Baja Family Road Trip Part 1

How We Decided to Pack Up the SUV and Drive 2,000 Miles with the Kids

A few weeks ago, as the Kip’s busy work season began to slow and his co-workers started talking about taking family vacations to all-inclusive beach resorts, he began suggesting we do the same with our family. Although we have taken the kids on a few extended family trips and at least one work related trip this past year, we have not gone on a vacation-only trip with just the four of us since we went to Hawaii in 2008. The kids are 13 and 16 now, and we are acutely aware that our foursome family days are limited. This time next year our oldest will be a high school graduate and our baby will be getting ready to start his freshman year in high school.

Hawaii in September 2008

They are almost all the same height now. Father's Day, June 21, 2015 in San Ignacio, Baja California Sur, Mexico

But when we broached the topic of vacation with the kids we got a lot of push back. 

Why are we always planning trips? Why can’t we just stay at home? I’m going to miss my friend’s birthday party. 

The very thought of staying at a beach resort seemed repulsive to them, totally boring to sit on the beach and read books. Our 13-year-old was particularly concerned about being away from friends for a week or two. Kip, on the other hand, dealing with his first year at the most demanding job he has ever held, as well as an hour-long, one-way daily commute to work and an extended season of aggressive international work travel; seemed to be needing a stress-free vacation as an almost medical necessity. He was longing for sun, sand and days of no work calls, no early morning crisis e-mails, no after dinner dishes, no driving to work.

So we had a few family conversations.

I found myself, self-appointed family referee, saying things like “Ok, now don’t tell me what you don’t like. Tell me what you do like.” And I found that while Kip remembered our past anniversary trips to all-inclusive resorts for their blissful moments of sipping margaritas under beachside palapas with nothing to worry about, I also remembered sunburns and the environment created by people gorging on all-inclusive food and alcohol. My favorite vacation moments over the past few years have mostly been from the international work trips that I tagged along on: discovering medieval castles in Germany, riding bikes up mountain roads in Norway, early morning running through the streets of Istanbul, sailing a Hobie Cat with Kip in Cancun, exploring Greek islands on a Vespa. But all of these moments were just Kip and me. This time we wanted to bring the kids.

I asked the kids what they have enjoyed the most on family trips and some of their answers surprised me. My daughter, almost apologetically, said she really enjoyed walking around gift shops and buying little souvenirs with our family in Alaska. My son really enjoyed riding bikes through Central Park on a recent trip to New York City. And of course, although he wanted to do some shopping, he was not interested in “walking aimlessly around.” And I remembered that the biking through Central Park was more stressful than fun for my daughter who may have been overwhelmed by the adventure of navigating crowded streets and figuring out how to maneuver a different bike than the beach cruiser she uses at home.

We were at a vacation planning impasse.

Then Kip suggested we could drive to Cabo San Lucas, all the way, and suddenly that seemed like the perfect adventure. For years Kip has been dreaming about taking a motorcycle there, but I have always been concerned about road conditions, banditos, drug cartels, the fact that we don’t really speak Spanish. But for some reason when we started talking about the adventure of taking the kids on a road trip through the Baja peninsula with the goal of making it to a restful margarita-on-the-beach resort destination, it seemed to be a win-win for both me and Kip.

Family adventure with a bonus margarita in Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico

It took the kids a few more days to get on board with the plan. But by the time we bought new vacation bathing suits and downloaded fresh audiobooks and music playlists of their choosing, we were all ready for the family road trip.

Day 1

 

Characteristically, we started our Baja trip about 8 hours late, but we had been ambitious to think we could head out of town with the first light of day anyhow.

Kip had just returned from a business trip the day before and I was frantically trying to make sure that we had everything essential packed and that the house was clean for friends and guests who would be staying here while we were gone. Kip, of course, spent more time rigging up a new GPS, DVD, Bluetooth, digital device thing and changing the car battery, than picking out his clothes. But despite the delay the GPS was incredibly useful, and as always, Kip packed all the right clothes anyway.

So with kids ready, house ready, SUV ready, we headed out by late afternoon and immediately hit Los Angeles rush hour traffic. 

We tapped into both of the kids’ music playlists, only stopped for ice cream once, and hit the Mexican border at Tijuana just after dark, the one thing I had anxiously not wanted to do.

We crossed the border and began looking for the tourists office to get our required tourist cards, and not only could not find it, but found ourselves circling the poorly marked border crossing buildings and getting stuck into a lane going out of Mexico and back into California. 

It was a stressful, but once back in the US, we stopped, took a deep breath and used our mobile phones to look up maps, motel listings in Ensenada and allusive information on how to get to the supposedly 24-hour tourist office. We also changed money, took one lasts trip to an American potty, and went for a second try in finding the tourism office.

This time when we crossed the border we pulled into a lane for declaration, asked someone for help and after several misguidances, found the office, spent $100 and got our “required” tourists visas that we actually never used during our whole 2,000 mile, 12-day trip. No one asked to see them at the multiple military and police check points, and we did not need them to re-enter the United States.

With all our proper paperwork we headed out into Tijuana, a border town whose notorious reputation intimidated me, around 10 p.m. and realized we were already breaking our resolution to avoid after-dark driving in Mexico. 

But not wanting to go back into San Diego, we loaded up the GPS and headed south to Ensenada and I gradually realized we were going to be just fine. The toll road from Tijuana to Ensenada is well-lit, well-traveled and probably just as safe as driving through Los Angeles in the middle of the night. We arrived in a charming, touristy area of Ensenada around 11 p.m. and found a decent hotel that was perfect for a one-night, family stay. I set my alarm for dawn and the next morning we got up and began our real Baja adventure.

Gift of the Blog

Blogging has been sporadic over the past four years, obviously, intermittent with writing about trips and apologizes for not writing. The apologies are all to myself because this blog has always been a gift to me primarily. I write because it helps me process, helps me remember, helps me live in an awareness of the amazing life we have.


Recently Kip traveled to Tokyo. He got to work on Monday morning and his company decided it was imperative for him to go to Japan … immediately. He hopped a plane and was there the next morning.

He has traveled a lot the past year and a half. He has been to Singapore, Australia, Turkey, Greece, Paris, Switzerland, New York City and China. He also spent a week in Detroit, but I didn’t envy that trip. It was January and below zero the whole time. Usually I have had a few weeks to prepare for him to be out of town, but this time the travel hit me a little off guard. It made me feel left behind in a way I had not in a long time.

About a year and a half ago when Kip first started traveling regularly it was difficult for me and the kids. I missed him. Our preteen son talked daily about waiting for Dad to come home. We had to save all fun activities for when Dad could be with us. After the kids went to bed I would wake up in the middle of the night listening to sounds in the house, worrying about what needed to be fixed, wondering if Kip was ok. But over time I learned to roll over, go to sleep and deal with the problems one at a time.

But this time when Kip left for Tokyo I found myself worrying again until I pulled up my old blog post about our trip to Tokyo and read the whole thing. It was medicine to a weary soul. It brought it all back and I could remember where I had been and where he was at that moment. I texted him the link and went back to sleep.

And then later I thought about what a powerful gift this blog has been to me and to him. I only blogged regularly for a short time, but those entries are like gold now.

I still write quite a bit. I have dabbled with a couple of specialty blogs, worked on a screenplay about one of my favorite historical events and tried a few attempts at Namo Wrimo (National Novel Writing Month). But most of my writing these days is journal writing.

Every morning when I get up, if I have time, I like to drink a cup of coffee on the balcony overlooking the canyon and the ocean beyond, and spend some time reading the Bible and praying. Prayers take on the form of written words and often I fill pages.

Over the past few years I have filled several journals, mostly with stream of conscious style prayers. It's here that I have worked out the pain and triumph of living free and emotionally healthy. It's here where I have written the heart-blogs entries, the ones that will never make it to the outside world. It’s here amid the misspelled words and messy handwriting that I have gotten painfully honest and experienced healing. And occasionally, very rarely actually, I will read something I have written in my journal to Kip while he is still waking up, fuzzy haired, coffee in hand.

This past weekend I read him something and he made me promise to share it on Facebook or a blog or something. I said I would and now I can't find it. I'm sure I will find it later, but in the meantime I decided I need to write and I need to blog on this blog. It's a gift I'll be glad I gave someday.

 *****

I found that little bit of my journal. It's posted here on my little side project, my inspirational, journal-style blog Like Shining Stars.

Incredible Istanbul

I was standing in the entrance to the Hagia Sophia, a building that was once a church, then a mosque and now a slightly neglected museum, talking to an Australian tourist about traveling and writing, when I realized how much I missed blogging. 

I was explaining why I had stopped blogging, and I said something about writing being like picking up a pen and opening a vein, bleeding into the world; when he said, “I like that.” And it was at that moment that I remembered – I like that too. 

I like writing life onto white pages and refreshing a dying memories with words more specific than pictures. I didn’t just take tourist pictures. I was there. I was alive in the moment. I walked the cobblestone streets. I saw the mosque spires. I heard the haunting calls to prayer and felt the little hands of gypsy children begging coins, asking for that last piece of leftover baklava so vulnerably displayed in a clear plastic take-out tray.  I want to remember, and for me, the only way to capture those thoughts is to go back there and write it down.

Istanbul is ....

Istanbul is a colorful place of cultural contradictions. It is Europe and Asia, a modern city teaming with people at every corner, an ancient city with the ruins of multiple great civilizations. It is a place where history happened centuries ago and where it is still happening. One weekend while Kip was working there he had to walk past overzealous police with machine guns and water cannons squelching protestors’ demands before they erupted again in Taksim Square.
 

Kip in Taksim Square

It is also the land of a thousand stray cats and the world's best baklava.

The stray cats are so plentiful even the ducks along the riverbank have figured out  how to coexist.

First Impressions of an Islamic Country

I felt that Istanbul was a very different place than any I had ever been to when I got off the plane. It was humid. The sun was glistening on rain-washed hillside neighborhoods protruded with mosque spires. A man was busy rolling out a carpet, facing Mecca, kneeling and pressing his forehead to the ground. Praying silently. If anyone did that in the Los Angeles airport someone would call a SWAT team.  

And while Turkish people hold their religious identity in varying degrees, it is still statistically the most homogenous religious place I have ever visited. Like most Muslim countries, Turkey is more Islamic than Alabama is Evangelical Christian, more Islamic than Utah is Mormon.  To be immersed in such a different religious culture was interesting to me, in part because it felt so different, and in part because there are similarities. 

It was initially unnerving to see so many women in complete burkas, walking with their husbands, pushing baby strollers, seeing the world from behind eye slits. But like the city of Istanbul itself, there were also women who seemed to be straddling the Middle East and the West. I saw more than one teenage girl, veiled beneath the modesty of her hijab, peering into a handheld mirror, carefully layering on mascara and lip gloss.

But it was the call to prayer that caught me off guard. Unlike the cheery church bells that rang across empty Sunday streets in Frankfurt, Germany; the daily calls sounded heavy to me, sorrowful and longing, hauntingly beautiful, like an Adele song, sad.  It always made me want to pray. So much of the Psalms feel that way to me anyway, “How long, O God?”

Our Istanbul Adventure 

Trolley running through Taksim square and the pedestrian zone shopping district

Shoppers walking past countless bakeries with amazing baklava

Baklava and Turkish delight in a bakery window. Both ancient and modern buildings in the window reflection.

Notice the street kids catching a free ride on the trolley. Gypsy children were everywhere begging for money.

 When I arrived in Istanbul Kip was finishing up a week-long conference. He was busy working and I was jet-lagged, so I made my way out of the hotel cautiously, initially walking through the same western style shopping area we had wandered the first night I arrived.  But I eventually figured out how to get a metro pass and made my way to the Hagia Sophia and the Grand Bazaar and wandered the neighborhoods in between. I did a lot of walking around and looking.

The Hagia Sophia was amazing, if for no other reason, it is incredibly old, about 1,500 years. The kids and I learned about the church years ago, listening to Story of the World a great children’s history series by Susan Wise Bauer.  It was kind of the ultimate homeschooling parent treat to actually walk through the place we had read and studied about. I wished that the kids had been with me. Maybe next time.

Ancient Byzantine mosaics and huge Islamic calligraphic medallions

You can see the Apse Mosaic, a 9th century depiction of the Virgin Mary holding an infant Jesus.

The museum seems to be constantly undergoing renovation.

Mosaics of Jesus from the Byzantium Empire look down on the Ottoman Turkish mirhab pointing the direction to Mecca. The grand marble minbar on the right is a giant pulpit also built by the Ottoman Turks.

The Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque sit opposite each other.

The Grand Bazaar, as the name implies, was kind of a crazy place. I wandered into the 600-year old labyrinth of shopping booths alone on my first trip into the city. I found it a little too overwhelming to barter alone, so I brought Kip back the following day and we bought a few souvenirs -- the obligatory coffee cup and T-shirts for the kids. I also indulged the pushy silver salesmen and negotiated a few earrings for myself and a little necklace for our daughter. Like nearly every restaurant, shop and tour guide in Istanbul, the salesmen in the Grand Bazaar were relentless.

“Hey, hey lady, buy this scarf. Look at this scarf. Hey lady, don't break my heart. Just look.”

They would say nearly anything to make you turn around and look. The first day I stopped once; just long enough for a young Turkish man to seize the opportunity and wrap a beautiful silk scarf around my neck.  

“Look, you see it. You like?”

He motioned for me to take a step into his booth-shop, which looked like an apartment size walk-in closet. Feeling tired of all the nagging, I stepped forward and SLAM. He shut a door behind me revealing a full length mirror.

“See for no charge extra I match your eyes. Very beautiful. I give you for 200 Lira.”

There were other things I wanted to spend $100 on, so I managed to smile and tell him I should take his card and come back with my husband later. He opened the closet door, I escaped. I didn’t come back.

One of the many entrances to the Grand Bazaar, an indoor labyrinth of a marketplace dating back to the 15th century. 

Need a tea set, pipe, magic lantern?

Silk scarves for sale in booths lining the archways

Fountains for ceremonial washings

More lamps and scarves... want to make a deal?

When Kip went out alone he had several experiences with hustlers, shoe shiners trying all kinds of scams to get his attention, guys trying to get him to go out for a drink with him, all scams he had been warned about. When we were together it was mostly just the restaurant hawkers and tourist oriented shops that berated us, but it was enough that we were actually relieved to leave Istanbul and head to the more laid-back Greek Islands.

Taking a break from souvenier shopping at the Grand Bazaar for Turkish coffee and baklava

Kip enjoying a fish sandwich aboard the Bosphorus River cruise.

One evening, after going on a river cruise of the Bosporus and buying too many overpriced souvenirs at the Grand Bazaar, we found the best marketplace, the almost equally ancient Spice Bazaar. Kip tracked down the country’s best Turkish coffee bean roaster and discovered a treasure trove of spice stores. We walked away at the market’s closing with coffee, bags of olives, dates, Turkish delight and an assortment of spices. I think it was the highlight of Kip’s time in Turkey.

Kip is so happy to be at the Spice Bazaar that he makes the shop owners happy too.

Kip's own private Heaven of spices

And more spices

Dates and other dried fruit by the kilo

Spices, pickles and more spices.

That night, with bags of souvenirs and spices and much less Lira than we had started with, we settled for $5 fish and bread sandwiches with Turkish beer at a restaurant literally under the bridge. The mosques were bathed in lights, reflecting on the river. It was the kind of moment that I wanted to remember forever, just because.

Had we not been heading to Greece for our anniversary celebration trip, I would have enjoyed spending several more day in Istanbul.

 More Pictures of our Istanbul Adventures

One night we stopped at this open-air bar where Turkish bands played a mix of Turkish and American top 40 songs. It was funny to hear these guys singing songs in English that we grew up with.

Entrance to the Blue Mosque. They were having services when we visited, so never saw the inside.

Turkish food was amazing. Kip's dinner of many little fish.

Kip loves funiculars. This one was unfortunately underground.

I think the guy with the green suitcase was happy with his pictures too.

Not Lost in Germany

The moon is a sliver of silver and a new day is dawning.

I've thought about picking up where this blog left so many times. But like a suitcase dropped in the middle of the beach, it felt too heavy to pick up, to lug across the sands of time. The last year and a half have been difficult in ways that only a happy life can understand, but in a long term way, good, very good.

I've thought about blogging under the post title "Lost in Germany," because this nearly orphaned blog felt that way. But I know that even though I left the blog hanging in Germany, it was not that trip that made me feel lost. I am really not sure what triggered the displaced feeling.

It may have been a delayed reaction to feeling my world shift under my feet, to losing so many old friends in LA, to missing my old groups of church friends who helped encourage me through difficult times in the past. But it may also have been life speeding up, homeschooling a busy high schooler, immersing myself into new opportunities, experiences, time commitments. Driving kids everywhere. Driving myself half crazy. But I know that it was not just that either. In the past it was the new experiences that drove me to write.

The truth is that I have been writing over the past year. I filled two journals, just from sunrise conversations with God. Most of it would have been too raw and real to process here. But it felt safe, writing with the Friend who always listens and is not intimidated by the fluctuating drama of "life is Beautiful!" and "Oh God, help!"

Unlike friends who have been through real sorrows and loss, my crises were personal, seemingly trivial, wounds of long term disappointments and unrealized ideals. At some point I had to realize that I was angry and afraid, afraid of the future, afraid of having no future. Afraid that if I made myself vulnerable I would be misunderstood, or more frighteningly, perfectly understood for the shallow, selfish demi god that I aspire to be.

There is a huge breakthrough in being honest. Release. But it doesn't come easy. It comes with tears and I really hate to cry. But this past year I learned to cry and let things go, really let go of control and give to God. And then I learned to thank God.Gratitude has to be one of the most powerful human experiences. There is no way to overstate the power of giving thanks all the time, in every circumstance, for all things.

Once that process began I could get honest with myself and a few very close friends about real anxieties that were growing large. It was like painfully peeling away old Band-Aids to put a name to the dysfunction, but once I called it anxiety and began asking God for healing, deliverance and healing, I began to heal, really heal.

On the few occasions that I have looked back over this blog, I have been really blessed to see the good days God has given me. My kids are growing up, and I miss the simple days with them. But I could not be happier with the beautiful people that they are becoming. I'm thankful for the way I blogged through those "simpler" years and I think its time to start recording the journey again. There are new days ahead, everyday. Thank you, God.

Driving Fast to the Middle Ages

Early Sunday morning we woke up to rain and did what you should do on a free Sunday when woken up by rain. We went back to sleep until a symphony of church bells rang through Frankfurt and made waking up glorious.

After realizing that Delta had still not delivered my lost luggage, we set out to find some more appropriate shoes for me. (We had left southern California in a heat wave and I had been wearing sandals on the plane.) We wandered around a cold and somewhat dreary Frankfurt for a little while until we realized that nearly all stores are closed for Sunday mornings, so I settled into wearing Kip’s shoes for a second day and we made plans to explore the area around Frankfurt.

Kip wanted to rent a car and try out the autobahn. I wanted to see the Gutenberg museum and reveal in a little history and then drive up the Rhine Valley, so we rented a car at the train station near our hotel and headed off into the realm of international driving.

I was not interested in challenging the autobahn. I had accidentally let my California driver’s license expire, so I had the perfect excuse. But driving on the autobahn was definitely on Kip’s bucket list and he was eager to experience driving without a speed limit.

Without a speed limit sports cars fly as fast as possible in the left lane while other drivers scramble to move over to the right lane. Traffic can stop on a dime.

Kip, of course, did a great job while I sat in the passenger seat pleading, “careful, careful, careful, please careful.” He was able to top 100 mph in our little economy sized, fuel-efficient car.

It could have been very difficult to navigate driving in another country with different rules and signs exclusively in German, but we rented a GPS with our car and it was amazing. I am so used to using Google Maps that I rarely use a  GPS anymore, but in this environment it was extremely helpful.

The Gutenberg museum was great. I have been to other museum exhibits on printing, but it was inspiring to actually see a Guttenberg Bible and realizing how it changed the world in so many ways.

Sunday afternoon plaza filled with families walking around shopping. It seems to have been Fashion Sunday in Mainz. There were several little runway shows.

These girls are modeling dresses made entirely from newspaper.

Trying to look cool in Kip's shoes.

After the museum we wandered around Mainz, enjoyed walking with the crowds of Germans out enjoying Sunday afternoon shopping and snacking. We tried the delicious döner, a popular Turkish/German sandwich that resembles a gyro in German bread instead of traditional flatbread. I understand that Turkish workers arrived in Germany after World War II and stayed, although never quite assimilating into traditional German culture. In a way the popularity of the döner is a validation of their growing subculture in a changing Germany. We Americans take multiculturalism for granted.

Who needs a museum; every food stand is a legacy to history and culture?

And going back further into history, food and how it shapes a culture, we headed out of town and into the Rhine Valley. We had spent a little too much time in Mainz, so we only had a few hours of light to see the epic Rhine Valley with it’s medieval villages and castles lining the Rhine River. In this notorious corner of Germany vineyards cascade down steep river banks, providing what seems to be the only other industry other than tourism.

When we realized we would be soon losing light we pulled over at Bacharach, a town with 700-year-old half timbered houses and cobblestone streets. Once we walked through the old city gates it was like waking up in Disneyland’s Fantasy World. I am quite sure Walt Disney studied this area in designing his early films and theme park. He recreated it well.

This little town is famous for its wine festival celebrating their traditional Riesling variety. The name of the town literally means "Alter of Bacchus."

We climbed the 14th century city tower that once stood as one of several ramparts around the city and followed a path where the wall once was. It was the first time of many times this week that I was glad for our Malibu hill training. It’s nice to be able to run up mountains for fun.

You can climb through the tower and walk along the path that was once the old city walls.

As it got dark we found Altes Haus, literally translated Old House, and tried some of the local Riesling wine, reibekuchen (potato pancakes) and something that was like country fried pork. It was pretty good, but characteristically heavy. I liked German food, but we often had to split meals and eat only twice a day because the cuisine was so rich. And then after walking more we found the local Italian gelato place and had their tourist specialty – Riesling ice cream.

The name Altes Haus is no joke. It was built in 1368! The food was pretty good too.

Are we in Disneyland?

It was a wonderful day, and really just a small sample of a small, but famous area of Germany. I would have enjoyed spending a week riding bikes up the Rhine River and taking in the beauty. Maybe next time.