vacaenbaja
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Our Search for the Lost Mission
From John W. Hiltons book "Hardly Any Fences"
"Our friends Dana and Ginger Lamb, who have spent the major part of their adult lives doing adventure books and
films, had written Barbara and me a letter describing a
camp they had set up below San Felipe. this was the year they were doing the intensive search by land and air for
the Lost Mission of Santa Isabela. They said they had
their Jeep down near a pleasant beach and had their light
plane parked on a salt flat which served as a flying field.
They made the whole thing sound so attractive that
we were pleased when at the end of their letter they
said, "Why don't you come on down and spend some
time with us?" I was preparing to do a show and a book on
Baja California so this seemed as good a time as any to
start gathering material. The Lost Mission is a story in
itself. The Lambs were in a sort of rivalry with our friend
Gaston Flourie of Ensenada. He had spent years in search
of this mission. In fact, Gaston named the hotel he built
in Ensenada the Mission Santa Isabela.
We were more or less betting on the Lambs (if such a
mission really existed). After all, Gaston is only a part-
time adventurer. Dana is a fellow member of mine of the
Los Angeles Adventurers'Club. He and Ginger spend all
their time either living adventures or writing and lectur-
ing about them. On top of that, they had a plane of their
own and some "hot" leads.
There are a great many arguments, pro and con, con-
cerning the fabled Lost Mission. Actually, it is well
agreed by those who believe in the story that it was not a
mission as such with a congregation of Indians, culti-
vated lands, and corrals usually expected at such estab-
ishments. It was, rather, a hiding place or repository for
the treasure amassed by the Jesuits while they were in
control of the peninsula.
All over northern Mexico I have encountered stories
of hidden mines, buried treasures, and even lost villages
cut off from the world by man-made landslides to hide
wealth from the Spanish who, with the consent of the
Pope, expelled the Jesuit order in 1767. Most of these stories generally start out with the word of mouth as-
sumption that there was a plot underfoot by the Jesuits
to take large portions of the new world and establish
there a holy Jesuit empire that would be independent of
Spain and perhaps even of Rome.
The one thing of which we are sure is that the Jesuits,
especially in Baja California, were deeply entrenched.
It may be a mere accident that subsequent prospecting in
the 1850s through the early 1900s turned up rather good
mines near almost every Jesuit mission. Still, the written
records sent to Spain indicated dire poverty and hand-to- mouth existence. It is reasonable also to assume that if a
separation movement of great magnitude was under way,
the jesuits had a rather well-organized counterintelli-
gence that carried back into the mountain fastnesses
every whisper and rumor from the court of Madrid and
the Vatican.
If all of these other premises were true, then it would
be easy to believe the legend of the Lost Mission or treas-
ure place of Santa Isabela. The story goes (and it still
persists) that the Jesuits' plans had been discovered and
the King had sent an emissary to accuse them of being
disloyal to the Vatican. With this knowledge at hand,
they are said to have "prepared a place" in an almost in-
accessable canyon where all of the gold and perals and
anything of great value could be hidden until the politi-
cal storm blew over. (It may be that they did not believe
the king could ever get the consent of the church to expel
one of its hardest-working orders from the vast domain
held by the Spanish crown.) There was supposed to be
water at this spot. The legend goes on to tell that the
Jesuits in Baja California had ample time to hide every-
thing and all of it was taken by mule to the "secret
place." PART 2 to follow
[Edited on 1-2-2009 by vacaenbaja]
[Edited on 1-4-2009 by vacaenbaja]
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vacaenbaja
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Posts: 640
Registered: 4-4-2006
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Our Search for the Lost Mission Part 2
"Those who chose to disbelieve this story base their
assumptions on the written histories. Naturally, a thing
of this sort would not be included in reports current at
the time. They would most certainly not have put5 into
writing any of the information of the whereabouts or the
orders to hide the goods. To hold out treasure or wealth
of any kind without paying the usual share to the church
and state was a serious crime for which they did not care
to be tried and punished.
Whether the stories were true or false, the Lambs were
on an all-out search for the place or the Lost Mission. We
had been invited to join them and we felt that it was a
rare opportunity. I had to see a group off on a trip to Mex-
ico City by plane from Tijuana, so Barbara and I decided
to pack up some things in the station wagon and go on
from there to San Felipe and to "Lambs's Landing," a few
miles south. We stopped in Tijuana and bought fresh
vegetables, meats, and fruits that we knew would be
very acceptable to people camping below San Felipe. We
had a small ice box for perishables and to keep the beer
cold. We were dertermined not to arrive at the Lambs'
camp empty-handed.
The road from Tijuana to Mexicali is paved and pleas-
ant. The first part follows through prosperous little farms
that are irrigated from a nearby dam. At some of the road-
side stands we bought even more fresh things. We hoped
that the Lambs expected to stay for quite a while for we
were equipped to feed an army, and had Mexicali beer
along to wash the food down.
The road climbs a high granite mesa after passing the
dam and eventually drops into the brewery town of Te-
cate, which is right on the United States boarder. in fact,
most of the road parallels the border very closely from
Tijuana to Tecate. From Tecate the road climbs even
higher into the granite backbone of the penisula. It
passes close to the old placer washings where gold was once produced in great quantities. There are occasional
ranches along the way that look pleasant and prosperous.
They depend principally on cattle for their livelihood.
To the south we could see the misty heights of the
Sierra San Pedro Martir. We realized that this was actu-
ally a low pass between the coast ranges of southern Cali-
fornia and the Sierra of Baja California. We knew it
would be hot down in Mexicali as it was late spring, so
we traveled along at a very deliberate pace, stopping to
look at plants, rocks, and scenery as we went. It would
be much pleasanter to travel across the desert below us
after dark.
It was just about sundown when we came to the edge
of the great granite mesa. I stopped the station wagon
and we got out to look down. The below-sea-level Mexi-
cali desert and the even lower Imperial Valley to our
north shimmered in the heat. There we stood at about
fourty-three hundred feet, with a cool breeze among the
pinons and junipers, looking down into the sweltering
salt flats of Laguna Salada to our southeast. Beyond it
wee the tortuous ribbons of silver that represent the
channels of the Colorado River in its delta. Beyond that,
to the south, was the faintest glimmer in the haze of the
north end of the Gulf of Lower California.
The Laguna Salada, below us, is the purported location
of another treasure story. It is rather obvious that this
lake was, in more or less recent history, a tidal arm of the
gulf. A combination of flood waters in the Colorado River
and a series of high tides in the gulf must have often filled
this basin. Bones of skates and sharks can still be found
in the dry mud thirty miles from the present shoreline of
the gulf. The dams on the Colorado River now make
such flooding of the area very unlikely.
The treasure story regards a ship loaded with pearls
and treasure which sailed into the upper gulf under the
misapprehension that California was an island. There
was supposed to be a waterway between it and upper Cal-
ifornia that connected with the Pacific. The ship is sup-
posed to have gone up what is now Laguna Salada and
sailed along its shores looking for an opening in the
mountains.
After spending several fruitless days searching and
having stopped and shot several mountain sheep for food,
the sailors turned back toward the gulf onlt to find that
the water was running away from them and there was not enough depth to sail. The ship grounded along the
shore of the Laguna Salada in an area of great sand dunes.
It was finally abandoned there. The story goes that a few
survivors finally reached one of the mission settlements
on foot. This story has been, by certain fiction writers,
very deftly transplanted across the boarder into Coachella
Valley with the Salton Sea as the body of water involved,
but the meager historic evidence points very strongly to
the Laguna Salada. Anyone thinking of searching the
dunes for this lost treasure should remember, before
spending any real money on the project, that the pearls
would be worthless and powdery by now, and they are
the principal treasure mentioned."
PART 3 to follow
[Edited on 1-4-2009 by vacaenbaja]
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BAJACAT
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 2902
Registered: 11-21-2005
Location: NATIONAL CITY, CA
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Finding the ruins would be a treasure in it's own right,never mind the pearls.Thanks for the story VAJAENBAJA
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vacaenbaja
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Our Search for the Lost Mission PART 3
"The sun had already cast a long shadow across the
valley of Mexicali below us when we started down the
spectacular Cantu grade. One moment we were in sun-
light and the next we were in twilight as we entered the
shadow of the mountain. It was a good road with well-
banked curves cut out of the living rock. Each bend dis-
closes a panorama of beauty hard to match anywhere
else. We traveled slowly, drinking in the scenes as they
unfolded. The lights of Mexicali came on far below and
ahead of us before we came to the bottom of the grade.
At about the thousand foot elevation, ocotillos and other
desert plants started to appear in our headlights. The hot
breath of the sunburned land came up to us.
It was still warm and humid when we drove into the
thriving town of Mexicali and stopped at the Golden
Lion for dinner. The lobster was wonderful, as usual. We
enjoyed every bite and took our time. It was rather late
when we filled our gas tank and headed south over the
San Felipe road but we did not mind. We knew it would
be much pleasanter on this stretch at night.
At first our way led through the rich farmlands of the
delta. We passed through several small settlements
where people seemed to be up late for farmers. Then we
realized that people in this country become almost noc-
turnal in the summer. They spend most of the day in-
doors and work outside at night. We even saw tractors
with headlights working the fields. The lights would
have hardly been necessary for the moon was big and
bright.
When we reached the little village of El Mayor on the
Rio Hardy, I told Barbara of times when I used to come
down this road years ago before it was graded and paved
and had to wait for the tide to go out to get around the
bend. This point is about the northernmost limit of the
gulf tides. The Rio Hardy is a part of the Colorado River
system and yet one might say it is an extention of the
gulf. Just north of here I have gone duck hunting in small
boats in the labyrinth of channels, islands, and strange
currents. I remember catching catfish and bass in the
water so it must be fresh, yet the tides rise and fall there.
The moon shone on the Hardy River and the willow-
matted delta beyond. On the other side of the road was the
driest type of desert. There is no zone of gradation. Some-
time later we crossed the Laguna Salada. The road is now
graded and raised well above the salt flats. The moon
shone on the dry, salty surface as if it was water. Then
we climbed through some sand dunes and over small
volcanic hills. In the headlights I noticed that the plant
life was begining to change. Elephant trees were show-
ing up here and there. The old man, or bottle brush cac-
tus, became common.
I began looking for a place to camp. We found a spot
beyond the first range of hills where we could drive off
on hard ground. In fact, we were able to drive about a
half mile from the road. Here we put down air mattresses
and sleeping bags and turned in for the night. It was
after we were in bed, wondering when the moon would
go down and get out of our eyes, that we realized that
this was the first time Barbara and I had ever camped
out together in Baja California. We knew that it most
certainly would not be the last.
Next morning we cooked breakfast over an ironwood
fire and viewed the elephant trees in the arroyo nearby.
They were the first ones Barbara had ever seen. She ad-
mired their effect of frozen rhythmic motion and said
she would have called them the dancing trees rather than
elephant trees. The road was good all the way to San Fe-
lipe. As we neared the gulf, a breeze brought us the faint
odor of salt flats and beaches. It seemed strange that
these smells should come to us among the ocotillo and
cati, but they did.
Upon inquiring for the Lambs in the little fishing vil-
lage, no one seemed sure but they thought they had come
through town the night before. They were not sure wheter they were going into their camp or comming out.
The only thing of which they were sure was that they
had seen the Lambs the evening before in San Felipe. We
checked our sketchy directions to their camp and drove
on out of town. The pavement ends very abruptly at San
Felipe and the typical Baja road takes over. The road
south leads through the city dump and the usual piles of
fish heads. These are out of town far enough to give the
coyotes a feast.
There is a law in Mexico which makes it illegal to
clean fish and throw the refuse in the ocean. Fish must
be brought ashore to be cleaned legally. It is a shame as
long as the legislators went to that much trouble they
did not make the law read that all cleaning should be
carried to a point at least a mile from human habitation
and burried. As it is, there is a new and very bold crop of
coyotes growing up that is throwing the biology of the
land off balance. When fishing is bad, these new and
numerous predators become hungry and gang up on
calves, goats and even people. The shark fishing was re-
sponsible because of the great number of shark carcasses
thrown ashore providing a new and easy food supply for
the coyotes. Now that shark livers are no longer profit-
able (the vitanmin companies have found a cheaper substi-
tute that has been blessed by the A.M.A.) the coyote
population must dwindle again, from starvation, to the
normal number necessary to keep the jackrabbits down.
We watched for a road turning left toward the coast
from the road south and finally found one with fresh
Jeep tracks on it. In a little while we came to its end and
there was a dry lake, or salt flat, with plane tracks on it.
At the north end was a pole made from an ocotillo stem
and on the pole was a ribbon of toilet paper. This was,
without a doubt, the wind sock for Lamb's landing."
PART 4 to follow
[Edited on 1-3-2009 by vacaenbaja]
[Edited on 1-4-2009 by vacaenbaja]
[Edited on 1-4-2009 by vacaenbaja]
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Miette
Junior Nomad
Posts: 51
Registered: 12-9-2008
Location: Mendocino County, CA
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Mood: Yo soy contenta
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vacaenbaja
Thanks for this report! I love your descriptions and the tone of your writing. Keep it coming - more, please!
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vacaenbaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 640
Registered: 4-4-2006
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I am glad that you enjoy the story as much as I do. I really wish that I could write stories as well as the late Mr. John W. Hilton, who wrote this
piece. He was a facinating man
who was also quite a painter. I have posted two other stories of his. One is called "The Virgin of the Rock" and the
other is called "The Thirsty Ghosts of the LLano Perdido."
These stories span the time frame of 1933-1959 and were
printed in book form in 1977 by Dawsons Book Shop in a
limited edition of 500. It is for the fine writing of a Baja gone
by and the scarcity of his works that I choose to from time to time share with others the wonderful prose of this great
man and Baja afficianado.
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 64493
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: San Diego County
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Mood: Have Baja Fever
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Love old Baja stories... Thank you for sharing the book this way...
If I could make one request, could you double space between the paragraphs (you can use edit to do this after posting)? Thanks, it seems to make for
easier reading on message boards that way.
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vacaenbaja
Senior Nomad
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Our search For The Lost Mission PART 4
"Near the improvised wind sock we could see the neat
remains of Lamb's Camp. There was a pile of wood left
for the next fellow or for them if they should come in
late at night. There were the leveled-off spots where
the beds had been and the remains of the last campfire.
Every scrap of trash had been burned. The Lambs are
not only experienced campers, they are neat ones and
cannot be called litterbugs.
The road had been rather sandy coming into camp
but we had traveled it in fine shape. We had all of our
cold beer and food and equipment so we decided to
camp with or without the Lambs, hoping that perhaps
they would come back.
A sand dune divided the dry salt flat from the beach.
We climbed it and found the most beautiful beach we
had ever visited. What made it so especially beautiful was the lack of trash and human beings. We packed
some things over the dune and made a shade above the
high tide level. Then we packed over water, food, and
bedding, for we felt it would be much nicer to sleep
right there on the edge of the gulf.
We had lunch and spent most of the afternoon just
lazing around unser the shade I made with a tarpaulin
and some ocotillo stems. Far out we could see an island.
We latter found that it is called Consag Rock. Now in
the afternoon, it became a magic castle. Mirages dis-
torted it into a towering, white structure like the fairy
castles in the story books. As the afternoon progressed,
the towers dropped away and grew again in different
places.
I discovered that there was a trail around the dune
and that it opened out into a beach where there was a tiny inlet. In the course sand of this inlet we found
thousands of small jewel clams with many colors and
markings. They were tpp tiny for normal cooking but
we dug a couple of quarts, let them stand in a pail of
salt water until they lost their sand , and boiled them
for the broth. We had steaks broiled over driftwood
coals, clam broth, and assorted fruits. We sat and
watched a great moon come up over the gulf, then we
bedded down with nothing but sheets on the soft sand.
The coyotes howled and yelped in the dunes back of us.
The gulf purred in front of us. The moon shone down
on us and smiled. It was a great night.
The next morning was overcast and a great deal cool-
er than the day before. We rose and cooked a leisurely
breakfast. Since there were no other people on the beach,
we didn't bother to put on clothes. this was wonderful
--this was real freedom! We walked together down to
the water and had a swim. The tide was very low and
the water so shallow that we had to walk out quite a
way.
After the swim we decided to walk down "our
beach." Since we were the only ones there we felt by
this time that we owned it. Up the shore a half mile
were some rocks sticking out of the water. We found
rock oysters on them and mant sea shells around them.
We stopped to pick them up and walked on. Soon the
small basket we were carrying was full of sea shells and oysters. we stopped and sorted out the sea shells and
threw a lot away. Soon we had to turn back to camp
for we had more things than we could carry. It was still
overcast and the tide was coming back in. We had an-
other swim and started out the other way on the beach
gathering shells, still dressed in nothing whatsoever.
We walked farther this time for there were no oysters
to gather and it took us longer to get a load.
About the time we reached the camp again, the haze
broke and it became very hot. We spent the rest of the
afternoon in the shade and had to admit that perhaps
we should have worn some clothes. We looked at each
other and discovered that we wee sunburned in places
where we had never been sunburned before. The posi-
tion assumed in gathering sea shells had been ideal for
scorching those portions usually covered by bathing
suits. A sunburn is an insidious thing. It sneaks up when
you are not looking and you only notice it after you
have it. Then, when you think it is pretty bad, it gets a lot worse. That night the moon shone down on two of the red-
dest posteriors ever seen on the Gulf of Lower Califor-
nia, for we slept face down. Rather, I should say, we
tried to sleep. Our palitating posteriors made sleep
next to impossible.
It was torture the next morning trying to put on
clothes but we finally made it. It was more torture get-
ting things packed up in the station wagon. Then
the real torture began when we had to sit on those ten-
der, medium- rare rear sides and drive over the rough
road. Our dreams of starting a nudist colony of two
went flickering; and that is how we came to call the
beach beyond Lambs Landing "Burnt Butt Bay." We
have not given up on nude bathing or even shell collecting
on lonely Baja California beaches, but we have learned to
judge how much of it we can take and go prepared with
sunburn lotion."
LAST PART TO FOLLOW
[Edited on 1-4-2009 by vacaenbaja]
[Edited on 1-4-2009 by vacaenbaja]
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vacaenbaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 640
Registered: 4-4-2006
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Our Search For The Lost Mission PART 5
We were about half way back to the main trail south
when I slowed down for a bump. It was exactly the
wrong thing to do. I have been used to driving much
older cars over such roads anf hardly realized how com-
pletely inadequate the new station wagons are when it
comes to traveling the sort of roads for which station
wagons were originally designed. This one just dug into
the soft sand.
I got out and looked the situation over. It didn't look
good. It hurt to stoop over to see how low we were in the
sand. It hurt again when I straightened up. Barbara sud-
denly got visions of our dying of heat in the Baja Califor-
nia desert, I dug out in front of the tires and tried again.
We just went deeper.
Then Barbara said,"Lets pull brush and make a road."
This was a fine idea bit it was much harder than it can
possibly be described on the printed page. Our sunburns
hurt where the clothes rubbed when we stooped over to
tug at the tough, stubborn little bushes. The bushes were
scarce and far apart. It took a long time to amass a piti-
fully small pile of sticky,prickly brush. Finally, I put a
jack under one rear wheel, lifted it out of the hole it had
dug, pushed some sand in to level it and laid brush down.
While I was doing this, Barbara was pulling and breaking
more brush. Her hands were raw and almost bleeding by
the time we had brush under the other rear wheel and a
sketchey path laid ahead for about a car length.
The dunes all around us cut off any whisper of breeze
that might have been coming from the gulf. The sun beat
down mercilessly. It got hotter and hotter. We climbed in
the car, held our breath and started. We ran the length of
the brush path and sank in again. Going down hill toward
the sea we had rolled easily over this sand but coming
back up was too much.
Now we at least had brush gathered. It was a bit easier
to dig it out of our tracks than to break and pull more.
We had to move our path ahead of us three more times
before we again came to solid enough ground for our
pretty but delicate station wagon to negotiate. By then
our clothing had rubbed those tender, sunburned parts
of our anatomy to the point where sitting down was ex-
quisite torture, but we had to do it so we did!
Had I been equipped with the pump which I now have
which attaches to the engine, it would have been a simple
process to get that same car through that same sand. The
idea is to remove about half the air from the tires. The car
then rolls easily through the sand which it could not cross
with the tires inflated. Then, on higher ground, one
simply removes a spark plug from the engine, screws in a
plug on a hose and attaches the other end to a tire. When
the motor is started, it pumps clean cool air into the tire
by a process not understood by me, but it works fine.
Very few things are as hard on the human system in hot
weather as pumping a tire with the conventional push-
and-pull hand pump.
So ended our share of the quest for the Lost Mission.
It was, fortunately, never recorded on color film for the
edification of an adventure-hungry public but we "suf-
fered" as all good major Baja California travelers are sup-
posed to suffer.
We love "Lamb's Landing" and "our beach beyond."
We come back from time to time to camp there. Of late
years we have discovered that one can no longer have
the privacy of our first visit. Thousands of visitors pour
into the San Felipe region at Easter time now and over-
flow into the desert and beaches. The beaches become
so crowded that one can count as many as a dozen people
in a half mile. They are still charming beaches. They al-
ways will be, we hope. They are the only beaches we
know of where ocotillos grow within a few hundred feet
of the shore line and desert Easter lilies sprout up from
the sands just above the tide line.
We have had to give them up, however, during the
spring vacation for when we camp out and find out that
we are in sight of other campers not in our party, we de-
cide we are not far enough down into Baja California. We
move on! There are still many lonely miles of beaches
on which we have never camped, and hardly any fences
to keep us off.
Shortly after our return we contacted the Lambs at
their home in Corona del Mar and found them busily
developing film. The day before we arrived, they had
flown out over a rugged area near the foot of a remote
mountain called Matomi. From the air they had spotted
a sink hole in the rugged badlands with water, palms, and
cottonwoods. This might be the "secret place." The news-
papers ran pictures of the oasis, and the Lambs finally
reached the spot by land. It made a wonderful adventure
picture called "Quest for the Lost Mission." They feel
that the treasure might be covered by a slide of rock on
one side of the circular sink hole.
Personally, I feel that the "secret place" has not yet
been found. This place discovered by the Lambs is cer-
tainly picturesque. It has some date palms and fig trees
showing the mission influence. There are few water-
holes or palm clumps in the northern part of the penin-
sula that do not have this. However, in my opinion, if the
Jesuits were going to hide something, they would want to
keep such trees from growing around the spot.
I later went down into the area armed with photos of the site and discovered that it is well known among cat-
tlemen of the region. They have known about it for years
and their cattle use it. It is known to them as La Tinaja
de la Llegua (the waterhole of the mare). One cattleman
remarked that the only thing that was lost there was the
mare, and that is how the spring got its name.
Recently one of the authors of a well-known and very
accurate work on Baja California came through Ensenada
and stopped to see mt friend, Gaston Flourie. When I
saw Gaston he was full of mock indignation. The man,
who is certainly a great authority on Baja California, had
stated to Gaston that there was positively no such thing
as a lost mission, that the whole story had no basis in his-
tory or geography, and that Gaston was wasting his time
looking further.
"Can you imagine this horrible, practical fellow,"
moaned Gaston, "trying to convince me that the Mission
Santa Isabela does not exist? It is a crime in this country
to destroy a man's property but, my friend, it should be
also a crime to destroy a man's dreams."
That evening I overheard a tourist, who had been to
Ensenada more than once, telling a first-timer all about
the Hotel Mission Santa Isabela. "You see, this Frenchman
is really very clever. This is actually the framework of a
very old mission from which he made his hotel. The orig-
inal bells are still in the tower."
The other man turned and said, "No, you're all wrong
about that, Joe, this building was not here many years. A
friend of mine knows this Frenchman real well. He says
that Gaston won't admit it right out but he thinks that
this hotel is an exact copy of the original lost mission and
he has built it with some of the treasure he found there
when he discovered it years ago. You don't think he
would go around advertsing that he had found the Lost
Mission, do you? These Frenchmen are very clever. I'll
bet those bells are from the Mission Santa Isabela. I'll bet
Gaston Flourie beat the Lambs to the punch years ago
and just sat there and laughed to himself while they flew
all over the country looking for the place. Let's go in and
have another drink."
It seemed like a good idea. I went in and had a drink
too. I raised my glass in a silent toast as I muttered to no
one in particular. "Here's to Santa Isabela, treasure and
all. May no one ever discover her except in their hearts."
[Edited on 1-5-2009 by vacaenbaja]
[Edited on 1-5-2009 by vacaenbaja]
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 64493
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: San Diego County
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Mood: Have Baja Fever
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Cute story!
The Santa Isabel story is well known, but no evidence of it exists... and the padres had little free time to collect treasure when growing food and
staying alive took so much time.
Here is a book written a bit ago for school kids... Fun adventures are important, and I should know... I just had one!
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Mexitron
Ultra Nomad
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Mood: Happy!
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Nice story--thanks for sharing!
David--speaking of Isabella, did you ever come across that run down, eh, motel, in Santa Isabella Canyon? I recall that its north of Palomar Canyon.
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Miette
Junior Nomad
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Location: Mendocino County, CA
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Mood: Yo soy contenta
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vacaenbaja I read that first paragraph a little too quickly and I thought that "me and Barbara" referred to you in some fashion.
Upon rereading, I am up to speed.
So my compliments to your friends! And, lucky you for having such talented friends!
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 64493
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: San Diego County
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Mood: Have Baja Fever
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Mexitron
Nice story--thanks for sharing!
David--speaking of Isabella, did you ever come across that run down, eh, motel, in Santa Isabella Canyon? I recall that its north of Palomar Canyon.
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No, I have not... but it is well known... As I recall some general was developing it as a retreat/ hide-a-way/ resort... Then (as so often in Mexico),
the project just came to a halt and is abandoned.
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BAJACAT
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 2902
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Location: NATIONAL CITY, CA
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Mexitron
Nice story--thanks for sharing!
David--speaking of Isabella, did you ever come across that run down, eh, motel, in Santa Isabella Canyon? I recall that its north of Palomar Canyon.
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This motel
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BAJACAT
Ultra Nomad
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I just made it to Palomar canyon and run out time to visit the motel, but it is in my next trip..
Palomar hot pool(rather warm).
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BAJACAT
Ultra Nomad
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Location: NATIONAL CITY, CA
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bump
BAJA IS WHAT YOU WANTED TO BE, FUN,DANGEROUS,INCREDIBLE, REMOTE, EXOTIC..JUST GO AND HAVE FUN.....
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