of which made us stop. They loved the dogs though!), tons of street side food vendors, 2 cappuccinos, crazy drivers and great tunes, we made it to Villahermosa in 9 hours and 40 minutes. We went straight to our hotel and decided to just relax in our room due to the dogs and being exhausted. I ordered a domino's pizza, with the help of the front desk, and it was a lazy night of TV. 

We woke up early to get on the road to Puebla, which was over 7 hours. The day seemed so much longer longer than the day before, even though it wasn’t. We drove on a very long boring highway that was only country side, gas stations and fruit stands. No small towns to see. We saw parrots on sticks for sale, the car was X-rayed 3 times, we went through 2 checkpoints, 8 tolls with the most expensive one being $213 pesos. There was more traffic due to construction. Our day started with horrible drivers in Villahermosa and ended with horrible drivers in Puebla. We did manage to get a Starbucks before we started today and that was good - no coffee crankies for us! Our hotel was cute but it was the WORST bed we have ever slept in. 

The next morning we woke up early so we could get on the road to drive around Mexico City (around, not through) on our way to Saltillo. We made it to Saltillo safe and sound - I think this was the day we were most worried about due to having to find Arco Norte and just not sure what driving around Mexico City would be like. The trip included our first train sighting, many many MANY factories, only 2 checkpoints, a ton of police on the roads, the biggest toll at $355 pesos 1 birthday froofroo coffee drink (I turned 42!), a buffet dinner sign for 65 pesos ($3.42), 1 discussion on cacti vs cactus's, donkeys and goats, the many “cafes” along the highway and several highway fires... 8.5 hours down. 

The border was just 3 hours from Saltillo! The drive was a boring drive with lots of mountains and desert, Saltillo is a cute town but there is NO booze on Sunday and most restaurants were closed. We had 1 checkpoint with no one really manning it, we saw 1 dead horse on the side of the road 24 miles from the border (that was a horrific sight!!), the final cost for all tolls was $113.62 USD, at immigration we were the only people there, and we were never asked to see any of the dogs paperwork... 

32 hours and 35 minutes later, we arrived! The whole trip was 2,780 kilometers! 

Would we do it again - YES. It really wasn't as bad as we had expected at all. IF you have any questions on the drive, tolls, where to stay, etc... Just ask!

Gas Shortage in Mexico Could Affect Our Drive

A friend of mine recently reached out about a friend of hers who was driving through Mexico on his motorcycle and ran out of gas due to the gas shortage in Mexico happening now. Since Keith and I plan to drive for 4 days through Mexico I started searching for way to know who does and does not have gas on our route. 

Thankfully, Google to the rescue. It seems Google has added a feature to their maps where you just type in “¿Dónde hay gasolina?,” “¿dónde no hay gasolina?” and it will show you who does or does not have gas. I tried it and it's pretty cool!

There are also 4 apps that can also help with this and this article tells you all about it - I downloaded two of the 4 (Gasoapp and Gasolina MX), so here's hoping that we don't run into any issues along the way. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we are a bit nervous of the unknown.

Packing for 15 Months isn't Easy

Keith and I have been working on a big trip for 2019/2020 and it has finally come time to start packing and getting ready to leave. Our plan is to leave towards the end of January and drive 4 days across Mexico to the USA.

Chance was NOT having it - clearly he doesn't realize he is going with us on this trip. I can't blame him though, most days we pull out the luggage result in him going to doggie daycare or staying with someone else. He's not a dumb dog.

We have altered our condo to have more storage space for us to lock up anything we plan to keep here. We are hoping to rent our place while gone but HomeExchange has actually resulted in us finding several folks to swap homes with us on our travels. I am kind of obsessed with their website!

We are staying in a home in FL for two weeks, Amsterdam for 1 week and Paris for 2 weeks as of right now. We did find a renter for 7 months and several friends plan to rent our place here and there so we are happy to have it being used by folks we know. If you are interested, let us know. Here's the listing.

As for Mexico - we drive from Akumal to Villahermosa where we stay the night. Then we are on to Puebla for a night. We drive around Mexico City and stop at Saltillo for a night (my birthday!). Then we will drive to Laredo, TX to cross the border and head towards Austin to see friends for a few nights. We hope to see a few more friends on our way to Lake Ozark but will depend on their schedules if they are in town. Should be a fun road trip! (This is ONLY the beginning)

We will try and post about our travels, take lots of pictures and even a few videos. Come back and check it out!

What Do We Have Planned for 2019?

Here's a sneak peek of our the start of our 2019 plans... Stay tuned...

Our Roadtrip Across the US

Our roadtrip started September 9th from Seattle to FL last 32 days and was over 6500 miles. We visited 25 States.  Weleft Seattle on September 9th with all we could fit in our Hyundai Santa Fe along with our two dogs, Lionel and Chance.

I won't bore you with details of each stop but I will lay out where we went:

Seattle, WA - (drove through Idaho) - Montana - Wyoming - South Dakota (we drove by Mt. Rushmore) - (drove through Minnesota and Wisconsin (we stopped for cheese and a pink elephant!)) - Illinois (we went to see our friend Jessie and to see a Cubs game) - (drove through Indiana and stopped at our favorite candy company) - Ohio (we stayed here for 10 days with my folks - we went to a Reds game, drove to KY for a day, went to a beer festival and spent lots of time with the fam) - Pennsylvania (Stayed in Hershey and then stopped to see the Flight 93 Memorial) - Connecticut (Lunch with Keith's Coast Guard buddy, Bill, and then dinner at Mystic Pizza) - New Hampshire (stayed in Salem by accident, apparently there is more than one Salem in that area. Either way we still visited Salem, MA. We also made a day trip to Portland, Maine where we had the BEST lobster roll and oysters. On our way back to the hotel we spent a few hours in Kennebunkport. We spent one day in Boston as well where we went to a Red Sox game. One the way to RI, we drove through Cape Cod so I could see it.) - Rhode Island (We went to the Coast Guard base to look for the Willow, but it wasn't there... We had dinner at one of Keith's old hangouts when he lived there.) - New Jersey (We had breakfast with our friend Bonnie and lunch with Keith's Uncle, we drove through NY and saw Manhattan from a distance) - Pennsylvania (We stayed in Philly but had dinner with one of Keith's friends) - (drove through Maryland and Delaware)  - Virginia (We stayed in an airbnb in a cute house on the water and we visited with friends in the area) - Tennessee (we stayed here several days so I could show Keith where I grew up, my college, high school and my friends threw a BBQ for us) -  (drove through Gerogia, planned to stop in Savannah for a night but hurricane Irma was happening so we skipped it and went through) - Florida (our final stop in Ocala at my Mom's)

Cubs game with Jessie!

Red's game with my dad!

BBQ in Nashville with friends!

BB

Funny How Life Works...

I found a draft post from many months ago talking about how we were planning to move abroad in 2 years... I had to post it as we decided to move much sooner than that. This whole blog started at my 40th birthday trip and life has changed since then...

Since my birthday, Keith and I have decided we don't want to live the life we were living anymore. We want more! In the time since my birthday we have decided to move to Mexico full time. We found a place to live, got our temperary visa's started and have started selling all of our belongings.

We sold our business, the boat, Keith's car, my house and are working on selling the house we live in. OfferUp has become a staple of our life as we have sold so many of our belongings. It's quite a process to sell your whole life... The weirdest and saddest thing is seeing all the hard work you have done to have all these nice things and then have strangers offer you $10 for those memories. At the end of the day, it's just stuff. It's rather liberating to get rid of your belongings and makes you look at things more as "do I need this". I'm finding the answer tends to be "no". ;)

Where We Are Going

Keith and I have been researching places to move since we met as retiring early has been a goal. Ecuador was high on the list until they had a huge earthquake and are still recovering. Mexico presented itself and we started researching areas. We stumbled upon an expat couple, Two Expats Living in Mexico, and we were hooked! They gave so much great info we had to go check out the area and see if it really was as great as they said. After my birthday trip we knew we wanted to be on the Caribbean so traveling south to Mexico to check out Akumal seemed like it may be a great fit.

Paul & Linda, of Two Expats, met with us when we arrived and introduced us to several other people while there - everyone was so great! We checked out the area, asked a lot of questions and then, like magic, found the perfect place for us to live. It was the best and craziest week ever and has been quite the adventure ever since. Not even 2 months has passed and we are only 3 months from moving out of Washington. When we set our minds to something, we don't mess around!

The Plan

We officially leave WA on Sept 30th, unless something crazy happens... We plan to drive my car with a small u-haul and our two dogs across the US through about 18 states. We are hoping to see Mt. Rushmore, Chicago, Cape Cod, Boston, Hershey factory tour, Mystic Pizza in CT, My family in OH, Many friends, and whatever else we find along the way.

I'll keep a log of our travels - mainly for us so we can look back years from now and re-live it all. We are both really excited for the drive!

Keep us in your prayers and thoughts - we have a ton of change coming our way!

Love,
Tarah & Keith