Last weeks in San Felipe

And we still have 2 more weeks down here……

Week 3 started with a St Patrick’s Day party at Tony and Dee’s place. We planned the perfect food – the Irish 7 course meal. What’s that? Its a 6 pack of beer and a potato! OK its an old joke but still good on St Patrick’s Day.

Tons of great food and lots to drink

Dee and Tony with the corned beef and cabbage for St Patricks Day.

The big news here lately is the Baja 250 off road race which is happening just as we plan on leaving and its the reason the campground is full at the end of the month.

The Dune Buggies down here for the race are serious pieces of machinery with immense amounts of suspension travel that soak up bumps that would destroy regular vehicles. They race up and down the beach here at mind blowing speeds.

Our neighbors! A professional off road race truck and crew

The closer we got to the race weekend the more arrived.

In between times we met some new neighbors. On one side we had a couple and their kids from Phoenix so we got along well, The kids collected several hundred sand dollars from the beach each day and lay them out to dry.

On the other side were an English guy and his wife who was originally from Mexicali. She remembered coming to Pete’s Camp when she was a child. She was impressed by the changes she saw. We supplied him with good cup of English tea for which he expressed his sincere thanks!

Did I mention the glorious sun rises?

Trips to the local swap meet and various restaurants filled out the time nicely, although at one point we both expressed the same thought that perhaps a month was too long.

San Filipe swap meet

Things soon speeded up again and we were facing the end of our time down here a lot quicker than we had reckoned, so we had to buy the obligatory tourist junk and start planning the run down of our food stuffs before crossing the border back into the US.

That can be a problem, and we experienced it several years ago when crossing back from Canada. Vegetables are apparently unwelcome and the border agent confiscated ours out of the refrigerator. As at all borders there are limits on the amount of alcoholic beverages that can be brought in, so we shopped for a couple of bottles of my favorite tequila to bring back and ate all the vegetables!

Tony and Dee have been great, inviting us out for breakfasts, dinners etc., and introducing us to their many friends down here. I promised to do a painting of their house here that they can keep in their RV so went over to take some pictures to paint from.

Tony and Dee's beautiful house

I also painted a second version of the beach scene I had done, the couple from Phoenix asked if they could buy it before the paint was even dry! I painted the second with the sun setting, and it turned out very dramatic. I also painted the cove near the lighthouse from a photo I took at Daryll and Darlene’s condo. I wasn’t 100% pleased with that one so I may have to redo it at some later date.

The first version of my painting

The second version when the sun was low

Living down on the beach is just idyllic, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately depending how you look at it) there was absolutely no cell phone or internet signal due to the cliffs. We could get a signal at the top of the cliff, and the wifi at the bar and restaurant was pretty good, but we missed several emails and messages.

One thing we did do was call our friends Mike and Lynne in Australia on Facebook Video and tried talking to them over a very loud band that was playing in the restaurant we were at with Tony and Dee! They were excited to see us all together and jealous that they could be with us, but they are planning to be in Phoenix in November so we should be able to get together.

And several messages came thru from the TV crew who contacted us wanting to film. It looks very definite now and all may revealed soon. Come back next week for another exciting episode!!

That quiet spot on the beach is no more!

The campground suddenly filled up and the roads were jammed with trailers and race cars. Our quiet campground became the pit lane! We decided to leave a day early to get away from it but also to stay away from the weekend traffic at the border.

Race cars and trailers were parked everywhere

It worked! We sailed up to Mexicali and we were thru the boarder in 40 minutes compared to the 2 hours it took back in December.

In a couple of hours we were camped in Yuma at the Escapees Kofa park for 2 nights, and our Mexico adventure was over. We shopped at the Arizona Marketplace had dinner at Famous Dave’s BBQ restaurant, filled the RV up and got the rig tidy for it’s TV appearance.