Baja or Bust-ed!

Hola! Last night we just got back from a very relaxing and much needed mini vacation about an hour south of the Border near Ensenada, Mexico. Nate's cousin, Jared, rode his motorcycle in the Baja 1000 race. If you've haven't heard of it before, here is the scoop. It is a crazy race where you have to get from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time. Anything goes. Thousands of local Mexicans stay up all day and night to watch the racers and booby trap them in any way they can. They put jumps in the road, dig pits, throw rocks, direct them the wrong way, and hi-jack if possible, just to name a few. Jared had some amazing and crazy stories to tell. He rode 600 of the 1300 miles (there were 5 men on his team), going an average of 80-100 miles and hour. He drove in the day and night, mostly out in the middle of nowhere--literally. The pictures were awesome and stories riveting.
So in order to be there to support Jared in the race and what a good excuse for a family get together, we all chipped in on a large rental house with oceanfront property. Yep, you read right-we were right on the beach, just a rocky stair case away. It was so nice to have no obligations and do absolutely nothing but eat, chat, read, and play lots and lots of games. There were about 18-20 people there (including kids) so it was a full house. Kalli had a wonderful time. A couple of her older cousins took her under their wings and played with her on the beach for hours on end. We found some large seashells on the beach and Nate even tried to surf a bit (the waves were huge!) It was great, but of course there are always a few "bumps" to every trip. Now if you have ever driven over the border, I am sure you have encountered the crooked cops there at one time or another. Cops seems to search out the tourists and we knew we had a big bullseye on our Jeep since we had surf boards strapped to the top, but we hoped for the best. To our dismay, we were pulled over just outside of Tijuana. To make a long story short, we were told that we couldn't have the small platform we had hitched to the back of our Jeep, but if we wanted to pay them $150, they would let us keep it on. We ended up lifting the platform on top of the Jeep and strapping it down next to the surfboards to fix the "violation." The cops stood in disbelief and left before we finished. Ridiculous! So that was the extent of our encounters with the Policia, but Nate's cousin wasn't so lucky--he ended up with a speeding ticket. So all in all, we did have a superb time (even though it took us over 2 hours to come back over the border) and we even came home with a few Mexican treasures.
Now tomorrow night we "get" to drive to Utah. Who's the crazy person who planned these trips back to back :)