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After nearly 3 and a half months in Phoenix, it was time to hit the road for home. Bill checks his email one more time on the Tower Point WIFI (ok, it was a little chilly that morning!) and we are ready. A stop at the Schusters in Gilbert to say goodbye (and kiss new baby Emma) and pick up the stuff we'd been storing in Alex's garage. Then we hooked up the Honda, and rode into the sunset. We took highway 87 north, through the Tonto National Forest, and angled over to Holbrook. It's a beautiful drive, lots of wildflowers, and the high point is over 7500 feet (check out the altitude on Bill's Nuvi GPS). Our little 5cyl turbodiesel did very well hauling the loaded Honda over the mountains. We averaged between 15 and 16 mpg towing. There was still snow in spots in the forest, as you can see. Finally, after 3 days and 2 nights in Walmart parking lots, we made it home!
Next trip: Montauk State Park in south Missouri for a family reunion/campout/fishing trip with Nancy's side of the family (Baldwins), and then back-to-back a Roadtrek rally in Branson, Missouri. Will it never end? Nope, not til the money runs out!
So, we rolled into Mesa, AZ the evening of April 3, and spent the night in our Roadtrek for the first time in 2 1/2 weeks. It was like coming home! The next day, we did laundry, unpacked all our stuff from the Baja trip, and settled in. Nikki and Alex Schuster, our daughter and son-in-law, live about 10 miles away in Gilbert, AZ; this is the reason we've picked the Phoenix area as our winter HQ. Not to mention the weather, of course! Back to my story: Nikki has been having contractions all day, getting stronger and closer together. By mid-morning of the 4th, she and Alex alert the doctor, and it's time to go to the hospital. Nancy goes along as photographer, and Bill stays at the Schusters with 18 month old William. At 2:59AM on April 5, Emma Lorelei Schuster is born. She weighed 8lbs, 4oz and was 19" long, with medium brown hair (longer than her older brother's!) and dark eyes. Mom and baby are doing well, and everyone came home on the 7th. Here are some pictures of the newest family member.......
We returned from San Diego to our winter digs at Tower Point in Mesa, AZ on Thursday April 3. Had to swing by Tucson on the way, and pick up the Roadtrek RV from Sandy's West RV. They are a Roadtrek dealer, and we'd dropped off the RV there before heading for Baja. They did a great job sleuthing out our problems: micro-wave oven that wouldn't open, coach charging system that wasn't working, some crotchety cabinet latches, and a toilet valve that wouldn't flush. All were diagnosed and repaired, and Roadtrek warranty handled everything. We couldn't be more pleased with Sandy's service, highly recommended.
Wednesday morning, we were up bright and early, had breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Menu for breakfast just as funny as the dinner one. I had scrambled eggs with Mexican sausage. Tastes great, just don't think too much about what might be in the sausage. Off we went back toward Ensenada, crossing Baja again from east to west. I've thrown in some more photos of Baja, it's just so amazingly wild and beautiful. There are only 450K people on the whole peninsula, compare that with 35 million in California. So much open space, unspoiled vistas, wide open beaches. It was a great trip, and I know we'll spend more time there in the future.
We had lunch at the same great little taco stand right along the main drag by the harbor that we'd enjoyed on the way down two weeks before. Then we walked around the tourist shops for a while, and finished up our souvenir shopping. Just north of Ensenada, we parted from highway 1 to take highway 3 back thru the wine country to Texate. When we got to the border around 4PM, there was only one vehicle in front of us. We answered a couple of questions, showed the INS agent our passports, and didn't even have to get out of the car. It was a breeze. MUCH better than going thru Tijuana!
The drive from Texate to San Diego is around an hour, no big deal, since you'd spend that long in the line at the border in TJ. Spent the nite at the Good Nite Inn in San Diego, 10 minutes from the airport and across the street from Denny's, as we needed to drop Anne and Keith off at the airport at 7AM.
Our hotel in Catavina turned out to be pretty nice. The hotel was spacious, and had a rec room with pool table, a swimming pool, bar, restaurant, and garden. It also had a posse of cats. They followed you around the grounds, and tried to come into your room. Outside our room's door to the open central patio, there was a wounded bat. We told the hotel staff, and they flicked it into the shrubbery. Later that evening, we returned to the room to find a cat outside the door munching on a freshly killed field mouse. Hey, at least they keep the rodents under control! We had a big laugh over the restaurant menu, the best item being "young donkey". Well, it's a literal translation.....see, a burro is a donkey, and a burrito would of course be a young donkey.... About the old car in the cactus garden.... I'm not sure how that fits in, but it did look kinda cool. Maybe the guy didn't pay his hotel bill or something.
The gas station in Catavina, Baja California
We asked an American expatriate bar-fly at the hotel bar where was a good place to eat dinner, and he recommended the El Patron restaurant on the beach. He said to follow the river road to the end, we couldn't miss it. So, we piled into the car and headed down the street. The street became a dirt track after 2 blocks, and I pulled over to ask directions of a local who was walking down the road. She assured us we were on the right road, and that it was only 3 km. down. We bumped along at 15mph, and finally came to the end. There was a little bar and restaurant on the rocky beach, with plastic lawn chairs around tables. We pulled out our dominoes, ordered drinks, and enjoyed ourselves until dinner time. Then, we ate the usual fish tacos and had a great time. We also walked along the rocks and found some nice shells. There was a single fisherman, in a red kayak, with rod and reel looking for supper in the calm water of the Sea of Cortez.
Our day over, we searched out our hotel, the Hacienda, in Mulege. It didn't look like much from the outside. Inside the courtyard, there was a large open area with a clean pool, bar, outside tables, and beautiful overhanging bougainvillea. The rooms were simply furnished, but clean. The travel agent had said it was a 3 star. We'd probably have given it 1 in the US. The innkeeper, however, was a gem. He was an elderly Mexican who had lived in Mulege for the last 44 years. He told us that he'd gone to Tijuana as a youth to school, then to Ensenada to seek his fortune. After 15 years, he returned to his home town, Mulege, and took over the inn. His grandfather had built the original building, which had been added onto many times. With pride he showed us the horse powered olive press his grandfather had imported from Spain. He assured us that our car would be safe, as he locked the gates at 10PM. He said that fresh coffee would be ready at 7AM for breakfast. In all, it was a pleasure to stay there, and we had a pleasant evening playing dominoes under the flowering bougainvillea.
Anne and Keith have an early morning plane to catch from San Diego on Thursday, so we have to get them there. We leave at 7:15AM on Monday 3/31, headed back up highway 1 to Mulege, where we have a hotel reservation. Yes, the girls insisted, so we went to a Mexican travel agent in Cabo San Lucas, and got set up for the next two nights. On the way down, we noticed that every place there had been a fatal accident, the family had erected a little roadside shrine to remember their lost loved ones. We must have seen hundreds over the 1000+ miles of highway. I snapped a couple of photos, because they seemed so unusual. On one very curvy mountain section, I saw a scorched car and a small cross on the shoulder above it. We pulled over to take a look. As we approached the shrine, Nancy realized that the name was in English. She looked, and realized that it was a teacher who had taught in Lake Elsinore, who she knew. The teacher and her son had been in a serious accident in Baja, and she was killed. Her son survived. This was her shrine. This really hit home that this was a dangerous highway. On the way back north, we saw two serious accidents the first day. One was a small sedan that had run up on a truck from behind, and it was stuck clear up under the truck. The second was the remains of a semi that had rolled over, and the tractor was ripped in two. We resolved to redouble our efforts to be safe drivers and not to exceed the driving conditions.
We weren't the only ones who came to Baja to have some fun.....
So, if you're on a 2 and a half week trip, what do you do for clean underwear? After all, we're in a Honda, right, and there are 4 of us, right, and, well, you can see the problem, yes? Nancy and Anne came up with the solution. You see, there was a jacuzzi in our suite, and well, we had some laundry soap, so, voila, a washing machine!!!!
So, what to do in Cabo San Lucas for a week? Well.....
We brought lots of pleasure books to read,
Taught Anne and Keith how to play Mah Jongg,
Played Mexican Train dominoes,
Ate seafood tacos,
Took a harbor cruise out to The Arch and Lovers Beach,
Drove up to Todos Santos to look at art and handicrafts, (bought rugs)
Ate lobster enchiladas,
Went to Cacti Mundo cactus garden in San Jose del Cabo,
Cruised the souvenir shops for the usual T's, etc
Ate more fish tacos,
Went to happy hour at the swim-up pool bar.....
You get the idea, yes?
