This was the first time I returned to Loreto, BCS, MX since we sold our AV200 casa in Loreto Bay in March 2018. We purchased it in 2006 and while it was being built, Citicorp and the developer stopped construction on all homes including ours, and filed for bankruptcy in June 2009. Thanks to the internet and a quickly thrown-up website, about 140 homeowners with partially finished homes formed up and got Beck, a general contractor, to work with our subcontractors to finish off our homes. At the time our home was about 50% completed.
On March 23, 2010, we moved into our home, but we needed to complete a lot of the infrastructure and landscaping work using the special assessment funds. We buried the electrical and internet wires, moved some sewer lines, and installed gas lines. After that, we put in walkways and beautiful landscaping. Lesley Fleming was responsible for all of the landscaping work.
Nearby we had a smelly sewage lift station and capped it with a giant biofilter we bought and shipped from Germany at a cost of $32,000 which eliminated the hydrogen sulfide smells that had filled up the neighboring homes. Even the city of Loreto checked this biofilter out with the thought that they may install some along the waterfront by the high-end La Mission Hotel to reduce sewage smells.
I was the Chair of our Sub-Regime K during this time and was amazed at all of the construction work we accomplished. I even went to an auction where I bought an electrical transformer, insulators, and hundreds of feet of wire to connect some of the homes to this new transformer at a quarter of the cost had we bought it from a dealer.
With this adversity, I believe that our Loreto Bay community during this time became much closer than we would have if the original construction plan had been carried out. Since then, many of these original owners like me have sold and moved on, others have built other, larger, and more beautiful homes.
Many of the newer owners have no idea of how difficult it was to complete our homes and get agreement from the owners in Founders who had completed homes prior to the Citicorp bankruptcy to share in the cost of owners who have never paid their HOA assessments.
I drove my Prius out of the rains of Seattle to arrive in Loreto where it was blue skies and temperatures ranging from 80 to 90 degrees in early November where I would stay in a 2 bedroom apartment in downtown Loreto for a month.
I crossed the border to Mexicali after a 40-minute wait and drove Highway 5 for a night's stay in San Felipe. My wife and I had last visited San Felipe when it was a sleepy fishing village and the end of the paved road some 53 years ago. At that time, we camped under a palapa right on the beach next to our '67 VW.
Now they had many buildings, hotels, restaurants, and a beautiful Malecon that stretched for a couple of miles above the sandy beach and surf. There were a number of brass bands playing along the beach while jet boats and banana boats crisscrossed each other in the bay.
I spent the following day driving down Highway 5 which had a few villages with their topes and fundraisers found all along Highway 1 that ran down Baja on the Pacific Oceanside. This highway was wider and there were no buses and few trucks were on this highway. Once Highway 5 merged with Highway 1, the road was narrower, had many trucks, and topes on each end of towns were frequent.
I spent the night at the Desert Inn in San Ignacio and in the morning I saw the low tire indicator was on so when I gassed up, I had them fill up my tires.
Once in Loreto, I met up with my landlords, Francisco and Karla, at the apartment I rented from them for two weeks on Booking.com and another two weeks directly. The place looked new and the internet and wifi worked well--turns out that Francisco is an IT guy and use to work for Road9 who did the internet installation at Loreto Bay. He looked familiar so I am sure I had met him earlier.
After settling in I had a late breakfast at Cafe Ole and walked around Loreto and when I got in my car to drive out to Loreto Bay, I saw that the low tire pressure light was on. I stopped at the nearby Autozone and got a tire pressure gauge and saw that the front right tire was low and the other three had over 50 psi when they should have only been about 36 psi.
I then headed out to Loreto Bay. I did not find any of my Sub Regime K neighbors at home but did run into Dan Getman who invited me to a hike on Hart's Trail which overlooked Escondido Port on Thursday--our normal hiking day.
While there, I saw that several more homes were being built near the canals and the canals had been finished up.
Escondido Harbor
When John Filby and Bertha returned from Cabo, they had me over to their place for a delicious shrimp dinner and told me that they were getting married over in Puerto Vallarta in December. So good to hear. We also planned our next hike for Thursday and would meet at 8:30 in front of Pedro's place.
On the 15th, the first large cruise ship came to Loreto and the local music and dance groups put on a lively performance for them and the townspeople on the rebuilt stage across from the Loreto Mission.
We decided to do the Pinturas hike on Thursday, the 18th, but we were unable to go up the riverbed as in past years because it was chocked with bamboo, other shrubs, and cacti. Instead, we took the old San Javier trail that took us far above our normal swimming hole. Mike joined John and me for the hike. They had not much rain here nor hurricanes that would have washed out all of the bamboo and other vegetation. This had been one of my favorite hikes. We went into town for lunch at El Zopilote Brewery and Cocina for some IPA and pulled pork sandwiches.
On the 19th I got up at 2 am to watch a lunar eclipse and I captured a fuzzy picture using my iPhone.
On the 20th Loreto was filled with some of the Baja 1000 off-road race cars and supply cars. This race started in Ensenada and ended in La Paz.
I drove up to the San Javier Mission on December 1st. They were holding a service and the Mission was decorated for the Christmas holidays. I took a walk to a very old olive tree and saw the irrigation canals there still had flowing water which was one of the reasons the Jesuits established this cathedral back in the mid-1600s.
I also got to visit Lesley Fleming and we reminisced about our achievements in building out our Sub-Regime K. Later, I visited Silvia and Guillermo, one of the few Mexican owners in Loreto Bay, and they decided to join us in our Thursday hikes. I hope they will continue to join up with the Thursday hiking crew.
We had a fairly large group for our Thursday, December 2nd hike. Our group included Ian, Mark and Sherri, Silvia and Guillermo, Jon, John, Mike, and Len. We hiked up the Juncalito trail which normally has some swimming pools at the top of the trail. The trail up to the deserted shack looked like it had been bulldozed recently and from that point, we dropped down to hike up the arroyo. When we got to the pools, they were dried up and there were several bones of goats that had died near there. Mark indicated a couple of months ago, he and Sherri had hiked up there and found one dead goat floating into the pool and another was trapped in the water but still alive he rescued it and put the dead goat on the land.
Afterward, we celebrated our hike at the Clam Shack and I enjoyed their stuffed chocolate clams and sangria. The flies were pretty aggressive this time because there was very little wind.
Jon and John wanted to take me on one more hike on the 4th before I left and we selected the Old Swimming Hole trail that connected with the trailhead of the Pinturas hike. Although there was no water in the swimming hole, we found a lot of places on this hike where there was flowing water along with small pools. It was a good way to end my time in Loreto and was the first time I did that trail. It turned out to be opening day for Del Boracho's. We enjoyed the best burgers on the Baja and Negro Modelo by the pitcher.
That night, Silvia and Guillermo, and Jon and Cathy joined me for dinner at the Buena Vida restaurant across the street where the Saturday market was set up. Guillermo ordered a Kraken--not a hockey team--which was a tower of seafood surrounded by a pool of soy sauce.
They also have a Kraken bar here which should be popular with Seattle area folks since that is the name of our new hockey team.
I got an early start back home on the 5th of December and spent two hours at the Mexicali border where vendors of all types lined the way to the border inspection stations. From there I drove to Ontario for the night.
I was enveloped in tule fog once I descended from the Grapevine. It was interesting to see that there were electric charging stations at the state rest stops as well as at many gas stations. Looks like California is a leader in promoting electric cars.
The following day I met up with Donna and Wayne, our long-time friends we have vacationed with in Maui and Costa Rica. who was packing up to celebrate their 46 anniversary at Pajaro Dunes south of Santa Cruz the following day and week? I took them to a nearby restaurant for some delicious food. My wife Tani was Donna's roommate back in 1968-69 up at Alaska Methodist University now the University of Alaska, Anchorage.
After visiting with them, I headed to San Francisco for the night. I walked to the wharf area, North Beach, Chinatown, Nob Hill, and back down to Van Ness Avenue and my hotel. I took pictures of the Savoy Tivoli where we had our wedding party the day before our wedding at Glide Methodist Memorial Church some 52 years ago.
While still in North Beach, I then heard some blues music so I stopped in there for a few rounds of songs and drinks at the Saloon Inn before walking through the closed-up Chinatown.
The following morning I stopped by the homes we lived in back in 1969 and 1975. The first place was near 7th and Geary in San Francisco. We first lived in a dark green carpenter gothic two-story building that was replaced by a brown four-plex with bay windows near the tree and then we moved two doors up to the first-floor blue building that had a nice backyard our German Shepard enjoyed.
When we returned from Washington D.C. in 1975, we moved to a Mill Valley townhouse that was adjacent to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area accessible via Tennessee Valley Road below. We use to have Eucalyptus trees that swayed and glistened when the fog rolled in, but they were removed to reduce the fire danger.
I then met up with my cousin Ted and Ginger in Sacramento who hosted me for the night. We enjoyed reminiscing about our times together at family gatherings Christmas times at our grandparents' place in Glendale, reunions at their Sacramento Delta home as well as our times in the late '60s rafting down the Klamath River and winter camping in Yosemite National Park valley near Mirror Lake. We drove by a Christmas Lane in their area and had dinner at a nearby restaurant where I enjoyed the chicken curry meal.
The following morning, Ted entertained me with his piano playing and then we split our lunch sandwiches of dipped beef and Reuben sandwiches at his nearby country club while Ginger went to her book exchange party. It has been a good year of reconnecting with relatives and friends.
Tule Fog stayed with me in the San Joaquin Valley until I got to Red Bluff. I made it over the Siskiyou Mountains to Ashland, OR just as it was getting dark and where I spent the night after having Shepard's pie at one of the many British-themed restaurants thanks to Ashland being the Shakespeare play venue in the country.
From Ashland to my home in Seattle, I was cloaked in rain and grey clouds which reminded me of why I usually head to sunny and warm climates in the winter. It was a good 4,000-mile round trip journey in my Prius made better with the cruise control and average gas mileage of 45 miles per gallon. At one place in southern California, I paid $4.90 per gallon and saw signs for $5.10 per gallon.
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