With Semana Santa fast approaching and Mary Jo on her way back to Seattle, we returned to La Saladita after re-supplying in Zihuatanejo to post up and surf for a while. We camped out in the same place we had camped with Eric’s brother, James, last year, directly behind Lourdes’ Bar in the shade of the coconut grove. Our friend Lourdes, “The Queen of Saladita,” was super nice to let us plug into her electricity and camp for almost a month. Once again, our luck was on with the surf. We were able to surf several early south swells and many glassy mornings. The local photographer, Wax, took some great pictures of us from in the water. Wax put a video on YouTube which has a short clip of Eric (spelled Erick in the video).

One morning when Eric was paddling out for a surf he ran into Melanie and Chris, our fellow Panama road warriors who we met in Costa Rica months earlier. Turns out they decided to drive back from Panama rather than take a ship to Florida. We were so happy to see them and catch up. Afternoons were spent sipping home-made Ice Caps at their camp, watching the surf, and on several evening occasions, setting up an outdoor movie theatre (our computer) and watching some movies.

This wave-rich region of the Pacific coast is home to some high quality breaks; some of them are popular, some of them seem to be total secrets. All you have to do is get in your car, load up your board and drive around to find the break which suits you the best. Honestly, it is hard to beat Saladita with its long, long perfect longboarding waves. After Saladita, we headed north along the coastal highway towards La Ticla, site of Eric’s foot injury last year. We bumped into two Jays who we had met at different times on the trip: Jay from Wyoming who we met in Baja our first year and Jay from San Francisco who gave us the Becker fun board in La Ticla last year on which Eric’s brother ended up learning. We had some fun surf in La Ticla despite the cool, tea colored water caused by algae. From La Ticla, we drove north all the way to Sayulita to catch up with Chris and Melanie again and celebrate Eric’s Birthday. We also bumped into Frank from Aspen, another surfer from Colorado we met in Sayulita last year. Although the surf was flat in Sayulita, we made a couple of runs with Frank to a break on the south side of Punta De Mita where we found waves. Sayulita is so luxurious and convenient with Wi-Fi internet and loads of local restaurants and stores. For Eric’s Birthday, we lounged around and Eric used Skype to call everyone he could reach. Sarah was able to get her hair done at the same place she went last year, Jungle Hair Design. Snip, snip and eight inches on the floor!

That pretty much brings us up to date. We are sitting here in Sayulita, updating the website, calling family and friends and preparing for our ferry ride over to Baja for one last push up the Baja coast to meet up with some friends and Sarah’s brother, Noah, once again.

Until next time…. Que lo vaya bien!
Eric, Sarah and Bruce

We said our goodbyes to Adam and hit highway 26 westbound to meet up with Dan Egan and Bruce dog for some coastal camping.  We arrived at Oswald West State Park’s campground just north of Manzanita, Oregon.  Sarah and I scoped out the camping scene since this special little campground is walk-in tent camping only.  We had our pick of sites in the place and settled on what we thought was the best site available.  As we started ferrying loads of gear using the wheelbarrows provided by the campground we bumped in to Dan and Bruce.  We all worked together to set up camp before grabbing our boards and heading down to the beach for a look at the beach and the surf.  The waves looked great at first so I decided to paddle out.  Little did I know that I was in for two surprises; one was that the water was colder than anywhere I had ever surfed before, and two the waves were much larger than they had appeared from the beach.  I don’t think I really even caught a wave and ended up heading in with my tail between my legs.  Over the next few days, the surf conditions improved and the weather warmed up making it much more fun riding waves.  Sarah paddled out several times and caught a couple fun ones.  She sure is a trooper out there. 

We met a cool couple who was down from Vancouver. One of them had spent the summer on Tofino, surfing a lot of the same breaks as we had a few weeks ago, they had just gotten back from a trip to Costa Rica (where Eric learned to surf) and they were curious about Westport, Washington (the place we surfed this winter).   We discovered after the first night in camp that our site was on the little known but much traveled Raccoon Highway -- from the creek near our site to the least fortified trash cans in the campground. The second morning we moved to the campsite our Vancouver friends had just vacated.  It was larger and off the Raccoon Trashcan Highway (which shall be called RTH from this day forth).  We did find that the site had several other resident “pets”, including a forest rat (super official technical forestry term as you can tell) that had a penchant for digging through our hanging trash bags and many, many chipmunks.  Bruce did his best to patrol the site, but the chipmunks proved too fast for him most of the time.  After a few nibbled containers and even more chipmunk poo on anything we left on the picnic table, we resigned ourselves to locking all food and dishes in our tents and the surfboard bags.  But no bears and no sharks, so we considered the small critters a source of entertainment rather than of concern. And we are all up on our rabies shots anyway, right?

After six days of camping and surfing Dan, Bruce, Sarah and I decided to move further south to Lincoln City to hit the infamous Lincoln City skateparks.  Dan and I had a blast rolling around the new and old skateparks.  While we were in Lincoln City, we camped at Devil’s Lake State Park.  The campground is basically right on Devil’s Lake so Bruce got to swim off the docks.  It was super fun to travel with Dan for these past few days. We thought Bruce just might put up a protest when we had to part ways but he seemed to get over it as soon as we made it to the next place we could let him run and play fetch.  Thanks for hooking up with us Dan, we will see you soon!

Well, we just made it back from our first road trip leg up to Bellingham and Vancouver Island.  We ended up hitting I-5 northbound in the early afternoon on September 8^th. The drive didn’t take long up to Bellingham where we met up for some beers and catching up with friends.  The next morning we ate some breakfast with our friends who then gave us a tour of their new sailboat.   Afterwords we said our goodbyes, topped off our water and fuel then headed north for the Canadian border and the Tsawwassen ferry terminal.  We caught the ferry to Nanaimo which was a beautiful 2 ½ hour trip north through Georgia Strait. 

I couldn’t help but feel as if we were entering another world as we traveled toward the sunset with Vancouver Island growing on our horizon.  The Canadian landscape felt both familiar and exotic with its Pacific Northwest mix of sea, island, forest and mountains.  Our evening exit from the ferry would be the beginning of a 90 minute winding journey through evergreen encrusted roads of darkness.  We rolled into Pacific Rim National Park’s Greenpoint campground to find just enough room for us to park our rig and lay our heads down for the night.

The next morning we secured a campsite for the next night and set out to explore Tofino and the surrounding area.  We stopped into Storm, the Tofino surfshop, for some local tips on the surf spots.  We stopped by each surf spot on the way back to camp to see what the surf was like and to familiarize ourselves with the area a bit more.  The next few days we spent our time hiding from the rain at various lush campsites in the Greenpoint campground, surfing, enjoying some sun and settling in to life on the road.

As the temperatures dropped and the storms lined up we decided it was time to start chasing after warmer weather by heading southward.  Before leaving Vancouver Island, we decided it would be cool to head through Victoria.  Sarah had been there a couple times before but I hadn’t so she would be our guide.  We camped 20 minutes northwest of Victoria in the campground at Goldstream Provincial Park.  This beuty of a campground cost little while boasting showers and a bounty of vacant, well-groomed campsites.  We made a dinner of steak, potatoes and veggies under our awning as the rain drizzled around us in a familiar format.

The final day of our initial Vancouver Island voyage began with blue skies, as we packed up and indulged in a shower at the campground before heading into Victoria.  We spent the day wandering through Victoria blending in with the bus-bound, camera-toting tourists.  The Royal B.C. Museum served as our entertainment for many hours with its cavernous exhibits covering the first peoples of B.C., Natural History, and a special traveling collection of Egyptian artifacts from the British Royal Museum.  After overloading ourselves with information, we headed for the conveniently located ferry terminal for an exciting wait in the standby line for the Port Angeles bound M.V. Coho.  We squeezed on to the boat and headed back to the U.S. across the Strait of Juan De Fuca.