The Grand Finale

Just in case you feared we were in captivity somewhere in Mexico, unable to blog or possibly being held by the US Border Patrol for smuggling swine flu in Adam's beard, we thought we were due to post our final bit of travels.

We last wrote from Chihuahua, Mexico. A surprisingly pleasant town that is former home to revolutuionary Pancho Villa and home to an unsurprising amount of Chihuahuas. From Chihuahua we rode a train through MExico's Copper Canyon. A beautiful canyon that is 4 times the size of the Grand Canyon, the train ride was not a let down with stellar views and the fun of a 15 hour train ride.

After a night in Los Mochis, we headed to Topolobampo to catch a ferry across the Sea of Cortez to Baja California (still in Mexico). The ferry was fresh out of seats and was an overnight ferry. After getting kicked out of the restaurant for sleeping on the floor, we headed to the top deck and laid out on the metal floor, catching some sleep while seeing periodic meteors fly across the sky and enjoying the breeze off of the sea.

We spent a few days in Baja, though with such little time, it was hard to soak in much of the beauty that Baja has to offer. Instead we ate lots of fish tacos and tried to catch a bit of beach between 12 hour bus rides. We finally arrived to Tijuana and headed to the border. After a quick conversation with a relatively friendly border guy, we were rushed through the border crossing and into the US.

We took a trolley into San Diego and wandered about town for a bit. We finally found the Greyhound Station and continued into LA. We spent three days in LA exploring the sites, seeing some beaches, riding public busses about town, seeing Hollywood (unimpressive), and finally met up with our good friend, Drew to continue heading toward home.

With Drew, we rented a car and drove Historic Route 66 to St. Louis. We were previously unaware, but Route 66 is only a historic road and does not actually exist in its entirety any longer. However, with a handy guide book and step by step instruction, we weaved through back roads across the country on thew hisotic route. Of course, this involved frequent stops at burger joints, ice cream shops, places of general weirdness (Crazy Fred's Whorehouse and Truck Stop) and the occassional cheese factory or museum. We also saw the Grand Canyon and managed to camp each night, mostly without having to pay. We also learned that lots of Europeans drive or bike Route 66 while vacationing in the states and got an interesting new perspective on travel in the USA. The west was particularly impressive and we generally felt like real cowboys, especially after our stop for lunch in Oatman, AZ.

We then spent a few days with Drew in St. Louis, visiting the wonderful Christian Activitiy Center in East St. Louis and seeing old friends there. We then took a Greyhoud to Chicago, stopping off to see an old friend, Kerri (and having the unfrotunate experience of being on a train when it hit a person). After a well cooked dinner and a good night sleep, we jumped on another Greyhound, for 20 hours, to Washington D.C. There we toured the Capitol Building, walked around a bit and then spent time with our college friend and his wife, Matt and Lori. (We also went to see the movie Food, Inc. which we highly recommend!)

We learned that Amtrak was Sold Out and Greyhound was hard to get along with for the last leg, so we lured Matt to Richmond with the hope of Bojangles (how did we eat Bojangles after watching Food, Inc.?) and lured Adam's parents to Richmond with the hope of bringing us the rest of the way home. Finally we made it back to North Carolina, and at that our journey ends.

While travelling across LAtin America was challenging and figuring our way to nooks and crannies and especially between Colombia and Panama is challenging, the real challenge of our journey begins now. As we enter back into our own part of the world, how do we live differently? What do we do with the things we have seen and how do they really change us? We hope that we can find ways to not just answer those questions with words, though we think that will be important as we continue to reflect, but with real actions that are tangible in our lives.

Thanks for reading our blog and following along with us.

Orale!

Tracy and Adam