Our RV story-
We have been full time RVing now since November 1st 2018. We have our big Horn 5th wheel named Valhalla that is 38 feet long, has three slides, a fire place, walk-in closet, all oak doors, cupboards and cabinets and is huge and heavy.
Adam setting up camp on BLM land in Arizona with our big 5th wheel Valhalla
At the end of August 2019 we bought a smaller 5th wheel named Moose. The idea with this RV is we’d be using it for work, when we travel to all our markets, festivals and events instead of staying in hotels constantly. Moose is much smaller 28 feet, one slide out and about 5 thousand pounds lighter than our other trailer!!!
Here is Moose in our awesome spot in Los Barriles Baja Mexico
The winter of 2019 we spent some time in Baja Mexico, around San Felipe to Guerrero Negro. We learned how messy and narrow the roads were, how big the pot holes were and from huge parts of the Mex-1 highway were missing then due to a huge storm. We quickly learned that our big trailer Valhalla was way to large for the Baja roads and too heavy for the beach areas we wanted to stay at.
This winter we brought down our new little RV Moose! With this trailer being so much shorter and lighter the drive was much easier then the year before, much cheaper on diesel and to be honest we actually forgot that Moose was even behind us sometimes. Lesson learned smaller lighter RVs are much easier on the Baja roads!
We came down to South Baja in December of 2019 and since we have our light little trailer and big 350 truck we felt like we could go anywhere and camp in any crazy desert, beach, marsh, sand bar, forest, river wash, mountains...or wherever we wished and we did.
Beach camping in Baja Mexico
One amazing advantage we have with the weather and traveling in an RV is if we ever don’t love the weather or the forecast, we pack up and drive away! On our trip from Toronto to Baja, we actually stopped in New Mexico in a funky little town called Truth or Consequences. We we going to stay a night or two and have a break from long days of driving. Instead we stayed for a couple of weeks, met some great people, got our back disk breaks fixed up, painted the roof of Moose with rubberized paint, started renovations inside the Moose the trailer, found a funky brewery, explored they city and suddenly one day it started snowing, so we packed up and drove to sunny Arizona to cross into Baja Mexico the next day. It’s just that easy!
Snow-
The worst weather that we did see with our RV Moose was back in Canada near the end of November. We were staying just outside Toronto and were vendors at the Royal Winter Fair and the weather decided to drop. It was snowing, icy and stayed around -16. The day we left we had so much ice and snow to remove from the roof, our solar, the slide, the hitch before we could even get moving. Hopefully that’s the last time Moose has to see winter weather.
Moose in the snow in Toronto as we quickly pack up and get ready to drive to Baja
Adam trying to get all the snow and ice off the tea do we can leave
Wind-
In January 2018 in Arizona camping out on BLM land just near the border. We were experiencing some really windy weather and some big gusts for a few days. While packing up inside the trailer to move in the morning to cross to Mexico, out the window we both saw a dirt devil heading right at us. It was one of those weird moments when Adam and I both looked at each other, knowing that we are in the middle of the desert with no one near by and a little mini tornado is going to hit us and we are in a little trailer and there is nothing we can do!!! Seconds later it did hit us, it shook the whole trailer like crazy and felt like a huge noisy earthquake! I’m really happy the windows were closed.
Adam cleaning off the solar panels after the dirt devil and a lot of eind
Rain-
December 2019 while camping at the beach in Santispack we actually got some rain. The hill that is the only driveway to get on and off the beach was clay and quickly got messy and slippery. A few of the trucks headed into town slid around. We stayed put, as the month before a truck pulling a trailer was coming down the driveway, started sliding and jackknifed before they even got to the beach. With that same rain storm a few other trailers decided to leave but on their way out found they were too heavy and couldn’t make it all the way up the slick mud to the road, it was about a week before things dried up enough for trailers to move.
Heat-
We had originally planned to stay on Santispack beach for a few weeks or so, but due to the covid closures we ended stuck at that beach from the end of January to the middle of June when roads were opened up for a short time and we were able to move further south to a much cooler beach. While on the beach here we parked about 5 feet from the water and had a stunning view. We were living off solar for electricity, had a 60 gallon bladder to being in water and had a dump station near by and a dolly dump or blue boy to take our grey and black water. For our lockdown we were ‘stuck’ in paradise...gorgeous blue water, little islands to explore, paddle boarding, snorkeling, bonfires...but just like all my favourite ‘stranded on and island’ movie eventually goes a little wrong. When may and June came so did the heat, the hot, hot, hot Santa Anna winds and with our trailer being in the beach with no shade, we were baking in the sun!
By this time we were the only RV left on the beach all the other trailers had returned back home to Canada or the USA and all the boats anchored in the Bay had also found Marinas to take them in for hurricane season and they’d also left. No one was enjoying this amount of heat!
Here’s our view from our front door and our cactus we decorated, eventually it had Christmas lights and looked great at night!
Most days were in the 40s, about 110 Fahrenheit and evenings were still in the high 30s 85-90 Fahrenheit. Looking back now, it doesn’t sound that bad, but being 6 months pregnant, not ever sleeping well through the night-just laying sweating, we did think about camping outside under the stars- but with so many scorpions and mosquitoes, that got shut down right away, having not much outside shade, no cool wind, the ocean water heating up and feeling like bath water, always feeling sweaty, salty and sunburnt really started to seem not so fun! When the Baja roads opens up again after the lockdown we were packed up and driving south that first morning. We ended up in Los Barriles, with the wind off the Sea of Cortez it’s so much cooler and life is much, much more comfortable!
Hurricanes-
We are currently in south Baja in Los Barriles and last night we had our first hurricane. Where we are we got s bit of wind and 2 days of rain. Cabo and the west side got a lot more wind!
August 2020 the first big hurricane of the season and it’s a category 4
-Cara
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