Photo of the Day: Just a Mexican Beach

Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM | Setting: f/4, 8 sec, ISO 1600
A perfect beach camp on the Sea of Cortes in Mexico

Disclosing the location of this beach would be dangerous.  Possibly.  Just a 6 hour drive from Phoenix, this quiet and clean beach gave us unending miles of perfect frisbee-throwing space in which the only people we saw were local fishermen and their small kids at play.  No quads hauling up and down, no loud music, no crowds of SPF greasy folks, no vendors.  Just a half dozen old grass-roofed palapas, the rolling tide, and a star studded sky.

The kids, at the time this photo was shot, were asleep in the tents, resting up from a long day of playing in the sand where we had no worries of broken glass or freaky rusty things lurking under the surface.  That's how far this beach is from civilization.  And the flip side: that's how bad civilization is for our planet.

A perfect beach camp like this comes at a price.  It's down a 50-mile-long dirt road that hasn't seen a blade in a long time - the deep washboards testify so. It'll punishingly rattle the hell out of any decent sedan that tempts fate.  It should go without saying that there are no services along this road, let alone at the end of it.  And the Sonora coast in Mexico is unique in other ways.  This is where the desert meets the ocean without warning.  It's just a cool place. The kind of place created for dreams.