Catching Up

Dental work behind us, we head out to Borrego Springs to rest and write. Here Bob checks out some windmills on the way.

February 14 – March 4, 2018.

It has been over 6 years since we began our journey. Six years of traveling, house sitting, repairing and improving Blue Wing, outfitting and improving Ballena Blanca, starting adventures and having to turn back, engine trouble, sailing across the Gulf Stream, island hopping, learning, coming back to and leaving Cabbagetown, and visiting friends, parks, deserts, and different countries. And six years of writing this blog.

In the sailing years we did a fair job of keeping up with the blog. Sailing is a lazy pace and oftentimes is spent waiting for the right conditions or hiding from the wrong conditions with nothing much else to do. And when you do finally get to sail and anchor in some stunningly beautiful place, frequently it is not that much different from the last stunningly beautiful place you dropped the hook. In contrast, traveling on land can be an exhausting pace. Every dot on the map has a story to tell about history, natural wonders, oddities, and culture. And we have a hard time passing any of it up.

Last winter we traveled for four months through 16 states, spending significant time in four of them. We visited 25 National Parks/Monuments/Recreation Areas, as well as many state parks, BLM recreation sites and monuments, and roadside attractions. We were on the move almost every single day which left little time for writing the blog.

It would be very easy to just let the blog die like so many others that lay dormant across the world wide web. But we love Make Like An Apeman. It not only records out travels (we actually have a hand written log for that), but lets us reflect on where we’ve been and learn more about each place. We also love the idea of writing for an audience. We hope we are entertaining for all our friends and regular readers and that we have helpful information for other travelers. And we love comments, but hope that no one feels like they need to leave a comment on every post just to feed our fragile egos.

So….. after we left the dentist in Los Algodones, we decided to just take some time and work on Make Like An Apeman. We headed to Borrego Springs and Anza-Borrego California State Park. We had visited this stunningly beautiful area last year and I thought it would be a great place to just chill for a while. We hung around and traveled in the the area for about 2 1/2 weeks, catching up the blog, taking care of some business, waiting for an order from Amazon, and planning our next adventure to write about – Mexico.

Right now, this very minute, we are in Mexico south of Ensenada, camped on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It is truly amazingly beautiful. Tomorrow we head further down the peninsula. Adventure awaits!

* All pics are click to enlarge.

Our first stop was in Anzo-Borrego State Park at a campsite near Mountain Palm Springs.
There are trails leading to a couple of different springs, which have clusters of desert palms near them.
Not too long ago a fire burned the long ‘beards’ off this group.
This is a hold-out species from the days this terrain looked like an African savannah.
We stayed at Mountain Palm Springs for four days.
We wrote, worked on pictures and started planning. What would be next, Baja or another trip through the western US?
We drove into the town of Borrego Springs on Sunday 2/18 to catch some wi-fi. Then back to a spot in the desert just south of town. Greg’s wearing jeans here. It got cold and windy that night. We thought the van might blow over. We just hunkered down on Monday and went to use the library Tues and Wed.
Bob was tired of the campsite south of town. He’s happy to see us finding a spot north of town at Arroyo Salado.
From Arroyo Salado we went to Indio to buy groceries and some wood. We drove up to a BLM site just south of Joshua Tree and used the wood to build wall holders for the phone and laptop. But we forgot how cold it would be at 1,800 feet. So we drove back toward the Salton Sea and camped in this box canyon where the nighttime low was above freezing. Salton Sea is in the distance.
On Monday 2/26 we went back to Joshua Tree to do some hiking.
We hiked a couple of trails at the south end of the park. We didn’t spend much time here last year.
Trail at Joshua Tree.
From Joshua Tree we went to the city of Indio where we stayed five days. There was nothing picturesque about the parking lot at Paradise Springs Casino, but we were close to libraries and other amenities. We had decided on going south to Baja. We did research, bought Mexican auto insurance, and made copies of documents.
We also put in an order to Amazon Locker. Finally, it came to this box at a gas station in Indio. We may be using this service in the future.
Bob guards the van as we do laundry before heading south.
We had decided that the easiest border crossing would be at Tecate. On Saturday the 3rd of March, we left Indio and camped in this desert OHV park at Plaster City (population between 4 and 12 while we were there). We would cross into Tecate on Monday.

6 thoughts on “Catching Up

  1. I love reading your posts because I really learn about how this lifestyle and travel can give such joy. We are not sure we could take such wonderful adventures with true abandonment of time and place. I am in need of where I will sleep each night so my anxiety is stepped up a notch until I review your pictures and posts. Gives me faith in an ability to change when needed. Your posts in all honesty are such a nice human escape from the USA….. you remind me how truly beautiful our country is during a disgusting moment in Amerucan humanity. It is hard to remember that the state of our nation is only a moment or blip in time even though I believe it is going to make a serious negativd impact on our country. Darn….. I got carried away ! Love your writings, pictures and fun…..

    1. Thanks Vikki! It is good to know you enjoy the posts. Hopefully through them we can share not only all the natural wonders, history, and oddities out there, but also a little bit of the humanity of the places we visit. We all have biases and preconceived notions about things, places, people until we go out and actually experience them. And with our traveling home we do not always know what state or country we will go to sleep in, but we know we are always going to do it in our very own bed.

  2. Those Amazon boxes are a great idea. Don’t stop blogging. If you do, we’ll have to print up some T-shirts which say “Bring the Ape Man Back!” with a picture of Bob underneath. That will confuse people – a bobble-head dog wearing a tiny sombrero and a reference to an ape man.

    1. Oh! Thanks for stroking our fragile egos! But now we are going to have to stop blogging so we can see these t-shirts!

  3. Yes, keep on blogging! It’s for us too! We appreciate what you are doing precisely because we can’t do it at the moment, if ever. And reading about someone else’s adventures is the next best thing (with pictures too!). Thanks for all your words, pictures and insights.

    1. Thanks so much for your kind words and encouragement. Hopefully we are going to keep writing as long as we can keep traveling!

Leave a Reply to Vikki Dibble Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.