Day 180 – The Mexican border at 10,700km – The end of our trip and the start of another chapter of our lives

At long last, 6 months and 10,700km later, we have finally made it. Thank you for all the well wishes along the way and for following our trip!

We’ll update our other pages on our site which have been neglected down the Pacific Coast, including a few posts we are still behind in Oregon.. We’ll post some entries on our journey back home by airplane with our bikes to the snowy East Coast of Canada as well.

In the mean time, we are going to kick back for some R&R in the San Diego area for the next week before we fly home. Although I am not sure how we will adapt to not packing, biking, camping and finding food constantly!

“May the wind always be at your back,
and the shoulders ever wide.
And may the downhills always be longer than the ups”
The Cyclist’s Toast from the Velorution Guestbook

– Adam & Katherine

Today’s entry:

We woke up to an incredibly warm morning. The last time it was so warm on our trip was back in mid-summer in Ontario!

We had a very relaxing morning, and had cereal in the sunshine. Last night we met a couple from Newfoundland, Pat and Kirby (please correct us if we got it wrong!) who were travelling with their RV. After travelling this far it was neat to meet fellow East Coasters on our last night of camping!

This morning we met our camping neighbors Steve and Katherine from Arizona. They were interested in our trip and we were interested in their home-built tear-drop trailer they were towing with their car (you can see it in the background in the first photo). It was very neat. We had a great time chatting with them and donated our bear spray to them on our way out. It would be ironic if we encountered a bear on our way to the border but we hope that would be highly unlikely..

It didn’t take us too long to get to the border, but it involved several slow stop lights. Thankfully we were able to follow a bike lane pretty much all the way. Once we could see the border, it was incredible to compare the population density across the two countries in the border area. Tijuana was packed with buildings while the US side was an open field patrolled by US border security vehicles.

We were also surprised with the number of stores by the border, ranging from factory outlets to boutiques to big box stores. There was an incredible number of people from Mexico crossing the border by foot just for shopping!

Once we arrived at the border, we snapped our last bike trip photo of us at the Mexican border. The end of our trip and the start of another chapter of our lives!