Drifting South ... Baja, 01/2019 ...

[Cabrito]

I’m home now, did the over 900 mile ride home in two pulls, 13 hours on Saturday and 10 hours on Sunday on a used $2k 2000 KLR

That was a quick trip. God Bless the KLR and Mr Kawasaki!

Good stuff John!

 

[SFMCjohn]

Well I kept the light on at LarryLand, but since you Ironbutted the ride home glad you had a great trip. See ya next time you drift this way.

hey Larry, was going to pay another visit but duty called back in SF ...

couple more pics from Larryland:

'nough said ...

thought augustiron may appreciate that Larry always has a use for chain on his Ducati ...

Larry donated this roll of TP for potential use at the military checkpoints in Baja, were I to run into issues with the AK toting teen-age soldiers ... got to donate it to some likely checkpoint soldiers near San Felipe ... they got a good laugh out of it ... thanks, Larry!

 

[SFMCjohn]

Supermike did a good job designing the sticker.

Awesome to see one on your bike! arty

Looking forward to some smiling kids getting some and one or two on the wall somewhere.

the stickers turned out great, big thanks to Supermike!
Kalle was the pro at getting kid-sticker pics, we'll see if anyone steps up to his fine example ...
I'll post some pics of my use of BARF Baja 2019 stickers with a
famous Baja denizen, anon ...

That was a quick trip. God Bless the KLR and Mr Kawasaki!

Good stuff John!

god bless the KLR, for sure ... this one sat for two years without its key,
and didn't miss a beat on this ten-day trip ...

La Rumarosa grade, awesome bit of highway engineering ...

view looking back on the road as it turn to approach Canyon de Guadalupe ...

the palapa campsite at the hot springs and the palm oasis ...

'nother view of the campsite's private hot spring ...

and the view of the peak that towers over the hot springs … Pico Risco,
one of four mountains in Mexico on the Sierra Club’s Desert Peak Section’s
peakbagger list. The peak is located in the Sierra de Juarez Range, which is
actually an extension of the Laguna Mountains in Southern California …

nowadays you can apparently make reservations at Guadalupe Canyon Oasis ...
I never have made a reservation, and took a chance on a holiday weekend
Saturday but Cesar on the south side was able to put me up ...
$800 pasos a night ... that was my big paso expense on this trip ... arty

 

[budman]

Super cool.

Killer Little Ride!

Or... Killer Long Ride!

 

[SFMCjohn]

Super cool.

Killer Little Ride!

Or... Killer Long Ride!

and we rode on ...

woke up the next morning and made my way to a big-bike dirt route from La Rumarosa down southwards toward Parque Nacional Constitucion de 1857 ... always get kind of lost finding my way, so that's fun ...

we all remember our history of Mexico ...

anyway, this part of Baja reminds me of Joshua Tree NP, but with lots of oak trees and big pine trees ... always a relief to find this sign ... which leads in short order to:

Laguna Hansen ... arty

fueled up in Valle de la Trinidad and got caught by sundown and camped here ...

pretty high up and woke up to frost on the bike and ice in the tent ... ha.

got packed up and continued my way across the peninsula on a fun dirt road through San Isidoro ...

views from the San Isidro road ... love to cross Baja east to west and vise versa anytime I can ... so beautiful ...

so it's dirt south of Hwy 2 to Hwy 3 and paved south on Hwy 3 to Valle de la Trinidad (gas) and then dirt again from there west through San Isidro and on to Hwy 1 south ...
a nice big-bike route from Tecate that gets me on dirt right away, just south of the USA border ...

 

[SFMCjohn]

slogged down Hwy 1 from Colnett through San Quintin to Mama Espinoza's for some tacos pescados ...

filled up with barrel gas in Catavina at around 3 pm ...

and headed west toward the Pacific Ocean and Santa Rosalillita ...

got caught by the sunset while still up in the huge cactus forests and boojum trees ... sunrise the next morning ...

almost full moon was still up ...

 

[SFMCjohn]

This is our route from Catavinia

here's a nice map my friend ThumperX posted of the area I'm heading to ...
super-remote and beautiful ...

 

[SFMCjohn]

packed up the tent and bike Tuesday morning ...

first view of the Pacific Ocean after dropping down toward the coast and out of the elevation of the cactus forests and boojum trees ...

flooded portion of the road near the coast ... it was pretty dry this year, and there was always another couple of choices of road inland that bypassed marshy/wet areas ...

arrived at Punta Blanca ...

watched the day go by, and set up camp in the evening ...

watched the sunset with a pair of breeding ospreys ...

 

[Cabrito]

Real nice John. You really show the diversity of Baja.

 

[SFMCjohn]

Real nice John. You really show the diversity of Baja.

yes, there's quite a bit of diversity in Baja Norte ...

there's been lots of rain this winter, so the desert was in bloom:

Canterbury Bell ...

Desert Pincushion ...

Brittlebush ...

Baja Fairy Duster ...

Dune Sunflower ...

pair of White Winged Doves ...

 

[budman]

Bloomers!!!

 

[Eric B]

Great photos John! Thanks for sharing.

 

[buellistic]

What! No fish?
No pole?

 

[m0t0_ryder]

Real good stuff John.
Appreciate the photo's and details too.
Glad you had a great ride!

 

[SFMCjohn]

Bloomers!!!

super-blooming up by San Felipe ...

Great photos John! Thanks for sharing.

looking forward to your pics! arty

What! No fish?
No pole?

my new borracho friend
Armondo offered to take me fishing in BoLA but it never happened ...

Real good stuff John.
Appreciate the photo's and details too.
Glad you had a great ride!

thanks m0t0_ryder, your big KTM would have loved this route ...

more barrel gas in Santa Rosalillita at Jaymies tienda ...

found the mission road heading east off Hwy 1 ...

another very pretty cross-peninsula route ...

made it to the Mission by noon and treated myself to a Coca Cola frio from the nice caretaker ... he told me he’s 64 and has lived at the mission all his life ...

 

[SFMCjohn]

after about 1000 miles and seven days drifting south, my 5% chance pays off ... arty

hit my favorite taco stand in Baja ...

watched the view and sunset from my palapa at Daggett's ...

sunrise over the Sea of Cortez the next morning ...

the BARF Baja crew begins to arrive ... my friend Drew on his Husky 350 ...

my friend Mark and his sweet XR-L ...

my new friend, Jim, outside the nice retirement home he built at Daggetts four years ago. He's from Ft. Jones up in norther California and loaned me some firewood and a camp chair ... he hopes to by buying a KLR soon, so we chatted about bikes ... he's owned a bunch of motorcycles over the years ...

we had a campfire on the beach Friday night, with about 12 BARF Baja participants around it at one point ...

my new friend Armando ... he rolled into camp at midnight on Thursday with music blaring from his pickup and woke me up ... wanted to ring his neck, but of course we wound up being pals ... he helped me with his truck to collect the wood for our big campfire ...

Campfire with SFMCjohn down in BOLA

got distracted around the campfire and was super-disappointed the next
morning when I realized I'd forgotten to take BARF-campfire pics, but my
friend Dmitry saved my entire trip by snapping these pics ... thanks, Dima!

Dima, Eric B and Mark came by to say goodbye as I packed up Saturday morning to start heading north ...

hit the Daggett's exit sign with a BARF Baja sticker on my way out ...

 

[SFMCjohn]

got to hang out with Coco on the way home ...

he made me breakfast ... and a great cup of Baja instant coffee ...

after feeding me he put me to work taking down LED sign-lights before the wind blew them over ... fought a roaring headwind all day ...

Coco has an old panoramic photo that somehow found its way to Baja and onto the walls of his shanty ... the SFMC is included ...

got to put up some BARF Baja stickers and one into his famous guest-book ... arty

 

[SFMCjohn]

road between Coco's and Hwy 1 is still mostly dirt ... this bit of highway south of Gonzaga Bay was new to me ... all the traffic south of Gonzaga Bay still has to roll through Coco's Corner, but they are making huge progress blasting the new roadbed through the hills ...

went and checked out the palapas at Gonzaga Bay for old-time's sake ... they've been upgraded with wind protection ...

did see lots of massive damage to the "new" highway, between Puertecitos and Gonzaga Bay ... huge chunks of roadbed often washed away and several of the big bridges just south of Puertecitos no longer in use due to storm damage ...

 

[SFMCjohn]

was treated to a sand verbena desert super-bloom up by San Felipe ... purple flowers went on for miles ...

famous dip sign still not washed away ...

 

[SFMCjohn]

wonderful that the weather cooperated and let me catch up with the BARF Baja 2019 crew at Daggett's ... think we started meeting once a month at Lanesplitters in Berkeley in August of 2018 ...

Hopefully BARF Baja will happen again in 2020 ... this year's BARF Baja event really helped me get motivated to do a Baja trip this winter ...

If you've ever dreamed of heading to Baja for a first-time motorcycle trip, I can't say enough about what an opportunity BARF Baja is ... massive respect to the core group that has taken responsibility for organizing it over the past five years ...

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see you around
the campfire,
-- SFMCjohn