Here are some Ferguson family stats from 2016:

• 1 baby added to the family (Frida!)
• 2 surgeries
• 22 US states visited
• 7 Mexican states visited
• 2 countries
• 4 vehicles (Carl, Ginger, Saffron, Hank)
• ~12,000 miles traveled (from sea to shining sea and all around in between!)
• 364 lbs combined weight on 1/1/2016 (Ryan+Pregnant Carrie+Iola); 352 lbs combined weight on 12/21/2016 (Ryan+Carrie+Iola+Frida)
• 22 Airbnb groups hosted
• 366 sunrises and sunsets
• 11 hotels
• 245 tomatoes harvested from the lakeside garden
• 1 house sold
• 33 blog posts

Happy New Year!

-Carrie

2016 from Carrie Ferguson on Vimeo.

“And I’ve got such a long way to go, to make it to the border of Mexico.” Ride Like the Wind by Christopher Cross

We said our goodbyes to our friends in Guadalajara and packed up for our trip north.  It was hard saying goodbye, even to our favorite street taco ladies.  We loved our time in Mexico and we’ll be back soon, so that made it a bit easier to say adiós to the wonderful people we had the pleasure of meeting.

Our plan was to take the trip back to the US almost as slowly as we had meandered south six months ago.  We assumed two small children would make travelling any more than four hours a day almost impossible.  But, as it turned out, our girls were amazingly patient with being in the car, so we just kept driving as much as they’d let us.  Our marathon day was Wednesday, when we drove from Zacatecas, Mexico, to New Braunfels, Texas.  Google puts it at a 10 hour drive, but that doesn’t include any breaks or, most importantly, the border crossing!  Including those things, it was over a 12 hour day and we were exhausted.  We also cut it a bit close being able to cross the border before dark, but we did it and all was well.  We did the 28 hours of driving to my parents’ house in Iowa in four days, what we felt was pretty amazing, but we were all more than ready to not be in a car.

Here’s iola in her customary ROAD TRIP shirt.  Our time in Mexico went so fast, but then I look back at pictures of iola during our trip down to Mexico six months ago and wow has she grown!  Click here to see pictures of her in the same shirt in early November 2015.

Our first stop after Guadalajara was Zacatecas, where we spent a night and celebrated Halloween in early November.  I can’t stop staring at all the colonial architecture when we’re here.

One final Kinder Surprise egg (illegal in the United States.)

…and one final OXXO (convenience store) cinnamon cappuccino for Carrie.

One final Mexican potty break.

And one final run-in with the law…as in for some reason the police parked right next to us despite dozens of other open spots.

We had to stop into a Mexican government office to cancel the temporary import permit for Carl Car and then crossed the bridge to the US.  We sat in line for about 45 minutes before it was our turn to be questioned.  Frida was not excited about leaving her country of origin and cried the whole time in line, so Carrie finally just held Frida on her lap.  We must have seemed honest, boring, or sick of having a crying baby, so we got to pass right through.  That’s good, because I really wouldn’t have felt like re-packing the car, which was jam-packed in expert fashion.

Many Mexican stoplights feature all sorts of vendors…food, newspapers, windshield wipers, etc.  It was only appropriate that we had one more shot at buying pirated DVD’s while waiting in line for US Customs on the bridge over the Rio Grande.

Back in the US, yeeeehaawwwwww!

Couldn’t pass up an IN-N-OUT Burger in North Texas.

A break somewhere along the Kansas Turnpike.

Here’s Carl Car, back safely in Iowa.  246,000+ miles and still running like a champ.  Thanks for your hard work, Carl, you’ve never let us down.

-Ryan

We’ll admit that it took us some time to embrace the organized chaos that is Mexico.  If you want an always predictable, organized reality, stick with Hawaii for your vacations.  Or for that matter, the Mexican vacations that aren’t really Mexico, like the spring break destinations.  But for us, soon enough, the dust of Mexico settled on our hearts.

Mexico always offers unexpected experiences if you care to wander off the beaten path.  While the US has many good things going for it (very clean, much better roads, etc.), it’s not as easy to stumble upon such unique findings as it is in Mexico.

Before leaving Tapalpa, we went outside of town to the neighboring village of Atacco to where I was told a straw bale house had been built.  There are various ways homes can be constructed using straw bales.  They end up being much more insulated than typical homes and they’re even fire resistant because the straw is so compact.  The bales are covered with plaster and can look very nice.  I enjoy natural building methods so I was excited to go and try to find this house.  We stopped where we were told there was a natural medicine store.  The woman there was part of the women’s group that built the straw home as a model home to help encourage and teach others to build using the affordable & sustainable technique.  She told us how to get to the house, which involved walking through the empty town plaza, underneath a conveyor belt loading bags of corn onto a truck, and up a rough path past shanty houses.  And there it was, a beautiful little home made of straw bales, not quite finished.  I hopped the gate and lifted iola over because the women’s group had lost the key for the padlock.  I checked out the house, homemade ovens & stoves, water collection system, and composting troughs.  I never would have guessed there’d be such a cool project in this small, poor town in the middle of nowhere.

Back at the medicine shop, we browsed their garden that produces the raw ingredients for their homemade remedies & the old chapel that’s still standing.  We bought soap, skin healing cream made out of a flower, & eucalyptus oil, before heading out again.

That experience, and many others like it, is the reason we learned to love the unpredictability of Mexico.  It’s often used to portray the bad aspects of Mexico, but for us the positives far outweighed the negatives.  What nice, fantastic people we had the pleasure of meeting all around Mexico.  We made great friends both from Mexico and from abroad.

The dust of Mexico settled on our hearts and we’re excited to go back soon.

iola found a broom & dustpan and got busy cleaning.

-Ryan