Yosemite National Park – Day 1

We left San Diego on Saturday, July 22 and made the 7.5 hour drive northeast to an AirBnB in Raymond, CA. We met up with our friends, Greg and Heath, there.

On Sunday, we were up at dawn and out the door by 0700. We skipped breakfast, deciding to eat in the park. It took about an hour to get from the AirBnB to the south entrance (on route 41) of Yosemite National Park. We had to waiting in line a little over a half hour, and we were inside the park by 0830. 

Our first stop was Mariposa Grove, where there was a cluster of redwood trees (AKA Sequoia trees). The parking lot for Mariposa Grove was just beyond the park entrance. From the parking lot, a shuttle bus took visitors up to the hiking trails around the redwood trees. The trail we chose had a noticeable incline, but the trail was graded well, so it wasn’t particularly steep.

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Baja California Summary/Highlights/Lowlights

On July 6, 2022, Kosmos set off on a Sea of Cortez adventure! We stopped in Ensenada to check into Mexico. From there, we did an 828 nautical mile (nm), 5-day non-stop passage to the La Paz area. We spent almost 8-months in the Sea of Cortez. We broke up the trip back to Ensenada into three legs, each 2 days.

Fiesta de Dia de Los Muertos on October 28, 2022

People usually ask us the same questions in the same order, so we’ll answer them in order:

Q: What was the scariest thing that happened? A: We were in a hurricane (though it was downgraded to a tropical storm as it was literally over us).

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Keith’s Thoughts on Baja/Réflexions de Keith sur Baja

Overall, I like Baja California, Mexico It has it’s good parts and it’s bad parts. It has beautiful scenery (mostly rock formations… most plants we found were cactus or dead). 

Isla Coronados, August 4, 2022

Dans l’ensemble, j’ai aimé Baja California. Mexico a des bons cotés et des moins bons cotés. Il y a de très beaux paysages (plutôt des formations rocheuses…. La plupart des plantes qu’on a trouvé étaient des cactus ou étaient mortes). 

San Francisquito, August 26, 2022

As for civilization, La Paz is nice with good food and a beautiful malecon. Loreto is a good town, not too big and too small. Bahia  de Los Angeles is super small, but it is a good town nonetheless. But my favorite town is Santa Rosalia. It has good food, especially pastries, and is cute and small.  

Santa Rosalia’s waterfront on south end of town, October 10, 2022
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The Last Leg Home — Our 8-Month Baja Adventure is Officially Over

(*Sorry for the delay in posting. Life got busy once we got back to San Diego)

On Sunday, March 5, we awoke at 0300 to do the last minute things to get Kosmos ready to go to sea. We untied at 0400. It was about 60-nautical miles from Marina Coral to the mouth of the San Diego Bay. Here was the sunrise

The day was mostly overcast and grey. Had we not done the previous difficult passages to Bahia Tortuga and Ensenada, we would have said that the conditions were rough, but compared to those two, sea conditions weren’t all that bad. We were hobby horsing a lot, but the swells weren’t giant nor the intervals rapid enough to make it a miserable ride. We were all functioning normally (for the most part). Here is a “sail” boat passing us… in 5 knots of head winds.

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