27 October, 2016 (Emily Smith)

Holy smokes, what an unreal day! It started off as our earliest day yet, with the crew taking off at 5:00 am. Well, it was supposed to be 5:00 am but Jeff decided to sleep in a little bit, delaying our departure time by a few minutes. Oh, it was only minutes until everyone in the van was fast asleep again as we rolled on through the state of California towards the much anticipated lands of Mexico. We have all been waiting for this leg of our journey. It was one of the first parts we talked about last spring - originally being worried that we wouldn't be able to make Baja, California happen. After a lot of thought and a lot of talk, we more or less decided to make Baja, California our mission. And we did it! Well, we're about to do it anyway. Getting here was an adventure in and of itself. It was all smooth sailing right up until we actually got to the border. It was already a much slower process than what we've experienced in Canada, and then we were of course asked for our registration for the trailer, which I thought, "Why in the world would we have it?" Jeff and Ryan scrambled to figure out this dilemma while we were approached by officers letting us know that we had to turn right back around to the states. A quick stop at Church's Chicken to print the registration and another go at crossing the border proved successful. Just barely though, as our printed registration was just a cell phone picture taken by Bryan from Transportation Services back in Macomb. It just barely let us slide by, probably with the help from Jeff's charismatic charm. We trucked through Tijuana, all of us noting the vast differences between where we came from and where we were. Finally getting to Ensenada, we met up with Jeff's pal Francisco who led us the long way to his ranch house where we would spend the night. We discovered that our adventures were not over... The winding and uneven roads were a little much for our trusty van and trailer to handle. With three of us riding along with Francisco and the rest of us in good ole' van 63, those of us in the ban all piled into the very back seat as we attempted to get our mobilized house up the hill. Surprise! We got stuck... Now all of us are behind the trailer, pushing it up the hill as Jeff applied the gas. Once we made it up, we celebrated with smiles and laughs and allowed Jeff to give us a lesson in backing up a trailer. As exhausting and eventful as today was, I couldn't imagine entering Mexico with this bunch any other way. Be grateful.