N 30*58.312 W 115* 44.694 Elevation 2118’
We drove farther than planned today, 209 miles from Bahia de Los Angeles all the way to Meling Ranch, for which you will note we have given the elevation – a piece of data that hasn’t been particularly relevant during the earlier stages of our trip where we resided on or near beaches. We timed this day so we’d be in El Rosario at the lunch hour so we could stop at Mama Espinosa’s and have lobster burritos again. They were as good as the first time, and we ate half the serving and took the rest with us to re-heat for dinner. Meling Ranch is 60 miles north El Rosario and another 31 miles off of Mex 1 on a narrow, winding, two-lane paved road. Parts of the road were very steep, with a 15+% grade in spots, and our civil engineering friends would not approve of the failure to attend to adequate sight distances. The landscape is much different than anything else we have seen to date in Baja. At 31 miles, you turn off the paved road and follow a steep dirt road down into a valley to find the ranch. Meling Ranch has been here for over 100 years, being run by the same family, and no, it is not a dude ranch. Rather, it combines being an all-inclusive guest “motel” catering to visitors to the National Park 15 miles further up the mountain, and an active ranch with every kind of livestock you can think of: cows, pigs, sheep, goats, turkey, roosters and chickens, ducks, rabbits and parakeets to name most of them. We expect to be awakened early in the morning by crowing roosters, baa-ing sheep and goats, and lowing cows. The trip up here and the ranch deserve a Picasa web album, so follow this link to the pictures (which includes photos of our trip to the park). We should note that for the first time in several weeks, we saw no temperature above 73 degrees today, and on arrival at the ranch it was only 67 degrees, so we’re back in jeans instead of shorts, closed-toe shoes instead of flip-flops, and we ran the heater in the Chalet shortly after dinner. All said, we considered skipping this side-trip and heading straight for the border and we’re so glad we didn’t do that: it’s gorgeous here!
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