Days 225 & 226: Potrero, CA

It was 32 degrees at dawn when we left Boulder Oaks (a little too cold for us, since we didn't have shore power to keep the cabin warm during the night).  The route back to Ocotilla was up and down, and it was interesting to see the thermometer climb and drop as we headed east.  It quickly climbed to 59, dropped back to 41 and would oscillate like that with every ascent and descent.  It was 79 when we reached the edge of the desert at Ocotillo.

Stopped for a selfie with a giant rattlesnake in Jacumba Hot Springs, CA.

I had hoped that the katabatic winds would be favorable (coming down the mountain), since the mountainside faced the rising sun (an early start might have meant a tail wind going uphill, as the heat coming off the warming mountain faces could draw colder air up from the desert basin).  But the desert basin was too hot in contrast to the temperatures in the mountains, so there was a strong downhill wind to contend with.  The winds through that area can be severe, so we still lucked out, as I probably didn't see any winds higher than around 15 mph or so.

The whirring windmills are pointing the wrong way (into the wind).

The climb into the In-Ko-Pah Mountains.

It turned out there was a 13 mile climb from Ocotillo to where we turned off of I-8 and got on California Hwy 80, with a bit more climbing to do after that.  Given the headwind, I simply found a nice easy pace and crawled up the hill.  I rode the first 26 miles of the day, to the point where Hwy 80 intersected Hwy 94.

Signs that we were near Mexico...

Once Alea took over and headed west on Hwy 94, we had officially left Adventure Cycling's Southern Tier Route and were blazing our own trail.  She lucked out, as much of her 24 miles were downhill and very scenic, though she did get some good size rollers in the last six miles or so before we met up in Potrero.

Off and on during the day we were in sight of mile after mile of tall steel fencing along the border with Mexico.  Since The Donald wants a proper wall between our two countries, I suspect he will have the Mexicans tear it down and do it right.  I mean, he promised us a wall, so we don't deserve anything less.

We are camped at Potrero Regional Park ($27, power and water, and 50-cent, 4-minute showers), and are fortunate to have plenty of shade under some old oaks.  There is a Baja Amigos tour group rendezvousing here (apparently they are all from British Columbia, or at least those who are already here are from there), and it sounds as though they have the same plans as we have - get tourist cards on Monday and head into Mexico on Tuesday.

The temperatures have cooled off, since we are in some low mountains.  I'd guess the high was in the low to mid 70s on Sunday, and it was likely in the 40s this morning (Monday).

For all of the worrying and hand-wringing that we've gone through over the prospect of traveling in Mexico, Alea had an almost zen-like calm about her when we crossed the border today.  Once we had done that, it took quite some time to find a place to park (thanks mainly to a traffic jam created by a Porsche Club outing that crossed the border just in front of us).  We needed to walk back to the border and apply for a tourist card for the duration of our stay.  That went reasonably smoothly, and set us back a total of $43.  Next, we stopped at a cambio to exchange some dollars for pesos, and then returned to the van.  We were gone a total of a half hour, but the van was right where we had left it, with Lana standing guard in the front seat.

Crossing the border behind the Porsche Club. 

Gridlock, caused the several dozen Porsches.

Finding the way back across the border took more effort than finding a place to park, but we eventually managed to get lined up for the wait.  It took us nearly two hours to cross back into the US.

The long wait to get back into the U.S.

On the way back to the campground we picked up a couple of packages that we had delivered to the local post office care of general delivery.  That was mainly some extra bike supplies to reduce the likelihood of needing a repair while in Mexico that we can't handle on our own.

Unless we can change our Republic Wireless phone plan to wi-fi only calling, we'll likely deactivate our phones so that we aren't paying for phone service that we won't use.  If we can get a wi-fi calling plan, we'll only have access to our phones (both calling and data) when we can find free wi-fi on the road, otherwise we will be incommunicado.  That assures us that we can't get any international roaming charges, and it will probably save us enough money to cover the cost of some cheap Mex phones so that Alea and I can at least stay in touch with one another while we are in Mexico.  

Our blog posts while in Mexico are likely to be unpredictable, as we'll only be able to update the blog when we have free wi-fi (we plan to shut off our AT&T mi-fi while we are in Mexico to avoid any chance of incurring international roaming charges on it).  So, unless we somehow miraculously find fabulous free wi-fi access throughout Mexico, we probably won't be very good at answering voice mails or e-mails, and we won't have much opportunity for keeping up to date with social media.  We will make an effort to keep the blog up to date, though if we have limited bandwidth we may not post many pictures.  We really don't know what to expect, but we don't want anyone to be worried if we "go dark" for long periods of time.