Ready to hit the road

We think we’ve made good use of the two and a half days we’ve spent in Brownsville. We left the campground around 9:00 this morning, and did everything we can do to make crossing the border into Mexico as painless as possible. We took the propane fridge to the dump, where they forklifted it off the tailgate of the pickup, and gave us $2. The guy apologized for how little it was worth, but we figure we’d rather get $2 for it than pay $25 to have someone dispose of it for us.


The propane fridge on a one way trip





Yesterday we went to Cingular and had our number transferred to the new quadband phone, and put an international calling plan on it. This means that the number we said wasn’t going to be any good after the beginning of January will work through Mexico, although we’ll still have to change it when we get to Belize. Tom couldn’t find the adapter to charge that phone in the truck, so our next stop this morning was Radio Shack to get another charger. We then picked up a few groceries, Tom got his beard trimmed, and we headed off to Bank of America to get the cash we need til we get to Belize, then headed down by the bridge to Mexico to get some of that cash changed from dollars to pesos. We topped off the tanks, filled the propane tanks for the trailer, and headed back to the campsite. I spent the afternoon cleaning up the camper and doing laundry, and Tom made some final adjustments to his fridge installation and made sure we had copies of all the paperwork we need. We’re going to get everything packed, hitch the truck and trailer, shower, fill our water tank, drain our black water tank, and be ready to pull out of here and head for the bridge at 5:00 am.

I spent some time this morning going through the Sanborn’s guides, reading Mexican travelogues, and planning our route. The Sanborn guides are great – all the info of the AAA guides, with opinions, which I think would be a big help in the AAA guides. We’ve been talking to lots of people here in Brownsville, both at the campground and as we’ve been out doing our errands, and we’ve picked up a lot of travel tips and advice. We’d heard from people who had either lived or visited Brownsville that it wasn’t a very nice place, but we’ve had exactly the opposite experience. Without exception, everyone we’ve talked to has been friendly and helpful. We’re amazed at how nice everyone at the campground is. We felt like the Clampetts pulling in, and didn’t think the people in the nice big RVs would give us the time of day, but we’ve made a lot of new friends and added a lot of people to our address list, and haven’t met anyone even remotely snobby. But, despite how nice it is here, we’re ready to hit the road!