Mexico for Thanksgiving:
A fun family trip to Mexico for the week of Thanksgiving.
Here are some pictures:
Thanksgiving traditionally means traveling to be with family, so we headed to Mexico. Temperatures in the eighties are not your standard fall holiday fair, but the pools were a bit chilly, so don’t think we cheated too much. The Thanksgiving feast was on the beach and featured the morning’s catch.
We were in Mexico to visit with Abuelo and Abuela (Bill and Jean). Bert and Al drove down together from LA, with surprisingly few adventures to speak of; they must both be getting older and wiser. (It’s possible I’m sure) The Thanksgiving party was rounded out by Steve of Stetson Engineering who Jean still consults for on occasion, and Adolfo who looks after Steve’s house and who took us fishing.
La Paz is the place Bill and Jean have spent the most time since running away from home about a year and a half ago. La Paz is the capitol city of Bahia California Sur (the Mexican state that encompasses most of the southern half of Baja California, excluding the very southern tip). La Paz is a nice city of about 200,000. It is a tourist destination for Mexicans as well as Americans. We had fun taking day trips into town, eating good food and shopping.
We stayed in a nice hotel at the marina where Talaria is berthed called Costa Baja. Costa Baja is about a five minute shuttle or taxi ride from down town La Paz. The pool directly at the hotel was a bit chilly but down the beach, at the lounge, the infinity pool was a bit warmer and the hot tub kept the kids plenty warm. And of course since we were at the lounge the bar kept the parents cool.
Aside from hanging out in La Paz we went for a sail on Talaria, and an adventure on the beach, where most of us were stung by nematodes, Bert stepped on a ray that in response poked him in the foot, and Ali sliced her foot on something else under the water. The beach was pretty though with mangroves and crabs and shells.
Thanksgiving day we caravanned across the peninsula to Punta Arenas where Steve is building a house. Many of us went fishing, but only Ali caught a fish big enough to keep. Stan caught the rock that brought fishing to end for the day. So we had to play on the beach, about 10 miles of it, nearly to ourselves. The swimming was better that in the bay of La Paz, as no one was stung and the water was pleasantly warmish.
Thanksgiving lunch featured ceviche made from Ali’s fish (Sierra Mackerel) and lots of other yummies provided by Abuelo and Abuela. After lunch we took a tour of Steve’s house that should be finished in another month or two. The drive back to La Paz featured a coyote wandering through Steve’s neighborhood and a spectacular sunset.
All good trips must come to and end. A long, but scenic, drive back to Cabo San Lucas ended just in time for us to hop on the plane and head home.
We're just back home from Yosemite and I'm procrastinating. I should be grading science work packets, but instead I'm preparing to entertain you with some new pictures.
It was a quick trip, up Friday night and back Sunday, arrainged by the Kings. They had also invited Jen, Kevin, Vince and Vallerie, so there were six kids and six parents to chase them around. We had a really nice camp right along a little stream.
We saw some wildlife spectacularly close up, beginning with the bat we crashed into on the drive up, the bat that hung out near the restroom for a while, a couple of coyotes cruising through the campground and deer that like us visited the Curry Village for snacks.
After a typical camping evening including smores, we had an uneventful night. It took a while to pack up this morning, then we headed out looking to skip some rocks on our way home. We ended up spending quite a bit of time on the Merced river, swiming with the tadpole and watching a couple of big groups climbing El Capitan. And then back home. A quick trip.
Enough of air travel challenges going to Mexico and Virgin Gorda. Stan was happy to just get into the van and drive, even if it was more than a week of driving and 1500 miles. It was a great itinerary: lots of fun to visit friends and see some beautiful stuff.
We all climbed into the van with camping gear, snacks and most of a week’s worth of stuff. We headed north.
The first night we stayed in a hotel at Lake Shasta and enjoyed a swim in the pool. Before dinner we noticed the big airplane and decided to walk down to the beach after dinner. We had been told that the fire fighting plane was nearly as big as the Spruce Goose. It was huge. The floats under the wings are nearly as big as a ski boat. The next day we rented a boat to go look around and have some fun in and on the water. We even had a chance to see the huge plane take off.
Next stop Ashland, OR to visit Justin and family (Shannon, Ian and Nolan). What a fabulous location. Five minutes from downtown and super views of everything around. Fourth of July was lots of fun, a parade in town and fireworks at the ranch and a great view of the fireworks in town from the ranch. We spent a couple of nights in the guest cottage (tent trailer) and then kept driving north.
On to Portland and more homestead envy, visiting Veronica, Colby, Garrett and Reece who live not far from Oregon City with five or six acres of trees to attend to. I think it must have been Jen who started this gathering of slugs; she and Doug were attending a wedding. Greta, Scott, Sophia and Dorette joined the crowd and Andy, Dan, Maddy and Beth are locals who managed to be back in town from their summer adventures to show us around. Lots of fun hanging with friends and even though the airport cops drew their guns on Stan and Zoe (who slept through the whole thing) they didn’t bother to write a ticket for expired registration of the van or for driving in circles like a terrorist. (Ali and Jonah were busy missing their flight home).
Ali and Jonah flew home a day later and Stan and Zoe finally got to do some camping. The pictures of the campground were suppose to convey just how crazy busy the place was. After our first day of leisurely driving up the Columbia River and south towards Bend our camp site at Cove Palisades State Park was super busy, we were decidedly out of place without a ski boat. It was fun to finally put up the tent and despite the busyness of the place we slept well even though Zoe’s air mattress went flat during the night.
We didn’t have time to make it down to Crater Lake the next day, but we had plenty of time to play in the snow, enjoy the view and to be a little choosy about our next campsite. Too bad the mosquitoes found us. The next day we made the hike down to Crater Lake, we’ll make sure there is time for the boat ride to Wizard Island on our next visit to Crater Lake. We enjoyed our lunch on the shore and the cool water on our feet before hoofing it up the hill and on to our next stop Lassen Volcanic National Park.
We did take time to stop in Klamath Falls to buy Zoe a new air mattress, to eat some pizza and to extract a mouse friend from one of those cranes in a box carnival toys. Driving through Upper Klamath Lake I decided that this was one of the places I will buy property when I win the lottery; beautiful mountains and hills, a big lake for sailing on and plenty of wildlife including a fox trotting through a field.
Did you know Mt Lassen erupted less than 100 years ago? There are photos and everything. Zoe and Stan went caving in a lava tube that was far older than the last eruption, nearly a thousand years old. Nobody cried, but it sure was dark in the middle of the ½ mile long cave.
Finally back home, Stan could have driven another few hundred miles and camped a couple more nights, but it was good to see Ali and Jonah again.
The best laid plans of Mice and Men… What could be better than a week in Mexico?
The less than a week in Mexico was fabulous; the poke in the eye to get there will be remembered as well. Don’t buy tickets from Travelocity that include legs on two different airlines. What will you do when one of your flights is cancelled? Who will get you where you want to go?
If we hadn’t spent two days waiting in lines at LAX expecting to get on a plane, the three day layover wouldn’t have been that bad. The real problem was we thought it was going to be easy…hanging around the hotel pool was fun, the shallow end of the pool was just deep enough so that if Jonah walked carefully he could walk on the bottom of the pool and if he did anything less than carefully his lifejacket would gently cause him to float on his back until he was rescued. The Santa Monica pier was pretty fun too. Too bad Abuelo and Abuela don’t have a phone. They had to drive an hour and a half back and forth to the airport each of the three days to see if we had made it. The drug trafficking checkpoint manned by the Mexican Army might be worth mentioning later.
Finally in Loreto Mexico (about halfway up the Baja peninsula on the East side), Abuelo and Abuela met us at the airport. We were the last ones though security, because after three days of waiting we had given up on hurrying. Promptly we were eating tacos and things were getting better. A quick stop at the beach in Loreto and then we were on our way to join Talaria in Bahia Concepcion. The stop at the drug trafficking checkpoint on the highway was uneventful. Abuelo was getting good at explaining where he was going and with two little kids and one happy Abuela wedged between the heavily armed soldiers didn’t even have us open the trunk, unlike most of the other trips through when the trunk had to be emptied.
Talaria had been anchored at Santispac beach for a while, but the week before we arrived, the resort (restaurant, bar and mini-market) closed, as the weather had become to hot for many visitors to come to the beach. The beach is part of a park system where visitors rent a little bit of beach with a canopy for shade. Its seems pretty cool; even in the off season, trucks come by offering most anything you might need for hanging out on the beach, from fresh water to t-shirts and hammocks.
Mulegé and Santa Rosalia were our destinations for a couple of day trips. Mulegé is a nice little town with lots of palm/date trees along the river valley. More yummy tacos and ice cream too. Santa Rosalia is a bigger town (the copper mine from the turn of the century is likely to reopen soon) with more services, like laundry and a marina where Abuelo and Abuela had kept Talaria for some time. It was nice to have the marina connection so we could borrow the pool. It turned out well that they we in the process of refilling the pools after cleaning them as the partially filled spa turned out to be a prefect wading pool for Jonah.
The best days of the trip were spent hanging around on Talaria, looking at the fish, zooming around in Zoom, playing at the beach and floating in the water. Our favorite toy was the spray bottle and our favorite activity was collecting shells or was it swimming in the ocean to cool off?
The few hour delay at LAX on the way home seemed like nothing. We just headed for the restaurants and had another round of sushi and fries. It is hard to know whether to blame the airport sushi or the Mexican roadside fruit cups for the traveler’s tummy.
Given the opportunity we might all opt to get married in an island paradise. Alice and John had just such an opportunity. We enjoyed a fabulous event hosted at Leverick Bay where John’s son Alex runs the show and the kitchen.
Arggh, traveling was a challenge. We were a bit late arriving at the airport, but it didn’t matter, the first plane was broken, the second one hadn’t been pulled out of the garage, and the third one just left late. Our itinerary got messed up. We slept a big three hours at a hotel in New York before heading back to airport. We arrived in Tortola about the time the wedding was to start on Virgin Gorda, instead of arriving in Saint John the day before. At least Tortola is closer and it would be easy to drive a boat over and pick us up, unless that boat was to break down on its way. That’s OK, there was a ferry that we could all ride back to Virgin Gorda, for some reason Bert and John skipped the ferry and had to hitch a ride.
The wedding was great: beautiful location, fun friends and family. Ali was the wedding photographer, her pictures haven’t been posted yet, but Stan’s are posted athttp://www.kodakgallery.com/ylnats.
Part of the bummer of the flight delays was that Ali had to go to work. She was to fly home the next day, and would have if her plane hadn’t crashed into the airport, while she was waiting for it to arrive. Her eye witness report made the local paper. We were all glad Ali was able to stay another day. The other bummer was that our luggage was lost. It’s a good thing you don’t need much in the way of clothes in the tropics.
Our days consisted of having some breakfast, usually at the poolside café, playing in the pool, warming up by playing at the beach, cooling off by playing in the ocean, having lunch, usually at the poolside café, heading up to the condo for a nap, going for a walk, cooing off in the pool, having dinner, usually at the poolside café, showers, bedtime for the kids, and hanging out on the deck. We threw in a couple of drives to different beaches, and a couple of boat rides (to another beach) just to vary the theme a bit.
The trip home was good. A ferry ride, a flight to Miami (where Alfred came out to the airport to say hey) and a good nap on the way home to SF. Glad to be home, and looking forward to summer travels.
We bought a house! We are really excited to have become home owners. We're moving a little bit south from the city to Pacifica. It seems like we're closer to work, but we haven't shortened our commutes by much. We are only a little closer to the beach, but we can see the water from Zoe's room and from a number of locations in the back yard. And it really feels like we've moved into a nice little community. A few of our neighbors have introduced themselves, and it seems like Zoe and Jonah will heve lots of kids to play with. Yeah!!!
We had a great vacation in Hawaii this summer. Everyone goes to Hawaii, and it wasn't really up to our standards of exotic travel, but it was lots of fun and at least Stan travelled to Hawaii in a non-traditional way...
By boat as part of Hooligan's Pacific Cup crew. Hooligan did well meeting our goals: 2nd in class and winning the Best Rookie Boat award.
Click to see
lots of pictures
Yosemite Weekend:
Oregon Road Trip:
Mexico Trip: LAX, Loreto and Bahia de Concepcion:
Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands –
Grandma Alice gets married and Ali makes the local paper:
Our New House!!!
Pacific Cup and Hawaii Vacationing: