Friday, Oct 17th, 2008 - This was the first day of the first Baja ride for Clark brothers Harry, Jim, and Charlie. Although Harry has ridden in Baja many times, Charlie has only ridden there once and this was the first time for Jim. Consequently, Harry was the designated tour leader for this trip.
We attached a trailer to Charlie's Honda Ridgeline and loaded up the bikes at Harry's house in Temecula, CA. Charlie brought Harry's 1996 Honda XR600R, Jimmy brought Harry's 1999 Yamaha WR 400, and Harry brought his 2006? KTM 525 EXC. We hit the highway at 7:09 am.
We bought Mexican insurance just before the Tecate border crossing (~$54 for $25K coverage). We then crossed the border into Tecate Mexico with no traffic or wait. We took the freeway (not quota) towards Mexicali until we saw the billboard for Hacienda Santa Veronica (HSV) on the right. We then headed down the dirt road, turned right at the Y by the big trees and arrived at HSV a little after 10:00. We unloaded the bikes, changed into our riding gear, and began our ride at 11:00 am. It was a clear and hot day (~90F) with a light breeze.
We headed south on the main dirt road for 32 miles before turning left by the big Oak trees on the dirt road towards Parque Nacional Constitucion and Laguna Hanson. This first warm-up leg was rather fast on a mostly wide and well scraped dirt road. There are enough turns, dips, and sandy sections to make it interesting.
The landscape changed to include more turns, hills, and trees on the road towards Parque Nacional Constitucion and Laguna Hanson. We arrived at Rancho Rodeo Del Rey at 12:25 for a lunch stop (56 miles from HSV). This was a nice, clean, relatively new place with camping and a restaurant. They also sold gas and are building a new hotel. We had a good typical lunch of mini burritos, salsa, and beans with plenty of water.
Our plan was to take a known dirt road down to the town of Hereos De La Independencia. Unfortunately, a sign stated that the road was closed and suggested an alternate route where "turn on the section heading down to Ojos Negros"... or something like that. We had a long ride ahead of us and Harry didn't want to ride all the way towards Ojos Negros due to the extra miles and time. Consequently, we turned left at what looked like an unused truck road/wash. We took this for many miles and came across a couple of ranches. During one of the more open sections Charlie and Jim both hit a hidden object (probably a half buried rock) head on at about 35-40 MPH. The impact was like hitting a curb and shocked them both. Fortunately neither of them lost their teeth and they didn't bend their rims or get flat tires. At times it seemed like we were heading in the wrong direction. We finally hit a section that looked familiar to Harry (a road
We headed southeast on Hwy 3 passing the turnoff to Mike's Sky Ranch at 140 miles at about 4:15. It was getting late in the day and Charlie was tired so Harry and jim agreed to take the highway the rest of the way to San Felipe and save the more challenging Laguna Diablo and miles of thick sand wash for another day. We passed the Laguna Diablo turnoff at 160 miles, continued on the the military checkpoint at the Highway 5 intersection. We headed south on Hwy 5 in search of gas. We filled our tanks at the first Pemex station before San Filipe (total of 200 miles from HSV). We then continued on to San Felipe and checked into the Hotel Caribe one block north of the water (208 miles from HSV). This was the same nice, clean, relatively new hotel that Harry and Charlie stayed at in Feb with the LeMay group. We met a couple of nice guys from Colorado that were riding their KTMs down the entire length of Baja. We ate dinner along the boardwalk at ???, then watched the moon rise over the water. It was a long first day for us, we were tired, and slept well.
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