Oriole and Don Chano Canyon

Yesterday morning Mike and I went to Los Olivos for breakfast. Sparkplug was holding an oriole in the palm of her hand. It had smacked into one of their windows, and was temporarily stunned. Sparkplug? Named by Marv because she is so dynamic, and also something to do with her shape. She is a fantastic person, decended from the Yee family. Lots of Chinese people had been brought down here to work in the various mines, then just as they were in the US, abandoned down here to fend for themselves. The Yee family is quite prominent throughout Baja. After breakfast we rode our ATVs to the other side of the river and turned up by Don Chano's into a canyon with some of the most beautiful rocks we have ever seen. Just a spectacular couple of hours. The access stops at one point, and the next time we will wear real shoes instead of flip flops, and continue on foot to see deeper into the canyon which, as you get closer to the mountains, changes into a lush green forest of cacti and trees. It was a definite WOW.

63rd Birthday Party

February 5th Mike celebrated (oh boy, and how!) his 63rd birthday party. I started the morning with a Bloody Mary and cooked all day. Nori rolls, turkey/ham rolls, quinoa cream cheese cilantro rolls, 100 shrimp deviled eggs, and more. Boxes of booze and coolers of beer lined up for the event. We ended up with over 70 people at the party. Half the people also brought food or appetizers. Scotty of Scotty's Restaurant in town smoked and cooked 75 pounds of ribs. Geoff Castle played his amazing electric violin accompanied by our local Mexican Beatles Band, and pal John Macy joined in on the mouth harp. Panning the party goers just about everyone had their jaws dropped in amazement with the music. Lots of dancing. Lots of fun. All the food vanished....and so did all of the booze. The party started at 3 PM, and by 11 I had to shoo away a few diehards and get Mike to bed. The following morning we lined up all the leftover stuff and took a photo. Funny, the only taker was Gene who owned the blue glass.

Fish in the River

Oh Baby! Nearly every morning around 6:45 we head up river toward town to see what we can catch. We always release the fish (too many septic tanks) back into the river, but it sure is fun catching them. Mike is shown here with a big cabrilla and......and....A SNOOK! Hurray for Michael.

29 Lb. Yellowtail

Mike has hundreds of fish photos, but here is one of me with a 29 pound yellowtail that gave me a run for my money.

The pelicans love to sit on any moored boat. This was a cooperative old fellow, and sat quite still for his photo. Hope took fishing quite seriously. Here she is bringing in yet another big one.

Crazy Fish

Hope caught a crazy looking orange fish with gold eyes. Zim, as always, had a big smile on his face when he caught this big yellowtail. Great sunset shot as we headed out of town for dinner one evening to Ray's. We had to subject them to Saturday carnitas at Danny's, and Hope took a fun shot of us on our ATV's.

Ooops, here is Hope's photo

Hope's photo of the fruit stand out at the orange orchard on Ice House Road