Wednesday, July 27, 2011

You really can pet a whale


The whale calves seem to love children
It seems appropriate to start my blog with a little story about how we found a small fishing town in Baja, Mexico.  My husband and I were in Santa Barbara on business and I signed on for a whale watching tour to stay busy.  The trip itself was unremarkable but the story that I was told on the boat that day sparked intrigue into me about the land that lay south of California.  An elderly woman spun a wild tale of beauty and danger in an unspoiled area where you could actually reach down into the ocean and touch a baby whale.  I half expected her to hand me a poisoned apple that day and I thought she might be half mad until I took to the internet and googled GRAY WHALES IN BAJA. That settled it.  We were going to Baja.

It took almost two years to find ourselves crossing the border from San Diego.  Why?  Well we lived in Tennessee.  It was 2000 miles from our home to San Diego and another 1000 to drive down the Baja.  We needed months for this trip.  It did not take long to discover that this was not the same Mexico that we had visited on the mainland.  The terrain was so diverse.  Unspoiled pacific ocean beaches,  desert mountains,  miles and miles of desert flora with huge majestic cactus, and turquoise bays surprised us all along our route.  By the time we made it to the south of the peninsula we were addicted to driving down the side routes to some isolated area looking for another surprise.

Our camper at Los Cerritos

It was one such route that brought us to become part of the Pescadero Community.  I had read a small "blurb" about possible beach camping in a place called Los Cerritos at mile marker 63 and as we came closer to this area we decided that this would be a great place to rest for a few days.  As we made our way down the washboard dirt road we suddenly noticed a tire rolling past us.  Yep!  It was ours.  The axle on our camper snapped in half.  Locals immediately helped us to the side of the road, we were given permission to camp there in sight of a beautiful beach, and six weeks later we were sad at the prospect of leaving.

This email is how the truck found us
During that time frame we met so many people.  We were fed, entertained, introduced to friends and families, and before long we had become part of the landscape.  On our way home we decided that we would someday sell our house in Tennessee and move back to Pescadero.  Since then we have stayed for months at a time during all of the seasons and most of our family and close friends have been here to visit us.  It has taken us four years to make it back permenately.  After selling our home, marrying off our and educating our children, and relieving ourselves of burdensome possessions we finally pulled away from Tennessee bound for the Baja.  That was approximatey one month ago.

Our friend Kenny at "Shut Up Frank's"
We have been back in Pescadero for a little more than a week now and have just become settled back in to a gorgeous private RV Park that our friend Kenny Sewell built.  We feel so fortunate to be part of this community and have Kenny as our friend.  One of my goals with this blog is to lead others to this area and possibly to our RV community.  We are relatively small with only 22 sites but there are a select few still available.  I will be linking my blog to the Mountain Shadow RV Park site for any of you who want to know more about our home.

Can you believe it.  I took this photo.
I saw it with my own eyes!!  
I plan to tell stories about the cast of characters who live in Pescadero and the surrounding area as well as give factual information about driving the Baja, places to stay along the way, internet resources, restaurants, activities, and more.  We are living our dream in a magical place that just came our way.  Hopefully some of you will be inspired to look for magic and adventure too.  In the meantime I am going to end this post with some photos of our first trip to the Baja and YES you can pet a gray whale here!!

No comments:

Post a Comment