It's the Journey that Matters!

[Jhango]

I've been reading the journeys in progress here on Expedition Portal for the past couple of years and now that we're on our own epic journey, I thought that I would add our story to the incredible adventures here.

My husband and I enjoy going places and spending our time in motion. Usually this means running and biking but also includes hiking, beach wandering, driving along the coast, and traveling. We lived in the SF Bay Area which was perfect for us. Within a few hours or minutes, we were either at the coast or in the mountains. And after growing up in Iowa and Pennsylvania, the perfect climate made it hard for us to stay indoors.

A few years ago we started a conversation about taking a very long and expansive trip around the world. I briefly looked into buying an “around-the-world” ticket but saw that it would be too constraining for what we would want to do. Plus, we are not planners and we don’t follow schedules very well. With around-the-world tickets, you have to keep moving (in one direction) and there are limits on the period for the trip. We would have to find a more flexible and less expensive travel option.

My husband came across this concept of “Overlanding” during his research and he introduced me to Expedition Portal. It didn’t take him much convincing for me to see that this was the perfect way for us to travel. Some of our best weekends were days when we woke up, ate breakfast and jumped into the car to see which direction it would take us. This would be the perfect solution! Now we just needed to decide the little things like what vehicle, where to go, for how long and when.

We began our journey almost five months ago. You can check out our blog at http://itsthejourneythatmatters.com/ to see where we've been. We aren't completely up-to-date on the blog but there is plenty of material to give you an idea of what we've been up to! We will check back to this thread from time to time and post quick updates as to where we are.

Thanks everyone who has contributed their stories and experiences to this forum. We have found your stories to be inspiring and they have contributed to our ongoing planning for our own adventure!
Happy travels,

Find us at http://itsthejourneythatmatters.com/

 

[jdlobb]

Love your site! Thanks for posting this. I like the BAV section.

 

[Jhango]

Thanks jdlobb! My husband put together the BAV section. He knew that this forum would love to see photos of some of the vehicles that we come across during our travels!

 

[Jhango]

Below are some photos from our first post back in March when we started our trip. After a day of removing everything from our home by either storing it, donating it or throwing it away, we finished packing our FJ Cruiser at about midnight on March 8 and headed out on the road. Our first stop was Death Valley and then on to Rhyolite Ghost Town, Mojave National Preserve, Joshua Tree National Park, and the Salton Sea. The FJ has a CVT (Cascadia Vehicle Tent) RTT with a 1,000 watt inverter. We removed the rear seats and installed a box to hold our clothes, cookware, food. We also have a 100 qt cooler in the back.

You can get an idea of the set-up in this photo. It's nice to have a picnic table nearby for extra "counter space". This was taken at Ricardo Campground in Red Rock Canyon State Park just outside of Mojave, CA.


View of Badwater from Dantes View overlook.


A pretty cool vehicle we saw on our way to Wildrose Campground in Death Valley. It's included on our BAV page.


Our off road campsite in Death Valley


Hiking along Kelso Dunes in Mojave.


View from Boyscout trail in Joshua Tree National Forest


Rhyolite ghost town in Nevada


You can see our whole trip report from this section of our travels here: http://itsthejourneythatmatters.com/2014/03/31/death-valley-to-the-salton-sea-and-places-in-between/

 

[Jhango]

Excerpts from "First Days in Mexico" from www.itsthejourneythatmatters.com

It has been some time since I posted an update from our trip. We are currently in Guatemala and I am seriously behind on our blog. I just made the last post from our time on Vancouver Island which was pretty awesome! But to keep things in sequence, I'll share here the post from our "First Days in Mexico"

We crossed into Mexico at Mexicali with no issues. Our plan was to follow the gulf coast through Baja California then turn inland to Guerrero Negro and San Ignacio for the whale migration then continue south into Baja California Sur and make a big loop hitting Loreto, La Paz, Todos Santos, Cabo San Lucas, then back up toward La Paz through La Ventana then retracing our route until the junction of Mex 1 and the road leading to the off road baja races. We would continue north along Mex 1 along the Pacific until crossing the border again into the US.

Our first night was spent in the quiet coastal town of San Felipe. There were two main streets where most of the tourists and snow birds congregated. We spent a couple of nights here before continuing south to Puertecitos. Along the way we stopped to see the giant cardon cacti in "The Valley of the Giants".

Cow skull at the entrance to Valley of the Giants


We spent a couple of nights in San Felipe where we saw this beauty!


We continued down the coast toward Puertecitos where we had lunch at Cowpatty where we had hot dog, chips and soda. once we finished we were told that there was a real restaurant down the road.


We left and had a second lunch where we met the guys from 3UpCollective. These crazy guys are driving all the way to Argentina on their motorcycles. The crazy part is that 2 of the 3 have never ridden a motorcycle before this trip!

This was our beautiful beach front view at the second restaurant. Absolutely gorgeous and we had the beach all to ourselves, or so we thought. At about 3 am a family of coyote pups woke us up with their cries.


We got a chance to drive part of the Baja 500 race course on our way out to Coco's corner. There were a lot of pretty awesome vehicles along the road and the best part was meeting Coco!

Pretty sweet Troopie! These guys were from Oakland, CA.


We arrived at Coco's corner.


A guy we met at Coco's Corner told us of a great camping spot at our next destination of Bahia Los Angeles, Campo Archelon. It was an awesome suggestion. The owners are turtle researchers with a really nice set-up on the bay.
Random signs we saw along the road.


We got a chance to go out fishing and relax taking in the beautiful views.


Antonio, the owner suggested that we go see a "magical forest" on our way to Mission San Borja. Here's the map we received from him. Surprisingly, we had no problem finding it!


The road to the mission was pretty rough and there were some steep sections that required 4WD. Atfter 20 miles of all dirt roads with no signs indicating whether we were on the right path we finally started to see some small hand-painted signs telling us that the mission was up ahead. This made me feel more comfortable.

We were greeted by Jenaro when we arrived. His family is descended from the Indians that worked there when it was first founded in the 1500's and have worked the land for generations. Jenaro gave us a tour of the mission and the surrounding spring fed garden. The garden, first planted by the missionaries, still yields figs, lemons, limes, pomegranates and grapes descended from those planted in earlier times. The family also has small herds of sheep, goats and cattle that roam the mountains and they have a few horses used for rounding up the small herd of cattle.


We spent a couple of hours at the Mission enjoying the gardens. Eventually we got back on the road so we could make it to our next camp site. More to come on the following days in another update.
It's been an awesome trip given the great people that we've met and the incredible places that we've seen!

 

[Jhango]

A CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH A GRAY WHALE!

Here is the blog post with all of the photos: http://itsthejourneythatmatters.com/2014/04/18/a-close-encounter-with-a-gray-whale/
After our visit with Jenaro at Mission San Borja we continued along the dirt road out to Rosarito. There was even a big official looking sign pointing the way for us which looked out of place considering these were all dirt roads.


From there we headed south into the state of Baja Sur at Guerrero Negro. The whale watching was our destination! We came to Baja specifically for the whale watching during the months of January through March. This is the time when the gray whales breed and have their young at the lagoons from Scammonds in Guerrero Negro down to Magdalena Bay. We were really excited about this leg of our trip.

As we approached the state border crossing, there was a military checkpoint, an agricultural checkpoint and then another to check our papers. The first checkpoint was only interested in where we came from and where we were going. The next was the agricultural inspection. I fessed up to having a mango and an apple but they didn’t seem to care about such trivial things. We paid our 20 pesos for the fumigation. This process required us to drive our FJ over a grate with vapor rising out of it. We didn’t ask what was in the vapor and I’m not sure that I really want to know the answer. We heard that if we didn’t have our papers in order for the next check point then we might be turned away back to the border. We didn’t see anyone when we arrived so we kept on driving. Now to see the whales!

Our campsite was in the parking lot behind the restaurant. It looked like they didn’t bother to open the main camping lot this year due to the lack of tourists. We were hoping to go on a whale watching tour the following day but when we arrived we were told that they wouldn’t be going out because of the wind. We were hopeful that the wind might die down the next day so we stayed and completed a few errands while we waited.

That evening, the wind died down a bit so we were hopeful that the pangas would go out to the lagoons the next day. When we got up I headed straight over to the Malarrimo Whale Watching tour office and we received the good news! They would take us out onto the lagoons in about an hour!!!

It was truly an amazing experience to see these giants as they observed us by telescoping. This is when they bring their head straight up out of the water as if to watch us.


At one point, the baby came sweeping by and lifted his tail up just enough for me to touch it!


The baby knocked his back up against the bottom of the boat so gently as if saying hello! (I have a very good imagination.) It’s amazing to think how gentle these creatures are considering that the 3 month old calf could easily toss us over with very little effort. Its tail was velvety smooth and felt like soft rubber. When they are born, they weigh between 1,200 – 1,500 pounds and are over 16 feet long.


It was fascinating to watch their behavior. The mother would come up under its baby to help prop it up so it could see us and get closer to the boat. If you look closely in this photo, you’ll see the mother underneath and the darker shape is the baby on top of its mama.

When the whales are first born, they stay in the more shallow waters of the lagoons where there is little current and the babies can learn to breath and how to dive. The mother introduces the baby to the stronger currents at the mouth of the lagoons at 2 or 3 months of age. Here they spend a few weeks getting bigger, stronger and more skilled at navigating the currents. They must learn a lot in these first few months because once they head out into the ocean, away from the safety of the lagoon, there will be orcas awaiting them.

After returning from the whale watching tour we spent the afternoon chatting with Ed and Lynn about the experience and spending a wonderful afternoon sharing stories of our travels through Baja. It was a spectacular day sharing the whale experience with this really nice couple.