This is the kind of road trip that I've always dreamed about, the kind you see in the movies. When you pack all your belongings into the car, and start on a long cross-country trek with no specific schedule in mind. It's a chance to learn and expand your worldview, discover new places, share new experiences and meet people with fresh perspectives. It's not always an easy journey, but it's one that you'll remember forever.
The Plan: St Catharines, Ontario, Canada to Monterrey, Nuevo León, México
Google Maps estimates that it should take a total of about 31 hours of driving. We decided to stretch it over one week and take our time, to stop in some of the interesting cities in the USA along the way.
DAY 1
Sunday, July 13, 2014
St Catharines, Ontario, Canada to Buffalo, New York, USA
Weather: Sunny but overcast with patches of rain, 24 degrees celsius
We spent all weekend packing the last of our things, with lots of help and encouragement from some dear friends... Thanks guys, you know who you are ;) At some point we ran out of boxes and had to leave most of the kitchen stuff behind.
For our trip, we purchased a 5 x 8 foot cargo trailer, thinking that it would be the best option to bring our belongings with, and then we would also have a trailer available in Mexico for touring with our band.
Although a Honda Civic is not specifically designed to tow a trailer, it does have a towing capacity of 2000 lbs listed (if you search hard enough). Our plan was to weigh all the boxes before loading them, and we even bought a new digital scale for just that purpose. Packing took longer than planned and it was getting late, so we decided to skip that step and just load everything in. Here's a shot of our little red civic and the 5 x 8 trailer in front of our house.
9:00pm.... it started raining just before we did our final walk-through of the house.
We started the trip on the QEW headed towards Buffalo. Amazingly, the Honda had no problem towing our full trailer. Usually it's a 45 minute drive, but we took our time, going between 80 and 100km per hour. We were anticipating a long wait at the border. This was the exchange:
Border Guy: What's your citizenship?
Us: Canadian and Mexican.
Border Guy: Where are you headed?
Us: We're moving to Monterrey, Mexico.
Border Guy: What's in the trailer?
Us: Our household belongings.
Border Guy: Anything staying in the US?
Us: Nope.
Border Guy: Have a safe trip.
Less than a minute. Amazing! We were very surprised and thankful that we didn't have to unload everything out of the trailer. We were prepared with a list of all our belongings, just in case. After we crossed the border, we took the i90 and Highway 33 towards the Buffalo Airport. Despite the rain and a few bumps, the ride was pretty smooth. As we took the exit off the highway, there was a sign reading "bump." Definitely an understatement. It was more of a hole, dropping about 6 inches down. We heard the sound of metal hitting pavement. We were less than 5 minutes from the airport, but the hitch started scraping the ground. We finally arrived at the airport to pick up Ricardo (he was very patient, waiting at the airport for over 4 hours). Since it was late in the evening by now, we decided to stay overnight in Buffalo to figure out the hitch. We've only recently started using smart phones and discovered how useful they can be for travel. I remember the countless times I had to pull off the road and take out a giant paper map to try and figure out my way around.
Here's a photo of Millennium Hotel in Buffalo, where we spent the night.
Pretty comfortable, with a door leading right out to the pool.
We grabbed a late dinner at Jim's Restaurant... the first of many late night dinners.
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