Driving to Mexico -Part 1

We left St Louis early Thursday. We had packed the car the night before but as expected not everything fit in...so I had to make some choices, which of course I did not want to do.
The first choices of course was to keep the new outdoor cantilever umbrella we bought last fall, as well as the 4 cats and their cages. Plus I also took a carrier in case Grumpy Gus was impossible...which he was..another story. Than some boxes of Carlos special gluten free foods which we have not been able to find in Merida, clothes, computers, cat foods for the persnickety felines, our personal pillows and a few personal papers that we thought we might need sooner than later..So the car looked like this:

The first day we went as far as Denton, Texas. For the first several hours I had caterwauling cats, even though I had given them, or most of them anyway, a light sedative. After about 4 hours they settled down and sleep most of the time. For the first two nights we stayed in Motel 6's as they welcome pets...the room were just OK. At an average of 50.00 a night I thought it was a good choice as not many chains will accept pets.

Day 2 we went to Laredo, Texas. This time I did not bother to sedate the cats and they settled down after a hour with only occasional protests. We arrived in Laredo fairly early and just had an early night as we wanted to cross the border early in the AM as most people suggest. We took the time to put on our Mexican car TIP (temporary import permit) onto our car windshield, This we had applied for on the Internet and we received it in a week! Unheard of!

And that was our first two days on the road!