Why is my little jack under Carolyn’s rig? Read on to find out!
I decided to skip ahead from Summer 2023 to Baja 2024. I may come back with some ‘what I did last summer’ blog posts but don’t count on it. Baja is just too good to not talk about closer to the moment.I have seen and done so much in the last two weeks! So, let’s travel forward in time to the near – present in 2024 for some Baja adventures!
That RV Over There, Carolyn’s RV life, Ralph, Edie & Cindy
We had just come through a major rainstorm and frankly were happy just to all get close to the border. I should introduce our group to start with, by rig. This is an RV adventure afterall. At the front of the line is Sara and Aaron, who have a wonderful YouTube channel called That RV Over There. They are trying to get enough hours of viewing to monetize, so go over and view their stuff. I’m probably in there somewhere too.
Next we have Carolyn, of Carolyn’s RV Life, YouTube creator extraordinaire and boondocking road warrior. YouTube is a job for her, it (sorta) pays the bills. Although if you really want to help her pay the bills, her Patreon group allows you to throw a few dollars her way in return for some extra inside information and early release stuff. I’ve been an active member there for years now – comments there actually get respected rather than eviscerated as can happen on YouTube. Watch her videos if you want to see more of what happens to us while in Baja.
After that, we have Ralph, that would be me, the blogging fool that I am. I am actually putting a few short clips up on YouTube. It’s more for free storage rather than any entertainment with production values. I have enough trouble just putting up blogs, so editing isn’t a thing for me. Enjoy the little random bits you get. I also have been posting the good stuff to Instagram, at least anything square that is good. I only do old school Instagram, no video. It actually is more up to date than my Flickr account sometimes, as I can just upload a creation quickly on my phone.
Last in line, with a large RV and a toad (car being towed, get it?) we have Edie and Cindy, a wonderful couple who have been out travelling almost exactly the same amount of time I have. While I was out freezing my ass off on Vancouver Island, they were freezing in Maine, trying to get south and out of the cold. I think they toyed with YouTube for a bit but are not active now. I’ll update this if I find they are doing something online they want to share like (shudder) Facebook.
No relation to this story, just pretty.
Our group crossing was relatively uneventful. There was a rig inspection. Expect that the Mexi guards will want to look in your rig. Also expect that it won’t be a very deep inspection, unless you do something stupid like take your illegal drugs down and leave them sitting in your bathroom medicine cabinet. But all of us passed through without getting arrested. I should mention that Mexicali East had NO lineup to get in at 10am on a weekday. I dread coming back, as the ‘to USA’ line was already two hours at that time of day. The link above points to the building with the FMM office, your paper you need to travel anywhere away from the border while in Mexico. That process took way longer than the border inspection. One surly clerk does not make for a quick line with us and four others waiting to be processed. On a good note, they take credit cards now, so no need for exact change in pesos there anymore!
I didn’t take a single picture of Mexicali, but I didn’t miss much. It feels like a poor suburb and in a sense it is. A lot of the people live here to get bussed into the States everyday to work the fields growing the cheap produce we first world people have come to expect. Our first stop was a Costco parking lot. Not very adventurous, I admit, but we needed a good big parking lot we could hope to all gather in for our first jump south. There was a cool street vendor grouping nearby. The early ones through the border crossing had time to shop a bit, which I don’t miss doing even there. My first Mexican food was a fried Churro – fresh out of the deep frier. It was tasty, not too greasy or sweet. That bode well for the food to follow!
We proceeded south on highway 5. The roads so far were not bad. Mexicali has some different styles of roads, but overall they made a lot of sense, especially on the lesser road budgets they have. There are stop signs everywhere, even the main roads often can be stop sign followed by stop sign. The locals are pretty casual about stopping, but surprisingly courteous about who goes next. You’ll also get pestered by vendors at traffic lights, but again they are respectful and move on as soon as you say ‘no gracias’. That was the first phrase of Spanish I got down cold in Mexico. The city fades out slowly, with more and more open space between shops until you are just in the desert again.
El Salar, the “lake” is a boring mud bed behind me.
I didn’t even think of taking a picture until El Salar, a dry lake that we stopped at more for a pit stop than a scenic site. It’s supposed to be a dried up lake, but the lake is wet right now so no white salt flats, just brown mud into the distance. It was a grey day after all the rain. Trust me, the photos would not wow you any more than this one. We split into two groups here, one that went ahead and scouted a potential boondocking spot for our first night.
Still stuck in the dark
The first clue that we had a problem was a text “Working on Carolyn getting unstuck”. We proceed over to what was supposed to be our boondocking spot and find out that Carolyn is indeed stuck. Are you surprised that our intrepid boondocking warrior was the first to get stuck? Welcome to the club! The early party had just given up on trying to get Carolyn out on their own. A call to 911 was in progress.
911, you ask, isn’t that for emergencies? Out here at least, 911 also will get you routed to road side assistance by the Green angels, a service that will help you with breakdowns and getting stuck on most major highways in Baja.
Setting up for try #1 unstuck.
What showed up was unexpected too. I’m only slightly exaggerating to say a whole army showed up. We had several police, men (and a woman!) in army fatigues, and two police trucks from San Felipe to strap up, dig and push as required. But the army was not enough for the sand – pulling broke the 10,000 lbs strap they had with them. Good thing I had my brand new strap purchased just for this occasion with me. It got put to good use, but the truck was no match for the deeply buried RV.
New tow strap to flat bed, round 2
Round 2 was the calling of a heavy duty tow flatbed, with a lot more weight to throw around pulling an RV. They managed to break a chain trying to pull out an RV! That was the point I was wondering if we were looking at a new RV graveyard. But the Mexican tow truck drivers and remaining army don’t give up easily. My new strap was doubled, and doubled up again into a short tow rope attached to the end of the flatbed.
The tow truck tried to just gently pull out Carolyn’s rig, but the sand was having none of that, even with trying to jack up the rear with my little bottle jack. It was going to take some hard jerks to so much as budge the rig. But budge it did, slowly working itself out of the deep hole it was in. I winced every time I saw those front wheels being jerked around by the uneven pull, surely an alignment would be needed at the very least after this abuse.
Free at last!
But eventually the sand yielded its victim. With a shudder, out came the RV, free at last and back on terra firma roada. It had been a long evening, with much teeth gnashing. If you want to see the video version of this rescue, go now to That RV Over There, that will take you to the video version of this gripping first evening of adventure in the Baja. Amazingly, Carolyn’s rig was mostly unscathed, other than her front bumper now is more “streamlined”. Ford tough is real, people.
Yonke el Pony: 5 stars.
We all thanked our heros of the day for the monumental effort in getting Carolyn unstuck. Yonke El Pony was awesome. If you are stupid enough to care about pricing, all I can say is you don’t have an expensive set of wheels you live in.
One thing you might be wondering is how did Carolyn of so many years boondocking experience get stuck? Well, it turns out that Baja was new not only in local, but in local sand types. I personally walked all over what was left of the undisturbed ground where she had tried to park. It was solid. Any one of use could have hit the holes she was unlucky enough to sink into. The ground out there was very deceptive. I dug down too, finding the top few inches solid (salt?) encrusted sand. Below that was wet soft sand. So, as long as you didn’t break through the solid bits you were fine. Walking around, the ground varied wildly from soft to hard. If I went back there again, I’d only drive on what other had driven on, and preferably packed down good.
I’ll leave you with moonrise the following night. We all needed a day to decompress after that stressful evening. The moon had been a plus during our crisis, it was great to enjoy the rise with our RVs all on firm ground now. That was only day one and two of our adventures. We decided to head to San Felipe for some stress free campground camping for a few days. Time to see a town, eat some great food, and camp by the ocean. I promise, there will be more pictures – next time!
