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.

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.

Coming at you live-ish from the Baja peninsula... which is a very good reason why you haven't seen any updates in over a week.  It's been super tough. Shrimp tacos and off-the-grid beaches on Mexico's most notoriously fun strip of sand and rock are keeping us really "busy."

Pardon some of the funky keystrokes on my part because they have keyboards here that do stuff like this ñ and this ¿ by just hiting the wrong key.

So, back to Mexico. Baja.

The other day we - Brooke, Chloe, me, Greg, and Samantha - were enduring a brutal morning on the beach south of Mulegè.  Some coffee, some huevos rancheros, and a gentle tide at about 90 degrees F.  A clunky old Ford pickup stopped next to our palapa and a thick and muscular Mexican man spoke a hilarious version of Spanglish through which he offered us an hour-long boat ride for $25.

He claimed he'd show us a sunken boat that's since been taken over by the sea as a reef.  He also suggested he'd take us to a nice point where we'd get some fresh clams from the bottom of the Sea of Cortès and swallow them down right there.  "Bring limes and salsa, I bring mi panga over here in one two or three horas."  He told us in his peculiar, yet admirable, dialect of Spanglish.

Get out your map and look up Bahía Concepción; it's about 2/3rds the way down Baja on the Sea of Cortés side. Here goes a minute of your day from our little boat on the sea.

The Phoenix-area is a great launching point for 2-3 day weekend road trip "mini-vacations." With a young daughter we try to minimize the driving and include more hands-on experiences that appeal to a toddler. Like everyone else, we prefer a short drive, to a not-too-crowded camping area, where it's scenic and there's something fun to do nearby.

That's not too much to ask, right?

When the couple from Alaska sat down to chat with me and Brooke about thier plans to spend two years on the road with their children (and likely in a Global Expedition Vehicle), they smiled and implored in the simplest terms, "If we ever end up at an RV park, we'll consider that a major failure for our trip."

Okay Internets. You got it. I never thought I'd let you do this to me; never thought you'd have this much control.

We tossed you the ball and you clobbered it out of the park.

Chloe plays at the park
Fall has arrived in the desert.  Trying to take advantage of some days in the sun that are the perfect 78 degrees, we've been escaping to our neighborhood park for morning play time.  Having a two-year old toddling in the park is always fun and sometimes even funny...except when it's time to say 'bye-'bye to the slides once more.

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.

Exploring the National Parks by motor vehicle dates back to as early as 1916.  The PBS program shows us how adventurous folks used their automobiles to travel and camp, virtually setting it straight from the get-go that we mortals like our cars because they can take us to cool places.

Modern American Rule #1: The road is no place for a person who's paying attention.

Let along one who's on a bike. With a little baby in a trailer. But we did it anyway and enjoyed an evening of wine, women and song (more like beer, family, and jazz, but whatever) by bicycling down to the Chandler Jazz Festival way back when Chloe was just a little 8 month thing.

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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.

Maybe it was foolishness, but it was like we wanted to set things straight with Chloe even before she was born.  Just 6 months into the whole bun-baking thing they call pregnancy, Brooke and I drove down the Baja peninsula with my parents.  We camped on lonesome beaches, ate like we didn't deserve it, toured 17th Century missions built from stone, got up close and personal with giant gray whales in Laguna Ojo de Liebre --- your standard Baja adventure stuff. Mexico being what it is brought us a number of other adventures we couldn't have fabricated. Like the exploding transmission in the Range Rover . . .