After we payed for our stay at Club Pesca RV, we took advantage of our new location. The tide range in this vicinity on the Gulfo de California is among the greatest in the world, less than Bay of Fundy goes through, but still in the 20 foot range (6 meters).  As our stay continued, the range grew greater, and finally sandbars appeared throughout the beach area where the town was centered.

Some in our group were true golfers, and all of us were to some degree or other. I’m in the “other” catagory.  While the “real” golfers did the golf course to the north of town, we only did the sand bars. The others joined us when they weren’t golfing the manicured links which they enjoyed, although at the same time reporting the wind being a distraction, unavoidable at the time as the course opened at 9 am just as the wind settled in.  Of course, the sand bars had their drawbacks too. The shallow water near the sand made water shots, almost never done otherwise, a regular thing. But whatever else, they were the forgotten with in the joy of doing something rather unique. Scores weren’t really kept, but laughter was the order of the time on the watery links. It was intresting to note that, one day, Pat had the best preformance-using just a putter!

One day we did a convoy trip (three vehicles) to Puertocitos, located farther to the south on the west Cortes coast. The road was fine for our cars, but with many serious dips in the road, and we guessed the Mexican term would likely be, “Vados Grande!” Signs for the gigantic cactus pulled us in, but we didn’t enter once we were told that the entry fee would be ten dollars for each car. Onward (those cheap Canucks?) The road took us away from the ocean for several miles, then plunked us down in Puertocitos. This was a rough-looking area, with a fishing-camp look to it. But one hotel looked a bit upscale, and behind it’s entrance somewhere were the hot springs we’d heard about. But when we were met in the courtyard with the news that we would need to pay 15 dollars per car to stay, we didn’t. Enjoying a great experiences was superceded by a unanimous, Canadian-style sense of economic values. We carried on, by now the lunches we had all packed with us looming forward from the back of our minds. A short distance back down the road we came in on, we turned off, to a distant picnicing area where we settled in with our own lawn chairs to eat, eventually met by a young person on a motorbike who asked for nothing, noting I guess, that we were a group of “oldsters” merely enjoying a place to stop to eat a lunch and the view. Several palapas were set, for busier times; the water was quite far away; sand had been blown up the cover much of the nearby hill. We were careful to leave it as clean as we found it.

The Cowpatty bar was the next stop. We had passed by it an hour or so before, but now lingered there to enjoy its anbiance. Some motorcylists were just leaving; a group of eight or so were eating outside; others were here and there, searching the walls that were festooned with memorbilia. We sat and enjoyed a libation, Tecate – the only beer offered because, as the owner pointed out, their elctricity was provided by a generator. The front of a bus protruding, as it were, from the building, yielded a fine photo oportuniity. Eventually we left, one by one, at our own pace. Marguerite and I did a trip down one road that became so washboarded we turned back, tried again farther north. The next trip had a better roadway, wide with much soft sand. We made it almost to water’s edge and there, along the sea front were perhaps a 75 palapas, looking like none had been used for months. Sand had drifted throughout, but we found a way back without having to turn our hubs to 4WD. Wenever saw a soul there despite some buildings to one side. Then it was back to our home away from home in San Felipe.

We began in the morning from the El Centro, California, area’s Walmart parking lot where we spent overnight and assembled the three rigs headed for San Felipe. We calculated it would be about a four hour drive, left the Walmart about the same time on the way to the East Gate border crossing that would take us into Mexicali, Baja, Mexico. With all three rigs together, ourselves, Drew and Pat from Prince. George, British Columbia and Terry and Joanie, from our home town, Powell River, B.C.

Couple by couple, along with one or two others doing the same thing, we filled out our FMM tourist permits, walked down the street to the bank to pay for them, and returned to immigration where they still had our passports. Satisfied we had payed for the FMM’s, our official stamped our passports and after a cursory search by the military, we continued on our way, around the outskirts of the city of Mexicali. We found this aspect a little daunting, with the traffic and hustle and bustle – and construction- happening on these streets. They encompassed quite a lot of uneven roadway. Eventually we rode out of the city on Baja Hwy 5 south, gradually clearing heavily populated areas and eventually saw buildings disappear entirely as we ate up the kilometers, in one area replaced by what appeared to be acres of broken glass, shimmering in the morning sunlight. We were a strung-out threesome, never getting close together until we came upon the road from the west, from the Pacific coastal city of Ensenada which joined Hwy 5 at about 40 miles north of San Felipe. There we had another quick Military search, and drove on. The drive from Mexicali covered some interesting regions which ran the gamut from a huge now dry lake area that once held overflow waters from the Coloraado, to low mountainous areas where sand dunes now filled gullies on the mountainsides, the sand blown up over time by winds from the valley floor.

San Felipe arrives slowly to a driven vehicle, as the outskirts unfold for fifteen or so kilometers. We did have an idea of where we would try to get settled into an RV park. Club Pesca RV Resort was where our directions took us. We all parked, walked the area and found spots on a long, wide, concrete apron that gave a three-foot drop to the sandy beach. Two 40-foot motor homes, the owners from northern California, had the first two spaces, with room for three or four more. As it was, we never had to relinquish any of the spaces between any of the rigs. The smaller ones that did stay during our month long sojourn there untiized the spots farther down towards the clubhouse that offered palapas, and were closer to the WIFI and the club house there. As it was, we did not pay for three days, meanwhile looking for something better. The more we looked at our spots the more we liked what we had, the best view, the cleanest location, and far enough from the malecon that we were almost assured of peace and quiet, but not too far from shopping. As it proved later, the mountainous sand dunes behind the property routinely lured sand-climbing vehicles, some powerful and noisy. But these proved to be more interesting than problematic during our stay.

We always passed up taking the trip here in all the years we came through the Lukeville/Sonoyta border crossing, bbecause we were bound for the “real” Mexico much farther south. Anyway, we had little thoughts of the half-day travel destinations that could be had from California or Arizona, USA. Weren’t they just getaways often for the weekends only, bring all your toys and rip up the place, there is water! and sandunes! and cheap booze? Let off our pirotecniks? That was our half-baked conception, sometimes true, but often a misconception. Now that we’ve had a smidgin of seeing it for ourselves, all I can say is take it for what it is and what you can make of it yourself. Personal experiences will vary.

For winter travel though, it doesn’t compare with the warmth of the beaches farther south in Mexico. To my mind, winter warmth starts about San Blas, Nayarit; it gets too warm at about Zihautenjeo, so I say though never having camped there. Over time we became aclimatized in the wonderful winter temperatures of the Costalegra – the stretch of the Pacific coast between the south of Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo.

This year we dedicated time to vist northern Mexican destinations on the Sea of Cortes, which on many maps is named Gulfo de California. Whatever. For some, Cortes or Cortez pleases; for many more the elimination of the historical surname is better, thus the Gulfo terminologyv is found on Mexican maps. Conquerors are seldom revered, the old or those since.

Now in San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico. We’ve been parked by the water for a week now, slowly finding our way around town, getting used to Mexican ways again after being away for nearly four years. But this is our first trip driving to Baja. We were a bit cold when we first arrived but have either gotten used to the environment, or it’s has in fact been trying to shrug off the wintertime blues. Who knows? I check the temperatures each morning and now find I’m not looking for my warm slippers right away now. It must be spring.

We’re just enjoying a quiet lifestyle now. Our friends, Terry and Drew, have been golfing but, truth be told, the winds seem to come our way if not right away in the morning, then just abit later on. Fishing? Ouch my sore back…or it would be if we were out pounding the waves on a trip to sea. Golfing has been okay acording to Terry (no rain) but the wind soon becomes a factor, and no way to beat it as the course doesn’t open until 9 AM. El Norte hits us by 10 each day, so far.

But we’re having a good time. It was laundry day today, and after getting the bulk of it done in town Marguerite had a few things not subject to modern day machinery, so we needed a clotheline (as all campers must have in this world) so that was my job this morning. It takes almost no time to dry clothes here, with the wind a steady 15 MPH and humidity at 18 percent or so.

We stumbled late out of the starting gate earlier in the month. With a hurried departure, some important things got left behind for instance, we missed our first choice for a ferry that would take us from our home town. That one proved to be an unimportant small diversion now that we are looking back on it from sunny days in Arizona. We had a plan to slip through Seattle on a Sunday, but since that was Remembrance Day in Canada and Veterans Day in America, we waited at Nicole and Chiko’s in Burnaby, B.C.  for another day because of the long waits at the border crossings. On the Monday a holiday in Washington too, we left meaning we breezed through Seattle for the first time ever.  Once camped here in Parker, we discovered important items missing from our Shaw Direct package. We had the dish, the receivers, the wires, the tripod and only later found our “hidden” box containing a level,  compass, incline guage and “screamer” which emits a whistling sound when it finds a satellite signal  (and maybe not the correct one). But no LBN nor the arm it gets mounted on.

It was then that our friend Walter came to my rescue. He had a new-style LBN he wasn’t using and knew of a welding shop where we could have a new arm made. Very soon, after the short ride into Parker to the shop where a chap named Dennis fabricated a replacement from steel, by cutting, grinding and welding a piece of one x two- inch box stock into the arm we needed, and to Marguerite’s delight we had some fine Canadian television again. Just no NHL hockey.

On the way south we had stopped in Chehalis, Washington, to replace our MiFi internet gadget which worked but had no battery life with another from Verizon, the “Jet Pack.”  A new battery for the WiFi was about the price of the JetPack assuming we return the WiFi to Verizon for the announced rebate for sending in the old gadget.

There was a fair amount going on while we were in the Parker area. Motorboat races from in front of ther Bluewater Casino, for one.

The love affair with the automobile long ago swept the Western World. It’s World wide now.  People all over will Look, See motion. Want! As long as it’s shiny. 

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The semi annual coral music festival, called Kathaumixw (“Kath-ow-mew,” a Coast Salish word meaning, “a gathering of peoples”) was on again in early July, right of the heels of  SOAP, a symposium of sorts that has orchestral musicians meet in our town every other year for a fortnight of study and play. Volumes can been said about both enterprises, the coral particpants come from all over the world, just as they have done since the beginnings back in the early 1980′s. In those days we hosted among so many others Soviet participation, and locals found it interesting to see their singers enjoy shopping in local stores with nothing more than a two-minute wait for check-out, and  being amazed by even our small-town array of merchandise. As years went by the Festival grew rapidly to prominance and its Director and internationally acclaimed choral conductor,  Mr. Don James, was awarded the Order of Canada for his international prominance and pioneering efforts with Kathaumixw.

This summer’s latest musical endeavour, held yearly, was just this past Labour Day weekend.  Great weather greeted musical artists for the two day Sunshine Music Festival held south of our town at the oceanside  Palm Beach Park. The festival was oncce called a Folk Festival, and still conforms pretty much to that musical niche, bringing with it a lot of variety for two days, Saturday and Sunday.

Another act comes on stage, boogie time!

We helped out at a booth set up to sell the Paricipant’s work they left for sale, mostly CD’s although one group came with those, 45 RPM and the large EP (extended play) vinyl records. One musician included a one-time downloadable copy of her album for one-third of the CD’s price. There were also tee-shirts, stainless steel water bottles, raffel tickets, all for sale at our booth.

The setting for this weekend’s music was just up from the beach (called Palm Beach, although the area’s present trees are fir) with a sightline south through Malaspina and Georgia Straits. Perhaps  if one could see the 70 miles or so, one would be looking into Vancouver. Some visitors anchored their boats just off the beach while most drove in on Highway 101, which ends about 30 miles to the north, at Lund, B.C.

Les on our open pit mining tour, standing with a copper ore carrier’s tire. Replacements are about $7,000.00 each !

We did all 18 holes today

The winter’s trip was by all acounts, a good one, and Marguerite agreed with me - that makes acclain for the accounting ledger at least a duality.  In fact she was the one who said it first, in itself so important. We’ve been back home for seven weeks now, happy for it, but suffering some with each Pacific rainstorm crossing over our paths at a time we are attempting to keep up with things that have languished around the house in our absence. But otherwise quite content with recalling that we’ve become a little spoiled spending time away down south in the desert where the sun shines nearly every day.

River is quite calm as we leave the bar adjacent to the RV park with Walter and Hazel. Had a fine meal there after a warm afternoon spent by the water.

A friendly little fellow

We traveled more in California, Arizona  and for the first time while RVing , we enjoyed some time in Nevada too. People we camped with as always made it so enjoyable,  we met old  friends and made new ones, some will returnto the areas where we plan to travel, others have made other plans for next year. They know there are many distant horizons to explore. Still, the more things change, the more they stay the same, year upon year. It does seem that everything in life is in flux but still, life itself continues. World problems arise, sometimes get solved and we know, we’ve been so insulated from most of it. Of course we age by those years,  maybe by the day! and what we see in our future depends on so many things. With luck, and good health, we’ll continue to travel and embrace the RV lifestyle we have imensely enjoyed for a while longer. We follow a style of camping  that may not be what most Rv’ers do, but I don’t really see us changing very much. For example, sitting in one RV Park for months, or even weeks, does not impress. We’re good for a couple of weeks but then need to move around.

We’re all contemplating the trip home, some to Alberta, most to British Columbia.

Drew, Pat , Marguerite and Dave arrive for a Spring Training baseball game in Goodyear, AZ.

An Algodones afternoon, with Lois and Art, and Friends

Since we are somewhat adept at camping when we have a lot of space around us, this might set us apart from a majority of RV’ers, not to say we’re that much different but just that we may feel a greater need for the open spaces that are so easily possible to achieve in the desert. Staying on the Bureau of Land Management areas are a good elixer from some tightly packed and rules oriented RV parks.  A slightly nomadic winter life just seems part of the scheme of things. When parked in the desert there are  few if any amenities. One has only what you brought.  Our small motor home has been faithful driving on several thousand kilometers on Mexico’s bumpy roads and still takes us to our destinations. For nearly ten years it’s given us electricity, refrigeration, hot and cold running water, cooking, shower and bathroom facilities, satellite television, satellite radio and recently, internet communications everywhere we’ve stopped. In turn we must provide fuel to move about, we’re now doing  4,000 to 6,000 miles a year. Our longest trip milage has been 12,000 the last year we traveled to Mexico, a year we returned via Quebec   We utilize campgrounds specific for RV’ers on a timely basis, determined by where we want to stay, how long, and often by whom we wish to be near.

Jeeps in Parker, AZ for the Parker 425 desert race.

In the Valley of Fire, a Nevada State Park

The  November’s “Blahs”  hit our hometown last fall but good luck that we  already knew we would be escaping to more moderate climes, to be found in the deserts of Arizona and California..  And soon after we crossed the Mohave it all began again for us when we  stopped for a short stay near Lake Havasu City’s Craggy Wash, a BLM little piece of heaven.

A must once in the area is to hit a good store to buy what many other snowbirds are buying. Miller (“Best Ice”) and Busch (“Natural Ice”) both have these in 30-packs, very reasonably priced. This one can costs less than 47 cents, is quite refreshing when served cold. Other libations are similarly easy on the wallet, devoid of many taxes that some areas insist that people pay out.

Then a week at an RV park on the Colorado River near Parker, Arizona, preceded a couple of weeks camped in the desert near Quartzsite, and then, thanks to Les,  an old friend from Kamloops, B.C., whom we met on the road  here, we found another gem in the desert, near the small town of Bouse.

Les, on a hike in the Bouse hills.

Hiking in the hills near Bouse, Arizona

Later in the winter of adventure, we endured a month in the Fountain of Youth and its wonderful hot pools and a Christmas gathering of old friends. Sorry, “endured” is far from the correct word for our stay. When its the third year there, they are indeed doing something right!

That restful area prepared us for a return to Arizona, some Casino camping,  and a short stay at Wellton, located east of Yuma. There we caught up with some hometown friends, Terry and Joanie,  and we did a jaunt east from there to another casino, the Desert Diamond Casino, located just a little south of Tucson.

The desert golf course, to be found near some forward-thinking areas, are free to use, but beware of chasing your ball into a snake’s den. A big help in avoiding the putting problem that desert rocks impart, is a rule that once inside a large circle around the flag, there is no longer a rule to go ahead with that rock-strewn “green.” You are free to tee off again on the next hole. Should you get your ball into the cup, though, one may subtract one stroke from your score. Our friend Eric, on a course in Quartzsite, shot a ball directly into the cup off the tee. His score there became a big fat zero.

Nearby the Desert Diamond Casino, a few miles south of Tucson, we spent a few days camped with Les and Barb and Joe and Bev. There is a large open pit copper mine very close by that ran tours of their operation, at a small fee, which certainly made for an interesting way to pass an afternoon. The green boulder on display below near the entrance to their visitor’s area is exactly the kind of ore they look for in a giant pit on their property. They stop digging and blastiing downward when they reach ground water, do core sampling to point their direction into the best ground. It was interesting  to find out how they deal with the ore, pummeling it with different sized iron balls, until it attains the physical form of powder. From there it goes into a frothy bath which the copper ore adheres to, enabling it to be further concentrated. To reach the final stage of becoming absolutely pure copper, this ore is shipped to Texas for final refinement.  The gift shop right at the main entrance was a hit with the gals. The copper items, by their shine, had been to Texas.

At the copper mine to begin our tour.

Touring the State Park at Tubac, just south of the open pit mine, was  interesting. It included a very old church in the State Park which maintains it- but only to the level of condition it was in when the park was created. This allows visitors to see back in time and perhaps visualize the way things were two or three hundreds of years ago. The bullet holes, the empty spaces on the walls where semi prescious items had once rested, were part of the way of preservation have been done.  It was here from Tubac that the Spannish made the first trek by land,  to San Fransico, California. This now, also most forgotten area, would perhaps have been the Tucson City of today except for the railway going through Tucson instead of Tubac.

We all cruised back to Bouse to camp again up the hill from town. The Parker 425 was coming up soon. Joining us for that were Terry and Joanie and Doug and Aggie.

Canadians camped for the Parker 425 off road race,

The spring trainng baseball games, described in an earlier post, took us back to the more south-central area of Arizona, to a RV Park in Goodyear, to the west of Phoenix proper.  Drew and Pat, whom we met at a park in Wellton, were already there, enjoying the fine golf courses in the region, but were also interested in the baseball. From Prince George, British Columbia, they had grown up in the same Fraser Valley area as did I.  Pat was from the same town, but was about half a generation younger, but knew my younger brothers. We enjoyed watching baseball with them and on our final day there in Goodyear, we watched the final game of the Canadian Mens Curling Championship, the Briar. We had the Canadian sattelite feed from Shaw Direct, Drew had the “bigger” screen tv.  Fellow nearby campers from Saskatchewan, who had once curled at a very high level of skill joined us, thus we were all a bunch of curlers camped for the afternoon under awning, tarps ans sun shades in the midst of Rv’er who had never heard of the game until they might have seen it if they had watched recent Winter Olympics.

After more time at the area near Yuma known as Kool Korners, the move was on to head north, slowly at first to enjoy the warmth of the region, and then a final but cold, rapid trip to the Canadian border. This route home did not include the California roads we had travelled south on, instead we used a shorter route through Nevada, Oregon and Washington travelling west through the Snoqualmie Pass and back on Interstate 5. But in the interim, a week at La Paz County RV near Parker, the casino town of Laughlin, NV and the Avi Casino were next on the slower leg of the trip, before we set out on just a slightly longer part of the trip north with a stop at Stewarts Landing on the shores of Lake Meade, about 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Ten minutes’ drive away is the Nevada State Park called “The Valley of Fire.” Its mountainous vistas are spectacular with their colours in the rock showing various shades of pink and red. The weather was getting warmer, hitting afternoon highs of 90 degrees F., and the cooling water in the huge reservoir was beckoning to us to take a dip. We stayed four days at Stewarts Landing. Doug and Sharlene  left for Utah and then Alberta, after our third day, Eric and Gerri followed us, and we said goodbye to Ted and Stella who were a day behind us. We later met up with Eric and Gerri  a final time, at Pendelton, OR. We were all bound for different parts of British Columbia. The morning we left we escaped an angry wind, got fuel and propane in Overton, and pushed on to the north. That day, after passing over a 7300 foot pass, we spent the night in the Nevada town of Ely, where we awoke to falling snow.

nearing the end of a hike in the Valley of Fire

amazing colours show up in these rocks

Many comercials and feature movies have used this area , “The Professonals” being but one.

Our final stop on this third winter’s odessey, as we headed north, had been to see the famous Valley of Fire. By then it was April 7th, the weather still fine, but getting warmer as the sun climbed higher each day. Some of these areas may be almost unbearable in the blaze of the summer months, but at this time of the year, very nice indeed. We only spent four days, but enjoyed all we saw. Twice we swam in Lake Meade, but even as we did there were no doubt some slight pangs of homesickness as all in the group were now, finally, on our way home to the north country, Ted and Stella, Eric and Gerri, and Doug and Sharlene, us.

Last day in the warm south

Marguerite with Dexter and Bella

Back  in the Vancouver area on April 14th, we found blossom were everywhere, but it seemed cold. Hockey was still on our minds as the NHL team Canucks, who had become the best team in the league for the second year running, began again the quest for a first Stanley Cup, after their loss last year to Boston. But this time was not to be. Both Canucks and the Champion Bruins lost in the first round of playoffs. Soon B.C. Ferries would help get us home, and we landed at Saltery Bay and droveback into our own neighbourhood, the noted Canadian Heritage area of Powell River, The Townsite. Our lawn was overgrown, an annual event. The banana palms had died to the ground because, for the first time, we’d not protected them. (But, by summer there were 15 new bananas growing.) Our two windmill palms had weathered the winters storms, one stood nearly 25 feet high, still embraced by holiday lighting wires that only get turned on for special ocasions, but never for Christmas holidays unless our good friend, Steve, decides it necessary. The winter trip had total motorhome milage of 5,115, or 8,184 kilometres; many more on our Tracker towed car.

I’d often thought of being in this region to watch spring training. The idea might have been hatched from listening to a chap from Kelowna, British Columbia who habitually headed to Mexico for winters to stay in the Bucerias area. He would go early to the Bay of Banderas and give himself time on his return north to watch the Dodgers and some other teams that held their spring training in the dry, sunny Southwest. Those were the days when we’d fly into Mexico but that offered no chance of doing what Jim had been doing for years. Later we drove to Mexico ourselves but always found a strong lure to head off the beach after many weeks there to discover more of the “real” Mexico to be found inland. When Mexico was crossed off our list because of firearms and drug gang wars and now on our third trip to the desert, we finally found  ourselves in Valley of the Sun at the right time.  And high time to see some baseball!

Spring Baseball at Goodyear Ballpark. 2010 National League MVP, Canadian Joey Votto, at bat. In that year he was named Canada’s Athelete of the Year.

The weather has been good here although our first game in Goodyear was watched with warm jackets on. Our next game saw the Dodgers pitted against the Oakland A’s, a win for the Los Angeles team, the weather warmer.

Here we are at the Dodgers and Oakland A’s game., Drew and Pat with Marguerite. For the Dodgers, it was an 8-2 route, and warm enough to order a beer or two.

Oakland A’s  have the mound summit and a pitching change.

The cheap seats for some. A night game Dodgers vs. White Sox at Camelback Ranch in Glendale

After the game fireworks went on and on, quite a show!