safely home

Yes we are... safely home. Arriving at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday. But for me (Grant), writing a blog post is almost as exhausting as a 45 hour road trip, so it's taken me this long to get something written.

Well, Hannah in her last post gave you a general summary of what we did, so I'll just go back and fill in some of the details. Not all... but some of the details.

We departed Ixtlan at 10:00 Monday morning with all eight of us to take Hannah, Leah, and the kids to the airport. We had taken the back two seats out of the van, filled the back two high with wooden crates, laid a piece of 1/4" plywood on top of those, and then threw in (or rather shoved, pulled, ripped, and tugged in) our queen size mattress.

The "south of the border" moving team

The "south of the border" moving trailer

Gabriel (with a great display of self-sacrifice) drove to the airport to allow us three the joy of testing out the mattress setup.

Once the girls and kids got out at the airport, we spread out, stretched out our legs, and headed for the border.

somebody's excited to be heading for home

Here's a view from the bed in back. The goal was to have a place to sleep. Have you tried sleeping while pinned to the ceiling of a 12-passenger van pulling a loaded down farm trailer on Mexican roads? We basically just had contests to see how long we could stay back there without throwing up.

About 10:30 Monday night, Tristan was trucking through the desert between Zacatecas and Saltillo, when we passed a Federal police car sitting in the median. As we passed, they flipped their lights on for a second. They didn't chase us or seem like they had an expectation for us to stop, so we continued. About five minutes later though, the darkness behind us lit up with red and blue. After enjoying the light show for a few minutes, we decided to pull over and see what they wanted.

Them: "Did you know you don't have any lights in the back?"
Us: "What?!? oh look! the light connection came undone. Wow, thanks for letting us know!"
Them: "No problem...  by the way, you're getting a ticket"
Us: "Uh...."
Them: "And we're taking your driver's licence. You have to come to Zacatecas in a few days and pay your ticket and then we'll give you your driver's licence back."
Us: "Um... no. That's not going to work. We're coming from Michoacan and we're heading to Illinois!"
Them: "Well..."
Us: "Well..."
Them: "Well..."

I'll leave the rest of the details out... but basically we could look at it a few different ways.

1. We could consider it that we paid 500 pesos for electrical connection diagnostics.
2. We could consider it that two cops were low on their donut supply, and we did our good deed for the day
3. We could consider it an appreciation gift to two servant-hearted police officers who wanted to make sure nobody rear-ended us.
4. Call it what you want, we left and continued north.

Unfortunately, I don't have a photo, since nobody felt that it would improve the situation to take pictures. We did end up running into rain around Monterrey, so for the last two hour sprint to the border, we had to tarp the trailer. The tarp did keep the furniture dry, but got destroyed in the process.

We arrived to the border at 4:15 in the morning. Brent and Janelle were at a hotel across the river and arrived for the trailer transfer at 6:00. Here's some pictures of the transfer:

After finishing the transfer, Gabriel headed back to Ixtlan with the Mexican van and trailer, and the five remaining people jumped in the American van and headed north. Border crossing was as smooth as it can go, and after showering at Brent and Janelle's hotel and getting a hot breakfast at Denny's, we started trucking up I-35.

I told the moving crew weeks ago that after all of our belongings were through Mexico, transferred into a covered trailer, and across the border, I was going to just crawl into the back of the van and sleep. I try not to break my promises, so if you have any questions about the trip from Laredo, TX to 20 miles north of West Memphis, AR, you need to ask somebody else. I remember stopping for a hamburger at an In-and-Out burger joint, but that's about it.

They let me finish the trip to Mahomet. We arrived there about 9:30, dropped off B&J, picked up Hannah and the kids, and headed towards Princeville

Words cannot express how much we appreciate what Brent, Janelle, Gabriel, Tristan, Tyler, and Leah did for us to make this trip happen. We also could not have done it without your prayers. Praise God for safety, and an all-around smooth trip.