2 months in Baja

[mickeykreg]

Hey fellow squares,
Thought I'd post up here about a blazer camping trip down the Baja. These are just the pics from the trip south and we still have to get home so fingers are crossed. I thought you guys may be interested.
Lisa and I made it to Los Barriles the other day after around 1200 miles, and 16 nights on the road. We had a great trip south. Much of the original plan went out the window once we got going. The '77 ran like a new one. Not even an oil leak. Pretty amazed actually, but I did work on things for months to prepare for this trip. No problems with gas, and it was always available when we needed it. I was able to use my CC to pay for gas more often than I thought. Never got ripped off, like I do in front of my own house in SLC. Always felt safe. Weather sucked, but not as bad as up north. Mostly just cooler temps than we expected. A couple nights of rain made us pass through the Catavina area way faster than we would have liked. Palapa at Daggets helped us survive a night of 50mph gusts. We met the bajadivide mountain biker crew near La Cuesta de la Ley. Bahia Conception was too much of a raucous to for us to hang around. We did stay at Playa La Perla which seemed different and chill. The lady collecting the $4 fee for the palapa was a sweetie, so Lisa bought a bracelet from her. Also stayed at a super nice camp at Juncalito, where we met some people that'd driven from South America.
Everything we look for in a camping trip and then some. Big views, stars all the way to the horizon, miles of nothing but everything, great street food in the dusty little towns, amazing beach camping!

I'll shut up and leave the rest to the photos.

Camp 1: La Jolla (out of Ensenada), barely made it before dark


Camp 2: Punta San Jose, bought fish for anniversary dinner on the coals.


THE Mama Espinosa's and Baja 1000 shrine in El Rosario


Camp 4: rainy night in the mysterious Boojums south of Catavina


Camp 5: before the storm at BdLA


Camp 6: Playa San Rafael - Pedro is rad as hell!




Camp 7: a cold night in the outback




Camp 8: in the dunes south of Bahia Ascunsion


Dinner in San Ignacio was something like $12 for both of us


Even the gas station has a rad view!


camp 10: Playa La Perla, cool old lady, $5 palapa to escape the wind




Loreto - thought I'd post a pic of us


Camp 12 and 13: finally a layover at Punta Conejo


best sunset of the trip at P. Conejo


nights 14 and 15: a couple nights of "fancy" at the Barcelo in Cabo.




Camp 16: Los Frailes, dramatic whale breach 250m offshore



Now it's time to chill out for a month in Los Barriles and shake off the road. March 1st we'll make a slighly faster trip north. So far the return list includes the Javier and San Miguel/Jose Comondu mountain route, and route 5 through San Felipe.

[68Timber]

Wow cool trip and great pics.

[lt1wrangler]

Beautiful place! Was there twice racing the 1000 and loved it!

[Greenlee]

Wow. Awesome trip! Post more pics on the way back!

[buffydores]

You are my freakin' hero. Epic.

[mickeykreg]

Guess I'll post the good with the bad...finally had an equipment fail...

Before:


After:

The tire carrier broke clean off!




1400 miles of Baja backroads roads finally took their toll. After the fact I find out this is a weak POS chinese spindle. Got nobody to blame but myself for not building more beef into this thing. Guess I can't complain too much since this is the only fail so far. Plan to rebuild includes a 1/3 larger spindle sold by Ruffstuff near Sacramento. Gonna have to get home first with this brute of a tire inside with us.

It's all part of the adventure....right???

[phillipm]

Thanks for updating with the last round of pictures. Such an awesome trip it looks like!

[68Timber]

You do not have to pay to post pics, you don't even need an image hosting site. When you start a post if you scroll down below the white box where you type text you'll see a button called 'manage attachments'. There you can upload images directly from your computer. The only downside to this is losing the ability to mix images into text. If you use this feature, the text of the post will be at the top and images below. But if that doesn't bother you too much, you can skip the step of uploading pics to an image hosting site.

[jrblanke]

Kind of an off topic question, but how do you keep mosquitos out while you sleep in the blazer. Do you have some kind of mesh screen or something?

[mickeykreg]

If there's bugs or its looking stormy we set up the tent. I think we spent one or two nights, out of about 25, in the tent.

[Zoomad75]

I don't know how I missed this, but great trip. Baja is a bucket list trip for me.

Thanks for sharing!