Baja Trip - The Last Frontier Part 1

Time to go to Baja! The group was a great assembly of long time friends and fellow Baja nuts. John M had a long background with Score and knew Coco before he left Ensenada many years ago for Coco's Corner. TacoFeliz wore out a Jeep down there and is now abusing a Tundra. Alan is the retired Coordinator at Zzyzx, the Desert Studies Center (with passenger Tim, a former manager of the DSC) and has done quite a bit of botany in Baja. Bossing the whole outfit was Dixie Johns, the Siberian Husky. She kept asking “Are we there yet? This doesn't look like the Siberia I remember!”. Oh yeah, Marian, my current wife, was along. Note: All WiW's, remember your numbers!

We loaded our four Toyotas up with pesos and crossed the border at San Diego with no problems getting our tourist passes (excluding the lecture I received for using a birth certificate instead of a passport). Hwy. 1 was a joy! No tourists! No spring breakers! No severed heads in the median! No cops! On several stretches, the lanes had been widened a foot or so and a two foot shoulder added. Amazing what a difference it made, no more puckering up when a big oncoming truck came into view.

Flower report: We were a little late for the peak of blooms, but still found areas of spectacular Goldfields that completely covered some meadows and hills.

Military checkpoint report: Routine and fast. One wave-through Federal checkpoint below El Rosario.
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We had lunch at a taco stand south of Ensenada and went onward to camp at a wide spot off the El Marmol road. The next morning we found an old road previously spotted on Google Earth and drove to a geoglyph site found by old Baja hands Marv Patchen and Eve Ewing. This was a small knoll with a straight path leading several hundred feet down to an arroyo. The rock circles at the top of the knoll were in some disarray and there was little else to see but is was interesting to find. The narrow old road we found was as interesting and exciting as the geoglyph. Creosote bushes put exotic pinstriping on the sides of our Toyotas and no one cared. This is what we bought them for!

Part Two soon!

Boss Trail Dog Dixie Johns leads us up the trail:

[Edited on 4-13-2009 by Neal Johns]

The fields of Goldfields:

...and the crowd yelled, "More, more old dudes, more!"

Old? Old? It's great to find out that you are still alive!




Below we have a dug well in a wash just off the road to El Marmol and near the old dirt Hwy. 1, rocked in to keep the wash water from filling it in. No longer used, it is full of trash.

[Edited on 4-13-2009 by Neal Johns]

Cool Neal.

That geoglyph was spotted by Marvin while flying, then he located it on the ground. He and I exchanged a few emails as he was trying to tell me where. I got 'Satellite Man' (www.satprints.com) to send me some close ups of the area near the El Marmol and original Baja main road jcn. where Marvin said it was near... but still couldn't pick it out from space (pre-Google days). I have the article from Marvin and Eve on the site. GOOD DOG for finding it!