Last leg of the 2016 Summer Travels - Homeward Bound

We crossed the border in Tecate, like we always do, but this time we were pulled over to be searched - first time for us and we were packed to the gills.  At first I let Bill handle it, but after about 10 minutes I got out of the car to see what was going on. They had started pulling stuff out of the cab and I had to jump in as I knew where everything was and wanted to get out of this quickly without too much unpacking. I would unpack a few things for him to look futher into the bowels and he'd say, a little more...so I'd unpack a few more things and this went on for another 10 minutes and he finally gave up. Didn't take us too long to pack it all back up again and we were on our way. One of the things that continues to get us into trouble is the giving of TOO MUCH INFORMATION...don't say you're moving down here, just say "I'm on vacation" - that's it!

We left San Diego early so were able to push to El Rosario and stay at Baja Cactus...dinner at Mama Espinoza's and an early night as we had a very long day ahead of us. In the middle of the "gas gap" we ended up looking for a baño in Cataviña. We've passed this spot many times and have always wanted to stop...Bill thought he'd get a breakfast beer and ask to use the baño when we were asked if we'd like a cold coconut. Why, si, por favor! Wow - did that taste good! And once we were finished he took them back and scraped up the meat, add some lime to the coconut and mix it all up, with some tajin seasoning and the water and I swear it tasted like sashimi - soooo good! I look forward to more stops like this along the way. On our first trip down the peninsula we did some of this but since then we've just been making a bee line from home to the border as fast as we can...now that we're "settled" it's time to focus on discovering this country.

Coconut Sashimi!

We had a super long day and made it all the way to Loreto, which set us up for a much easier drive home, especially considering all of the horrible road work being done between there and La Paz. Stayed in a new place - the Hotel Santa Fe, pretty nice and included a kitchen and a pool. It was a nice walk to Restorante Mi Loreto, that our friends, Cathy and Miguel, had told us about. 

We were so excited to get home! We arrived on what we were told was the hottest day all summer and it didn't let up until November. But we didn't care one little bit. Our casita was in perfect shape. Wayne's "guy" cleaned up our place so well that we were in shock, after seeing those crazy pictures. Wayne had plugged in our fridge, turned the a/c on and we were ecstatic!

HOME SWEET HOME!!

Final week in Palm Desert, or so we thought...

"Man plans, and god laughs" - my favorite saying of my mom's...
We did pretty good with all of our "plans" this summer until the last one. We were going to meet up with Wayne and his daughter and another friend to caravan down the peninsula a couple of days after Bill got down to the desert. But I had a little "incident" with our truck cab window and my mother's garage. I had the window popped up as I was backing up the truck onto the driveway to get it close to the garage so it would be more convenient and in the shade to pack, when I heard a little crunching sound. The good part was that I was moving slowly, but in the end it didn't really matter. The window got overextended and the frame bent...what a mess. It was a Lehr cab which is a big company in northern California, but no one in southern CA, south of Orange County, keeps them in stock because there are so many different sizes. I got quoted 2-4 weeks by everyone I spoke to. Finally I asked Bill to help and he found a place in San Diego that thought they could get it in a week, but it wasn't 100%. Bill did not want to travel through Mexico with an unlocked window to our cab that was packed with a lot of stuff we didn't want to lose. Plus, getting it fixed down there could be impossible, who knows. So we were stuck. As I stood there contemplating all of the crap we had unloaded into my parent's garage, so we wouldn't have to drive around town with all of that weight, I just couldn't imagine all of it fitting into the truck. We had driven all of the stuff down from our storage unit in Tahoe with the truck and the u-Haul with my parent's antiques in it, so I really had no clue what would actually fit. But I've packed that truck quite a few times, and even with my expert packing skills I was not confident it would fit.

During our summer travels I had started inquiring with a San Diego shipping company, that I knew shipped down to our area, about rates for shipping used goods. I knew that for anything new they charge 36%, duty plus their fee, but found out that for used goods they charge by the weight and dimensions. How we were going to get everything to San Diego that wouldn't all fit in the truck was going to be an issue. But now that we had all of this extra time, with nothing much to do, I proposed that we just make a day trip down to San Diego and deliver a bunch of stuff to ship down so we didn't have to stress with the packing. Bill came up with the great idea to pack up the bins/boxes with our lightest weight stuff, which was mostly our clothing and drive the heavy stuff down. And what a great idea that turned out to be. We ended up shipping 8 rather large bins and an end table down. They delivered it to our home a couple of days after we arrived and the total cost was $240!! Best money we ever spent! And we got to meet up with Bill's buddies Scott and Jean for lunch too.

Lunch at Native Foods, Bill's favorite!

During this time our friend, Wayne, made it back to Los Barriles and sent us pictures of our home so we could see what happened during the summer! Oy Vey!

When we left at the end of July the only thing green on our property was the sissoo (sp?) plants growing on the fence. And the plant in that one brown pot above. All of that stuff in the planters and everywhere else, NONE of that was there, it was all just plain old sand...and dirt in the garden beds. Oh WOW!!! What a mess!! Wayne asked if we wanted his "guy" to clean it up and unwrap the house for us, meaning to uncover everything we had covered up, turn on the a/c and the fridge. We said a resounding YES, PLEASE!!!

We stayed a few more days in Palm Desert, in the miserable heat, and finally packed up the truck and drove to San Diego. Luckily the day before we left we heard from the company that our window was on the truck heading south! It was October 10th, our 7th wedding anniversary and we went to one of our favorite plant-based restaurants, The Gratitude Cafe - and we had a lot to be grateful for! We stayed in an AirBnB with a couple of nice guys, got our pesos from Costco, did one final shop at a natural foods store, and were ready to begin the very last leg of our journey home!

Back to Nevada City...

I had about 10 days total in Nevada City, just enough time to catch my breath! We discovered the local hash kennel, "Cougar H3," was hosting a hash while we were there and friends Becca and Jules, aka PoopaTrooper & BATT (Bad Ass Tongue Tricks), drove from Sacramento and Reno, respectively,  to come hash with us. OMG, this was a kennel of REAL R*NNERS!! Not only was this an urban trail, set in the city, but in the hills...so that coupled with us being super out of shape spending the summer on our asses in the truck, made for us being really far behind - so far that there wasn't any beer left for us at the beer check...quite an offence, if truth be told....but we all met back up at the brewery, where they weren't going to sing any songs. The 4 of us visitors were not going to have any of that! This was a newer group and we were a bunch of seasoned veterans, who showed them what's what, even if they did leave us in the dust!

The Visitors, aka Troublemakers!
And upbeknownst to each other we all brought our Iguana's Happi Coats!

I left Nevada City before Bill and flew to L.A. to be with my daughter, Lauryn, to celebrate her 3rd clean and sober birthday with her. This is a day I am thrilled to celebrate, every single year!

Right after the birthday celebration at Beit T'shuvah we all piled into the van I rented and traveled to Palm Desert where we were going to spend the weekend at my parents. Bill left a couple of days later from Nevada City to meet me down there for the final family visit before we crossed the border. If you're exhausted reading these last couple of posts, you can just imagine how we felt! We figured at this point we had driven 9000 miles in 9 weeks, with another 1000 ahead of us...

The Spirit of '76, JFK 40th Reunion, Sacramento

WOW - it's been 40 years since I graduated high school?! Bizarre concept, but I actually have travelled far in those 40 years, and I don't mean in actual mileage. My youth was not carefree, hell, the first 50 years of my life were not carefree, but the great thing is that our mind protects us and blocks out a lot of our memory. I had been tempted to go to the last reunion by a FaceBook friend, but I just wasn't ready to revisit that period in my life, this time, I was kind of surprised by my reaction - I was curious! There was a FaceBook page and a website that people could post things about themseves and you could include a website. So I jumped on there and even posted a link to my blog. And I started getting a bunch of emails from people that wanted to reconnect or just say hi - it was kind of fun and got me a little excited about seeing people. Most of the people I was hearing from, and wanted to see were people that I had known since grammar school, especially my swim team friends. One woman was from my Brownie Troop - Brownies, really, OMG, I remember absolutely nothing from back then! Swim team is hard to forget, you spend hours and hours every single day with these people, I remember the people, but I don't really remember much more than that.

After confirming that a few people I knew were attending I bit the bullet and sent in my money and they even came up with a vegan meal for me! I drove in from Nevada City and got a hotel room walking distance from the Embassy Suites in Old Sac, fortified myself and started to walk over. Half-way there I started getting chicken and called Bill for some moral support....what am I doing, OMG, I don't even know these people! He talked me down off the bridge and I made it in. People started coming up to me and even after reminding me who they were, I drew a blank... names sounded familiar but nothing more than that. I remember saying more than once, "I think we were friends, I mean, good friends!" But more than that I didn't have. Fellow medley-relayers, Patty Leiferman and Karen Lutz told me to look at the pictures on everyone's name tag and that did help a little. But then I saw a friend I was really close with, and I got totally excited, maybe a little too much so and exclaimed, "Oh you're the one person I was really hoping to see!" I think it kind of freaked him out, and his wife, as they quickly disappeared! Back to the bar for me, and maybe a trip outside too, haha. Eventually he came and found me and we had a really super conversation, actually several of them throughout the night. He thanked me for saving his ass, more than once, and my friend Patty, who has a memory that does not quit, reminded me that I was late to a French final once because..."I had to pick up Peter!" There was Kenny, the guy I was making out with when my mom came home early and found about 6 couples in various stages of entanglement throughout our house! Several people had been reading my blog and were fascinated with my lifestyle.

The music was fantastic, same band from our high school days! I had a great time and then I was done...ok, you can only make so much chit chat and I happen to really suck at it. Friends gave me a ride back to the hotel, I had a good night sleep and I don't have to do that again, well, maybe in another 40 years!

Kathy Koretsky, Kenny Whitaker, moi, Patty Leiferman and Jane Fricke - all friends I've known for 50+ years.

Front - me, Mona Gonzales, Nancy Lena (the person I most wanted to be like), Kathy Koretsky (one of my besties)
Back - Kenny Whitaker, Nina Dacanay, Patty Leiferman swimteam), Karen Travis, Karen Lutz (swimteam) and Tony Vaughn, major hunk

Traveling west...

The original plan, post South Dakota, was to camp in Yellowstone, this was before we saw the 30 degree low temps and after checking the internet there were no reasonably priced accommodations anywhere...who'd a thunk it, we thought September would be easy, peasy! Friends, Wayne and Sharon, from Baja, were hanging in Steamboat Springs for the summer so we headed there because, well, a free bed! And to check out the town as I'd never been there before. Oh yes, it was super cute and I could see why they were enjoying it so much. We got some exercise in, went and checked out some property with Wayne and Sharon, then we shopped for cowboy boots! I have been wanting to buy Bill a pair of cowboy boots for-EVER, and what better opportunity! We were directed to an awesome boot store, F.M. Light & Sons, and spent quite a bit of time finding the perfect boot. Seems Bill's feet, like mine, love Luchese's! Check them out!

 We had fun walking around town...

and I got to kiss a frog!

Sharon captured this pic of a beautiful fox.

It was nice to rest up and be in one place for a couple of nights, and the accommodations were first class! From here we stopped to see our friend, Donna, at her place in Park City. She's got a sweet little condo here in a great neighborhood. It's fun to see our Baja friends all over the place during the summer, very different for us, but they've become our family. From here we drove to Reno where we got a fabulous room with a view for $40 - I've been trying to keep our lodging under $50/night, which is tough, and we've stayed in some quirky places, but pretty decent ones too. We did splurge on an AirBnB one night on our way to Reno, which was awesome as I could do some cooking and make us a few meals for a couple of days. 

We stocked up on provisions in Reno and went to spend the night at Sierra Hot Springs, one of our very favorite places. Lucky for us, our friend, Daniel, drove over from South Lake Tahoe to spend the day. We made pizza together in the community kitchen and created a yummy masterpiece!

Of course, one sin mushrooms for Mr. Bill...

And from here we were back to Nevada City for about 3 weeks to pet sit for Baja friends, Chris and Christina, again - this time they were traveling to Scotland! We were sooooo very, very happy to be in one place for awhile, but for me that lasted all of about 24 hours as I was headed to Sacramento. The previous month I found out, through FaceBook, that my 40th high school reunion was taking place while we were going to be in Nevada City, the second time. I've only been to one reunion, my 10 year, and stayed for about an hour - I have had absolutely no desire to go to another one, until now. I am not sure why the change in heart, but someone mentioned that it just might just be because I was in a good place in my life right now and I think that was it. I had been in limited touch, through FB with one or two friends and was kind of curious....