Coming Full Circuit

To the right is a photo of a peach shaped water tower that for years has sat along side I-85 in South Carolina. When driving the interstate highways the distractions are few.

We are in Greensboro, North Carolina tonight; only 7 hours of driving remain before reaching the Philadelphia area. By the time we reach home in Drummondville, Quebec we will have covered 10,000 miles: 5,000 from Quebec to Costa Rica and 5,000 miles back. We are ready to do it again. It was a good trip.

Ginette studied the maps and the guide books and selected great routes. Each day's travel had to ensure that we could reach a city where it was likely that a hotel could be found and all border crossings had to take place before 2pm.


Road signs in Central America are few and our Spanish skills not the strongest. It could have been easy to get lost. However, before leaving on this adventure we purchased a hand-held GPS device, a Garmin Etrex Vista Cx. It became a great friend, always at our side. It cost $329 US. We would not want to make the trip without it. The device comes with "base maps" meaning basic maps. For Mexico and Central America these "base maps" are the only maps available for the the GPS but these were enough to show us our position on any of the major roads.

Houston to Mobile

Everyone passing through the Houston area should stop in and ask my brother-in-law Larry for a bit of his key lime pie; it is the best of its kind. Mary and Larry took great care of us; they are always wonderful company. Our dogs and their dogs had fun together. Only Senor Gato, the cat, disapproved of our presence.

We stayed overnight in Mobile. Today we want to reach Charlotte, North Carolina. We are just driving hard and fast now. The super highways are fast but leave little to see.

Tropic of Cancer and the US of A

Today we getting close to the US/Mexico border when we saw this big yellow ball marking the Tropic of Cancer. North of this line there is no way, no time when the sun can ever be directly over your head. South of this line (down to the Tropic of Capricorn) the sun will, at some time in the year, be directly over your head. Big deal you say, but every globe of the earth in the world has the Tropic of Cancer, the Equator, and the Tropic of Capricorn marked on it. Any way, it was fun to stop in the middle of no where for the photo.

We crossed the border with ease. There were lots of cars coming across. No one checked us for anything. No one looked at more than the covers of our passports. Their greatest concern was that we paid $2.50 liquor tax on the two bottles we were bring in. Kiss Homeland security goodbye for the moment.

It was a bit shocking to see with fresh eyes just how wide and how smooth the US highways could be compared with all we had seen over the last four months.

We are off to Houston to visit my sister Mary and her husband Larry. We should be in Cherry Hill next weekend.