| Ethen
has a friend that is in our ward and his same age that likes to invite
Ethen to go with him to do many activities. This friend is good
for Ethen, because Ethen likes to not do much. Caden will call
him and bug him and eventually come over and drag Ethen to go over to
his house for various activities. Ethen enjoys the activities
when he attends, but he would rather not attend. A few times Caden has invited Ethen to travel with his family down to Mexico. Their family owns a place down in Mexico on the beach that they travel to occasionally. Ethen has been invited down to Mexico on a few occasions. Normally he will agree to attend and then as the trip nears, he will back out and stay here for the weekend. |
|
|
As luck would
have it, Caden's parents have wised up to Ethen's preferences and this
time around they invited our whole family to attend them for their
Mexico trip. I know where Ethen gets his tendencies from.
We debated it and decided that it would be good for the kids to see how
"good they have it" living in the US - so we thought we would go with
them to Mexico. As the trip neared, we found ourselves also wanting to back out and not make the trek down south. However, since we had committed to it, we thought we had better follow through. It was a short trip, we left on a Saturday and returned on a Monday. The kids were on their fall break, but I had to take a day off from work. |
| The
place they have down there is situated right on the water. When
the tide comes in the water gets right at the bottom of the hill their
property is on. When the tide goes out, it is about 250-300 feet
away from their property. The shallowness of the beach makes for
a nice place to play in when the water retreats. There are many people that will drive vehicles or 4-wheelers or any other contraption down there. It is surprisingly fun to drive up and down the beach. The town is El Desemboque. It is on the Sea of Cortes, 60 miles south of Rocky Point. The town is very small. At the southern edge of the town there are a bunch of sand dunes. If you head east from the beach you drive right through them. Again, it is surprisingly fun to drive all over them. |
|
|
Their family
has a few vehicles they leave down in Mexico along with a 4-wheeler, a
golf cart and a pair of jet skis. They brought an additional 3
4-wheelers down with them for playing with. The town has 2 small
stores and the kids made many trips over to the stores where they
purchased glass bottled sodas and various snacks. Due to the
exchange rate (17:1) they were able to purchase considerably more for
the small amount of dollars they spent. |
|
|
| Over
the years, they have found various animal carcases and dragged some of
the larger, more interesting bones back to their property. If you
look in some of the photos, you will see a couple of whale vertebrate
bones along with a single rib on their fence. |
|
|
We managed to
visit Mexico in between hurricanes. The weekend before there was
a storm and there was also another one the weekend after we left.
Lots of the scenery bore unmistakable signs of copious amounts of
precipitation. On the way down we drove south to rocky point and then took the road that followed the beach down to Desemboque only to be turned around with a flooded road. We turned around and went back to the boarder to take a different path, this time going through Coborca. This added about 3 hours to our trip. We crossed the boarder at Sonoyta a little town just south of Sells, AZ. This required us to drive through the Organ Pipe National Monument. I always pictured this national monument as having cactus of the variety that look like fat ocotillo cactus, but it was really a bunch of saguaro cactus. I guess I can check this national l monument off my list. We did, however, drive right by Kitt Peak. This one is still on our list to visit in the future. |
| On
the way home we decided that the storm water should have dissipated and
we took the coastal highway. When we neared Rocky Point, the road
was still flooded, but this time we attempted to cross it. There
were two spots flooded. The first was about 1/2 mile long, and there
was not much current. The deepest spot on this crossing looked to
be about 6 inches. The second spot was only about 300 feet
across, but it got about 10 inches deep. The crossings were more
hairy than I cared for. Actually all of the driving down there is more iffy than I cared for. On the road between Sonoyta and Coborca, it was a nice road - two laned (one for each direction of travel) with wide shoulders. This was nice because the local folks down there don't seem to care much for the traffic laws. Each lane of traffic straddles the white line on the shoulder. This is so anyone who wants to can pass and they straddle the center line (what ever type it is). I came close to getting in an accident when I was following an RV and couldn't see around it when suddenly it jerked over to the shoulder. The reason why it jerked to the shoulder was a pickup truck was passing two semi-trucks and was half-way in our lane of travel. I quickly jerked over to the shoulder as well and we all avoided and vehicle damage. |
|
|
The semi-trucks
down there will pull 2 or 3 full length trailers behind the tractor and
can be difficult to pass if you were to perform the maneuver
legally. I can only guess what happens when two people passing
(while straddling the while line on the shoulder) meet. I would
guess that there are many vehicle accidents. This was one of the
reasons we tried to avoid this road on the way back. |
| The
day we planned to launch the jet skis happened to be a day with rough
surf. The waves would break further out and there were 4-5 white
capped waves at any given time. I was told that once you got past
the white water the sea was usually calm and you could play with the
jet skis to your heart's content. I didn't find this to be the
case. Once I was able to get out past the white water, I was on
waves that were between 10-15 feet from the top to the bottom of the
swells. I played out there for about 20 minutes. I found the entire time I was just trying to find the safest place to cross the next wave and was spending my time trying to keep from capsizing rather than just playing around. |
|
|
|
 This was Landen's organization with some of his findings |
Everyone else
had the same luck and all but one other person who tried to play on the
jet skis ended up getting thrown off. With the water being so
rough, they all ended up floating in with the jet ski beating them to
shore. They really need to figure out a better way to launch the skis without having to submerge the vehicle so far into the water. I can only imagine that these launch vehicles will not last more than a couple of years with this type of treatment. |
| Due
to the lack of copious amounts of people on the beach, there were many
shells to be picked up and examined. We found many different
types of shells and sand dollars. The kids really enjoyed the
trip and truth be told, Terra and I did too. On the way home, I
kept thinking how fun it would have been to tow the buggy down there
with us. Given that the body is mostly fiberglass it shouldn't
have been damaged all that much, but all the same, it would have needed
a good wash upon return. I did go and wash the suburban off
pretty good underneath after just being near the beach. Perhaps we will venture down there again in the future. If we do, are their any adventurous souls that might join us? |
|
|
Return to Start Page