Sunday, March 30, 2014

Baja 3 - Sand and Cerveza

The lure of Baja and the yearning for adventure have once again gained the upper hand.  The storied adventures of Ken and Peter find us again heading eagerly for the sand and cerveza of Mexico.  We have positioned our bikes in Palm Springs where they remain perched, awaiting the roads and trails ahead.

We didn't have to ride all the way to Palm Springs. Due to the often challenging winter road conditions of traveling the Siskiyou's, that trip may have been cold and slippery. Peter and I instead, took advantage of an opportunity to trailer our bikes from the northern reaches of Washington, to as far south as Oakland California.  


It was rainy in Oakland when we arrived.  A couple of days exploring the area allowed the weather to finally brake in Northern California.  We then left for our ultimate destination, riding the bikes from Oakland to Porterville, over and through the Sequoia National Forest down through Barstow to Lake Havasu City Arizona, on to Surprise then Yuma and finally to Palm Springs.



We tried to stay off of major hiways as much as possible, which found us on a very scenic route with many way points that neither of us had seen before. 


April 7th, Peter and I will travel back to Palm Springs to begin our bike trip across the border.  Our plan this time is to navigate both paved and non-paved roads and trails on route from the border, through San Felipe to catch a ferry in Santa Rosilia across the Sea of Cortez to Guaymas on the mainland of Mexico.  From there, if we don't turn south toward Mazatlan, we will find our way north toward Puerto Penasco, exploring as many small coastal towns as we can find.  Much of our time will be out of cell phone service areas so Blog updates may be a bit intermittent but will be updated when possible.

Neither of us has any experience, at least any recent experience, riding bikes off road in the dirt, sand, rocks and cactus.  We are "jumping in the deep end" by learning to ride on the job.  Hopefully we'll come back yearning for more "off the beaten path" adventures.  It should be an interesting trip no matter what…