Day 2 of our 13 day Baja California trip

13 day Baja California trip

February 28, 2014 - first day on the road.  San Diego to Vicente Guerrero 189 miles.   We had to be up at 5:30am to be ready to leave by 6:45am.   Before we even got out of the campground three members of our group had problems.  One could not get their jacks up, one lost all his fresh water, and one hit a truck on the way to the meet up place!!!!  So we got a very late start. 

We drove 10 miles to the border with Mexico.  We thought we were going to breeze through, but they decided to x-ray every one of us (15 rigs).  They had each of us drive into a small area where the x-ray apparatus was.  We had to park and both of us had to leave the rig.  We were supposed to take our pets too, but there is no way Keys could have been held without tearing one of us to pieces.  So we left both cats inside.  The x-ray machine had a large top bar and a box like structure on the passenger side.  The machine slowing went down a track x-raying the top and side of the entire rig.  It took about 15 to 20 minutes to do each rig.  Then it was taking too long for some buses behind us who had passengers headed to the air port.  So they stopped scanning us, and pushed the busses to the head of the line.  It took about 3 hours for us all to get through this process.

One through the border, the Green Angels were waiting for us.  They lead the caravan which made us feel very secure.   Traveled with rain all day, at times pretty heavy.  We also experienced heavy winds.  Most of the roads were fine, but there were definitely scary spots with no shoulder and a big drop off (of course, that is always where a semi was passing!!).  The area is very hilly, and in the valleys we also ran into fog.  It was NOT a fun trip!  Along the way many people waved to us and all were very friendly. 

By the time we were close to our end point, we were strung out pretty far.  We were kind of in the back and could not see any of our fellow caravaners in front of us.  We did have one rig following us.   The final instructions were a little off and we wound up missing our turn off.  Upon turning around, we found that about 5 other rigs were similarly lost!  The tail gunner found us and helped us get to the correct turn off.

We had a great dinner in the campground restaurant and had great fun with our fellow travelers.  Some had a little too much fun due to very stiff margaritas!  Not us however  LOL.  Tomorrow we get to sleep in a little with a 9:30am travel briefing and 10am departure.