A-OK in LA Bay!

Hola amigos! We are safe and sound in Bahia de los Angeles (known to local gringos as LA Bay). We are still having an amazing Mexican adventure. After leaving San Felipe, we drove south to Puertocitos passing many small beach developments along the Sea of Cortez. The pavement ends south of Puertocitos and the road turns bad! The 50 miles to Bahia Gonzaga took over five hours to drive - I don´t think we broke 10mph the whole way. Luckily, the scenery was stunning. The land is far more arid than Tucson (about 4in of rain per year) yet it borders on one of the most diverse marine ecosystems on the planet. We camped at several small, desolate beaches along the way to Bahia Gonzaga (Gonzaga Bay). Even in the more populated towns, we generally occupy the only palapa out of many. For their supposed high season, we are seeing very few tourists. Luckily the scary headlines out of Tijuana are scaring off the gringos!

After two more kidney-punishing hours on the rocky, wash-boarded road, we came back to the Transpeninsular highway. We headed straight for LA Bay where we have again been lounging at the only occupied palapa in our campo. The weather has been phenomenal except for the occasional viento loco (crazy wind) which apparently is common this time of year. Also, the water temp is still too low for comfortable swimming. When we decide to leave here, we will probably start heading back up north along the Transpeninsular and along the Pacific side of Baja.

Once again, this computer is not playing nice with my photos so my words will have to do for now.

Greetings from Baja California!

We are in San Felipe on the fifth day of our trip. We have been having a great time traveling the Colorado River delta area of Mexico. We started our trip by crossing la frontera at Lukeville /Sonoyta. We headed towards Puerto Penasco but turned off into the Pinacate Biosphere Reserve. This is an interesting area of volcanic activity with lots of craters to explore. We saw very few people and it was incredibly quiet. After two nights in the Pinacate, we drove to Puerto Penasco to gas up and get more supplies. Then we headed off into the Gran Desierto on our way to El Golfo de Santa Clara. This road (Hwy 003) has just recently been completed in the last few months. It is unfortunate that the Mexican government decided to build this road (as it cuts through an amazingly pristine wasteland of salt flats and marshes) just to bring more Southern California tourons to Rocky Point. Anyway, we were glad to be able to drive this stretch which was previously only available to the most hardy four-wheelers. We camped on a bluff on Mesa Arenosa about 15 miles from El Golfo overlooking the northern most tip of the Sea of Cortez. We enjoyed a fantastic sunset and sunrise and Lori went for a lonely run along the desolate beach.

We spent the next morning exploring the tiny fishing village of El Golfo - definitely lacks the glitz and glam of Rocky Point or San Felipe, although the development is probably just around the corner with the completion of the new highway. From El Golfo, we drove north to cross the Colorado river in the dusty agriclutural town of Luis B. Chavez. This was also the border between the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California Norte.

At Highway 5, we turned south towards San Felipe but stopped short to camp in the wilds of the Sierra El Mayor. While I was on a short stroll, Lori got acquainted with the Mexican military. Long story short, they were nice but are not used to americanos camping in the wild. "No es normal." They assume that we all want to be safe and secure in our RV parks. After they left, we had the place to ourselves and enjoyed a mellow evening and morning in the stunningly beautiful and arid sierra. This morning we drove the final 80 miles to San Felipe where we will once again stock up on supplies for the journey further south into the hinterlands of Baja California.

PS This computer won't let me upload photos for some reason. Too bad 'cuz I've got some good ones!

Quote of the Day

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink, for thirst is a dangerous thing. -Jerome Klapka Jerome

Fall Colors in Aravaipa

Lori and I spent the last few days hiking through Aravaipa Canyon, one of Southern Arizona's premier riparian areas.  We had not been there in December before and the combination of shorter days, low sun angle, and hiking in the water made for chilly days.  The pay off (besides solitude and silence) was the beautiful fall colors.  This was also my first hike since coming off the Pacific Crest Trail over three months ago and the lack of wild in my life was starting to take its toll both physically and emotionally.  Hopefully this trip was the start of more regular ventures into Nature.

Pacific Crest Trail slideshow Dec. 8

Please join us for the first public showing of our 2008 Pacific Crest Trail slideshow.  If you were curious about what we were doing all summer, have questions about long-distance backpacking, or just want to see some pretty pictures of the American West, come on down.  This event is free and open to all!

When:  Monday December 8th   6:30pm

Where: downstairs meeting room Joel Valdez Library (map)

Cost:   FREE

El Tour de Tucson

Another succesful El Tour!  This was my third El Tour and second time riding with El Grupo, the youth cycling club I help to coach.  We rode all 109 miles in 6:46.  While this time was slower than our time last year, we have a completely new crew of riders most of whom new to cycling.  I seriously expected our team to take about eight hours to finish so obviously we did great.  No flats, no accidents, no complaints - just 8 kids riding with their hearts.  We also managed a quick "Happy Birthday" to my mom who cheered us on at mile 68!  This last photo is of the incredible celebration breakfast that my beautiful wife prepared for me.

I'd like to give a big shout out to my neighber and friend Mike Dean who could not ride El Tour this year due to the fact that he is in Iraq for the FOURTH time.  He was going to try to ride "El Tour" around the Army base but couldn't due to security concerns.  You are in our thoughts Mike!  See you next year!

Rainwater harvesting!

Today we had our new rainwater harvesting system installed.  You can see the before and after shots above.  First, we had the support wall built (second photo).  This wall was actually less for support than to raise the tank high enough to use gravity to water our raised planters.  The tank itself holds 250 gallons (and weighs one ton when full!).  It is a special tank from Australia that has a slim profile (look closely: it is not circular) which suits our tiny courtyard well - total footprint is 10 s.f.  The roof area that drains in to the tank is 468 s.f. and will fill the tank in a 1" rainfall.  In theory, we get enough rainfall each year to fill the tank about 11 times but this assumes that we completely empty the tank between each rain.  The black pipe in the corner is the overflow pipe that will drain any excess rainfall to the street (which is where ALL of our current rainwater ends up).  This system is essentially just a fancy bucket put under our downspouts - a brilliant concept in the desert!  Now we're just praying for rain...