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Baja California (5)
I continue with fairly close updates to try to catch the little backlog.
We are now almost in the South and the climate is summer.
1. Baya San Evaristo, a nice anchorage for yachts traveling.
2. Saline behind the promontory.
3. We decided to stop for the day on a beautiful beach where we were completely alone.
4. Nice camp, isn’t it?
5. The weather was not great but it’s nice for taking photos… 😉
6. I took the opportunity to photograph some birds. Here a brown pelican.
7. A blue heron.
8. A couple of American heating small crustaceans.
9. Sorry, I don’t rememebr the English name of this one. Will complete it later. 😉
10. Grooming…
11. I also test my folding kayak that proves efficient!
12. The next day, the light is brighter before our departure.
13. The road to La Paz delivers nice views…
14. … with some cliffs.
15. Fishing camp…
16. Still the desert…
An incident will slow our progress. While we have just La Paz, I see Baja Shaker that puts headlights in my rearview mirror. I stop and Andrew said: “You’re losing all your diesel”. I lean in and discovers a slot of ten inches in one tank welds. The vibrations of the trail broke this weld aluminum. Using plastic bottles cut, we managed recover about five gallonsto fill the only can we had, the rest of 40 gallons accidentally ending on the side. Baja Shaker then tow me to La Ventana where we find an old man, Adan, who made a nice weld on the tank previously took apart. As it was Sunday, it’s Baja Shaker who took me discovering the coast towards Los Barilles.
17. Seashore North of Los Barilles.
18. Sunset on Baya La Ventana.
19. From the other side of the bay the next morning, a beautiful sunrise with the sound of whales blowing.
After the forced stop, we will head north to join a small group of vans in San Ignacio and go alltogheter see the whales in the Laguna San Ignacio. To be continued in a few days… 😀
Baja California (4)
The road down the Baja continues.
1. We passed by the Mission San Luis Gonzaga, simpler but no less lovely.
2. Stripped interior.
3. Bell tower…
4. Decorated door.
5. … and amazing knocker.
6. Detail…
7. Some other buildings probably built in the 19th century remain. These are the only of its kind we saw during our trip.
8. It wasn’t possible to drive faster than 5-10 mph on that kind of roads.
9. Small Church in a very small village along our road…
10. Some “aroyos” have water during the winter.
11. Another mission that we couldn’t visit since it’s private property and we should have had an appointment.
12. Mountain oasis…
13. Another small isolated church.
14. Vivalavida and Baja Shaker then borrow a beautiful canyon to reach the coast about 140 km north of La Paz.
15. Stony descent.
16. Ascent to the pass accessing the coast. Here, a spring creates a small oasis.
17. There are some river crossings…
18. While Andrew went to see the village of San Evaristo, I climbed a peak to look for a point of view. Vivalavida looks very small from up there!
19. What a view!
20. San Evaristo not far away…
21. In one word: superb.
To be continued… 😉
Baja California (3)
More than towna I announced, I should have said villages because of their small size.
The first our route met was the well-known San Ignacio. It is a beautiful palm grove that has developed around a source maintaining a small lake year round.
1. A village square that might remind some squares in south of France.
2. The famous church of San Ignacio, one of the best preserved of Baja.
3. Awseome frontage…
4. Typical interior of Jesuit churches from mid 19th century.
5. The streets are colorful.
6. The lake and the palm grove.
We continued south with a stop in Santa Rosalia, a small really pleasant town.
7. Lively streets…
8. Point of interest, a church built by Gustave Eiffel for an International Exhibition and reassembled a few decades later.
9. The interior reveals the typical metal frame of this designer.
10. Back street…
11. We stopped for the night and the following day in a little paradise…
12. Panoramic at sunset…
13. This sand spit is unique…
14. A frigate, an incredible sailing (approx. 7 feet wide) which almost never beats wings as he knows how to exploit thermal and dynamic…
15. Continuing our discovery, we joined the mission of San Javier, in the central highlands.
16. White domes…
17. A tree in the garden…
18. Openings are small…
19. … but the architecture is powerfull.
20. Following the trail to South, a Virgin in an exposed passage of the trail.
To be continued… 😉
Baja California (2)
It continues down the Baja, along the Sea of ​​Cortez.
1. First sun rays on Baya de Las Animas, at low tide.
2. Our campsite on the beach.
3. Read turkey vultures warming after the quite cool night.
4. Vivalavida leaving Las Animas through salt fields.
5. The track is very rocky, sometimes really rough too.
6. We approach the beautiful beach of San Rafael…
7. … of dazzling white sand. First bath for Andrew who is a man of water! 😀
8. Also the first Heerman gull, a very pretty bird really common here.
9. Lagoon behind the dunes…
10. Still beautiful cactus.
11. Baja Shaker climbs a small pass in the light of late afternoon…
12. New camp on the beach in the bay of San Francisquito. We saw our first whales of the trip that evening.
13. Unikely glimmers…
14. … of this especially quite sunset.
15. Dawn will be nice too.
16. An attentive inhabitant of the desert!
17. The trail winds through the cactus.
18. Parasitic plant forming small aesthetic balls on a cactus.
19. You said staight..? 😀
The next update will take you in some towns in central Baja and will continue down the east coast. To be continued…
Baja California (1)
Here is the time to count the trip of Vivalavida in Baja California. We went there with Andrew, a Swiss friend already met in Geneva whoh also has a 4×4 Ford van. He came to the U.S. for a about two months and we agreed to meet at the Mexican border for exploring the Baja California together. It was a first trip there for both of us and given the remoteness of some places, driving two vehicles was a real advantage in case of failure.
I called his van “Baja Shaker” because its suspensions are much harder than those of VivaLaVida and rocked him not just a little on some bumpy tracks! 😉
We met at Ocotillo for a first night in the Anza Borrego Desert before crossing the border the next day in Mexicalli. From the first meters on Mexican territory, all immediately changes. It is like we were thirty years ago, with old cars, homes in bad state, even if the big american brands seem present in the cities at least. We had been advised not to stop us near the border and sleep at least 100 miles away to the south. So we drove south along the Sea of ​​Cortez since we had decided to go down on the east side of the peninsula and back along the Pacific coast.
1. First night on the beach not for away from San Felipe.
2. Puertecitos, small fisherman village…
3. … where teh view was quite different of the deserts through VivaLaVida travelled during the preceding weeks.
4. A stop at Coco’s Corner, a wellknown road junction of that area.
5. It’s a mountain area…
6. … with many washes which don’t see rain often.
7. Almost everything that grows here has thorns!
8. Vivalavida going down into a wash to access the bottom of a gorge. We camped on the opposite rim just next to the ruins of a 19th century mission.
9. Cactus flower.
10. Going up the gorge, we found some water…
11. Sometimes I had to use the shears..! 🙂
12. A beautiful cactus forest !
13. Really exotic !
14. My feet remember of a few large spines..! 😉
15. They are also giants..!
16. Descent to Baya Los Angeles.
17. Funny circular house at Baya Los Angeles.
18. Continuing south, the scenery is magnificent.
19. The sun goes down…
20. Last rays. We slept on the beach of Las Animas that we reached only at night…
Next to come soon…
Arizona
Last update on the road to Baja, I crossed Arizona in one day, in some desert places where are saguaro, the giant cactus.
1. Symbol of Arizona!
2. VivaLaVida gives the scale.
3. A deep coat of fech-fech dust in this wash…
4. … then a river crossing quite deep too!
5. A Swainson’s hawk.
6. Nice small red bird.
7. Nice desert landscape.
8. A petroglyph site.
9. Representation…
10. … and model!
11. This represents the sun.
12. More petroglyphs.
13. On the road, I stoped to see that solar plant.
14. Each parabolic mirror is more than 3/4 mile long and moves to follow the path of the sun, focusing the rays onto the pipe located in his focus. Thus, water is converted into steam under pressure which makes a turbine turn, similar to those used incoal plants.
15. Surface is huge. I estimated it at about one square mile.
16. And especially for Patrick and Claudia who drive trains, a picture of the huge convoys crossing the U.S. by the southern route, driven by large Union Pacific diesel locomotive. The photo, taken while driving is not terrible,, sorry…
That is it for my crossing of the southern United States. The following will take you to Baja Mexico where I spent four weeks with Andrew that I will present to you soon.
New Mexico
I’m then in New Mexico where I visited two sites even I had very few time to hit the road to the Baja.
The first one is a small State Park called City of the Rocks. an area of about one mile long by half a mile large where hundreds of eroded rocks make pinacles where it’s allowed to camp. I arrived at Sunset end enjoyed the last rays of light…
1. On the road, just before arriving at City of the Rocks.
2. Sunset on the pinacles…
3. … and sunrise the next morning.
4. A real labyrinth!
5. First light on dry grass.
6. Where VivaLaVida camped.
7. California quail, spectacular but not easy to approach.
I then went to a site where about 800 years aga, indians used to live in cliff houses.
8. Short stop in the charming town of Silver City
9. Arrival on the site of Gila Cliff Dwellings.
10. Bowl created by crushing of grains.
11. Wall were partially closing the overhangs…
12. … to create rooms…
13. … sometimes really high in the cliff.
14. Another view of the interior.
15. It’s one of the largest sites of cliff houses with le Mesa Verde National Park.
16. I slept a few tens of miles away in a beautiful mountain pine forest at nearly 6,000 feets above sea level.
Thats’s it for today. There will still be an update on my road crossing Arizona before offering you the story of our trip to Baja… 😀
Last update in Texas
As I’m quite late relating the trip of VivaLaVida, I already post a new update…
Leaving the Big Bend area, I went back quietly to the Northwest, taking the path of Southern California where I had to join Andrew for our trip to Baja.
So I went to the Guadaloupe Mountains, an interesting mountain range. However, I stopped several times on the road, this time to Watch a beautiful sunset on the Texas plains…
1. Huge and rather dry pastures…
2. Soft light at sunset…
3. … on these endless plains…
4. … that adorn some rocky hills to counter the monotony.
5. Nice pics!
6. Small remote ranch…
7. Western landscape…
8. Natural stairs in a canyon of Guadaloupe Mountains.
9. Vegetal elegance…
10. El Capitan (Guadaloupe Mountains) at sunset.
11. Immensity…
The next morning, I hiked the Guadaloupe Mountains. Mountain range over 8000 feet, it has the distinction of having a depression on top, which holds water and creates an unexpected echosysem in the desert environment.
12. A young “mule deer” at sunrise.
13. Long hike uphill…
14. … forest on the summit depression.
15. Yes, they are bears there! 😀
16. Mark at Pine Top summit.
17. The next day, as I left the camp, a wave of polar air was coming. Retained by a ridge, it formed a curious fog seeming to overflow a saucepan. Beautiful but freezing!
I then headed to White Sands, an erg of white sand.
18. Good dirt road North West of Guadaloupe Mountains.
19. Still immense arid plains…
20. Distant view of the White Sands.
Once there, I had a little frustration because the site was closed. An army drone crashed there three days earlier. So I had to continue my journey toward New Mexico…
21. Late afternoon on VivaLaVida’s road…
That’s it for Texas, for now at least. I then went through New Mexico to visit two sites that I will present in the next update.
Big Bend Ranch State Park (2 and end)
Some more report about Big Bend Ranch State Park. The next day, I hiked to discover the “Cinco Tinajas” and “Los Banos de la Leyva”, a long hike in several washes where walking is really hard in the soft sand.
1. Discovering the Cinco Tinajas… I took my shoes off and the water was so cold, partially frozen…
2. Going down the wash, arrival at the first pool of Los Banos de la Leyva.
3. Several hundred yards further, the second one…
4. A beautiful tree going up another wash…
5. Arriving at Cinco Tinajas from the top that time.
6. Limestone carved by water.
7. After a cloudy day, nice ray at sunset at my camp.
8. Another cactus in sunset light.
9. What a view!
10. Last gleams…
11. The next morning, I woke up in a freezing fog. Amazing to see cactus covered with frost…
12. Gray and icy atmosphere…
13. Petroglyph…
14. The weather has come to improve for a truly unexpected frosty landscape.
I then drove back on Alpine TX to search a General Delivery mail that was not there..! The next update will take you in the Davis Mountains where I spent one night before going to the Guadalupe Mountains, another National Park in the extreme west Texas. Coming soon… 😀
Big Bend Ranch State Park (1)
After the National Park, so I went to visit the almost adjoining and even wilder Big Bend Ranch State Park … Only one road leads there along the Rio Grande. So I made the diesel tank and the fridge full at Study Bute before getting deep on the slopes of this place really retired…
1. Rio Grande in late afternoon.
2. Abandoned village seeming straight out of a Western movie…
3. Pretty nice light for my Mountain bike ride…
4. In backlight…
5. the “single” which brought me back to VivaLaVida…
The next day, I visited to particular sites: Closed Canyon et les Hoodoos.
6. A picture that I like: Closed Canyon
7. The Rio Grande at a place called Hoodoos.
8. One of the Hoodoos, forming eroded by the wind.
9. Chihuahuan desert.
10. Cactus flower.
11. After more than 65 miles of rough dirt road, I spent the night like lonely in the world, near the ruins of an abandoned ranch…
12. Fiery sunset! (panoramic de 9 vertical images)
13. To regain strength, a vegetable omelet in preparation! 😀
14. The next day, I hikd my mountain bike to the Road to Nowhere, ancient way of mineral prospection lost in the middle of the caldera of El Solitario, a volcano from about 600 million years…
15. They do not lack of humor… 😉
16. I have seen wild pigs called javelinas here. There is a big male…
17. There, a younger.
18. I hit the trail again, sometimes steep and exposed, to old mines.
19. Butterfly warming in the sun. Images don’t show that it was cold, with a strong wind…
20. Scabrous descent, definitely steeper than it looks on this picture…
21. Really remote boondocking…
There will still be a post on this wild and magnificent Ranch State Park, before heading north to discover other region of this vast Texas…
D5 Creation