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The rocks, sand, and wild desert vegetation of the Baja pensinsula made up the backdrop for our family road adventure this summer. Greg and I can take partial credit for this successful vacation, having hatched out the whole plan out around a campfire last November. "We've got to get the cousins out on a really cool trip this summer," I implored. "Are you up for something?"

We settled on Baja, pleaded with Mark to go along with it (he quickly agreed), and 6 months later, with fresh passports in hand, we made the trek down. While the trip was Greg's and my idea, Mark was definitely the driving force behind the success of our 2 weeks. He planned a great route and was our group's main Spanish speaker. Baja gave our family the perfect balance of adventure on and off the beaten path. We enjoyed the food, the culture, and the views from every mountain and beach we explored on the way.

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I believe we can sum it up thus: "We're all here because we're not all there."

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So.  Yeah.

My old friends Russ and Andy dictate the Annual Adults Only Weekend in April.  They force us all to pass our spawns to the nearest grandparent willing to take them for a whole weekend, then we go drive some long, bumpy dirt road to a campsite.  We build a fire, fill the glasses, and talk about the old days and tell aggrandizingly sentimental stories about our children.

It might get loud.  It might get cold. We love it.  These are the pictures from our last outing in April 2009 that are suitable for the public.

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Just how do you tell a mere 2.5-year-old blond that she gets to go see a 700-year-old house carved into a hole of a limestone canyon wall and make it sound fun?

Can she possibly understand it? Not really. So here's what we did: "Chloe, do you want to go camping and throw little rocks into a river and climb on big rocks?"

And . . . she's . . . sold.

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We could have just driven down to any one of six or seven strip malls and found a Bed Bath and Beyond or something. But we wanted to buy something handcrafted and imperfect.  So we loaded the bikes and headed down the road for a two-day-and-three-night back road adventure through Tucson, Sonoita, Patagonia, and Nogales . . . just to buy a set of colorful mexican glasses and margarita pitcher south of the border. Chloe was learning to walk.  Labor Day 2008.

Our camp right on the edge of the beach north of town - Bahia de Los Angeles
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In search of the beautiful beaches enjoyed with the finest margaritas and the greasiest tacos that the Thousand-Mile-Peninsula has to offer.  And with a 6-months pregnant chick along for the ride, too.

JPFreek Adventure Magazine Logo --- what's real? What's not?
I loaded up the Jeep with a backpack, a few vittles, a camera, and a GPS with the idea of landing myself in Guadalupe Mountains National Park for a number of days. This was my first solo trip in years, and preparing for it felt as foreign as walking on the moon. Just me and the Jeep, no family this time. 535 miles and four days. And somewhere out there at a campgound in the Chihuahuan Desert, a few friends awaited in a huddle around a campfire. They'd be waiting a while.

I didn't get there until 2:00 am. Strange things happened out there on the road.