Mulege’s Las Casitas Hotel

CSC 150 Mustang replicas parked in front of Mulege’s Las Casitas Hotel. Yep, we rode down there on 150cc bikes!

I have several places I like to stay in Baja, and one of those is the Las Casitas Hotel in Mulege.    (Mulege is pronounced Mool-a-hay, with the accent on the “hay” syllable; it’s not mule-lidge as I sometimes hear gringos say.)  I could give you directions and an address for Las Casitas, but it’s really not necessary.  Mulege is a small town along Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway and the Las Casitas Hotel is easy to find.  Just take a left into town under the arch as you’re traveling south on the Transpeninsular (the main, and in many cases only, road through Baja), head into town, and sort of bear right when you come to a fork entering this interesting little village.

Looking into Mulege from Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway.

My good buddy Javier is the hotelier at Las Casitas.  He’s a guy about my age, we became friends as soon as we met, and he’s just a plain old good guy.  You know what I’m talking about.  Sometimes you meet somebody and you like them immediately, and for me, Javier is a guy like that.  That photo you see above with the Heroica Mulege arch?   It was erected to commemorate the actions of a small band of Bajaenos who held off a large group of invading seaborne soldiers.   I was telling that story at dinner in the Las Casitas one night and I couldn’t remember who the invaders were.  “It was you, the Americans,” Javier reminded me, and we all had a good laugh.

Las Casitas has a bar and a restaurant, and if you’re traveling with a group, Javier has no problem setting up a world class meal to keep the gang happy.   I’ve had seafood dinners, chile rellenos (my favorite Mexican dish), and more.   Javier does a great breakfast, too, and the coffee is superb.  The real treat, though, is the fresh-squeezed orange juice.  It’s worth riding the 700 miles south just that alone.

A dinner in the Las Casitas on one of the CSC Motorcycles rides.
Chile rellenos, as prepped by Javier and his crew. Wow, were they ever great!

Las Casitas has a tropical feel to it, and that’s not surprising as Mulege is damn near in the tropics (the Tropic of Cancer, the northern edge of what officially constitutes the tropics, is just a few miles further down the down from Mulege).  The hotel rooms are arranged in two rows with an enclosed courtyard, and Javier’s okay with parking the bikes in the courtyard at night just outside the courtroom.  It’s really not necessary as there’s little crime in Baja (and on more than one occasion, infused with sufficient amounts of 100% blue agave Tequila and the inevitable accompany bottles of Negra Modelo, I’ve left my motorcycle parked on the street with no problems).  But it’s a nice touch to be able to bring the bikes into the courtyard.

In the Las Casitas courtyard with the bikes. Javier is the second guy in from the left.

The little town of Mulege is an oasis along the Rio Mulege, and it’s one of Baja’s date-farming centers.  It would be a crime against nature to not stop at Mulege’s ancient mission, 1700s-era church still in daily use.

The Mulege Mission. It’s one of a small group of 300-year-old missions dotting the Baja peninsula.
Inside the Mulege Mission.  It’s still on active duty as a working church.
A statue in the Mulege Mission.
Looking out of the Mulege Mission.
Date groves along the Rio Mulege, as viewed from an observation platform at the Mulege Mission.

Writing this blog on this fine Friday morning, I am realizing I need to get my knees in the Baja breeze again.  Maybe that feeling will pass, and maybe it won’t.  We’ll see.


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Princeton Battlefield State Park

On a recent trip to New Jersey, Sue and I took a ride around Princeton and we found ourselves at the Princeton Battlefield Site.  I’m embarrassed to admit that even though I grew up in this area, I didn’t know much about this place.  It is amazing.  It’s the place where the tide of the Revolutionary War turned.   Will Krakower (a young historian and Rutgers grad) led us on an impressive tour.

A road used during the Revolutionary War in Princeton, New Jersey.
The Princeton Battlefield Site.
The Clarke House, used as a field hospital during the battle.
Will pointing out where the British and American troops fought.

Good times, and a great tour (thank you, Will).  If you ever find yourself in Princeton, this place is definitely worth a visit.  Better yet, plan a visit when the Princeton Battlefield Society is giving one of their tours.   You’ll love it.  You might want to have breakfast at PJ’s in Princeton on the morning of the tour.  It’s the best breakfast in town and it’s the place we all hit when we played hooky back in high school.

Surprisingly, there are many great places to ride in New Jersey.  A great weekend might include a ride along the Delaware River with stops at Washington’s Crossing and New Hope, Pennsylvania, followed by a Sunday Princeton Battlefield Site tour.


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Sweet Home, California and New Mexico!

Wowee, it’s been nonstop travel for Gresh and me these last few weeks.   As you know from reading the ExhaustNotes blog, Gresh rode his Husqvarna to the Bonneville Speed Week in Utah from his home in New Mexico.   He’s a better man than I am.   I don’t think I could handle riding a Naugahyde-covered 2×4 all that distance.  Joe is back on the Tinfiny Ranch in New Mexico now, no doubt thinking about concrete, motorized bicycles, getting his vintage Z1 back on the road, and more.

I’ve been on the road, too.  It was a scouting expedition for an upcoming hunting trip with my good buddy J, back to Soprano-land for my 50th high school reunion, and then up to Seattle for a friend’s wedding.  We’re racking up the miles, but I’m home now, and let me tell you, it’s good to be home! I was supposed to be on the road this past week for the Three Flags Classic (I would have been on the way home from Canada by now), but it was getting to be too much and I bailed out on that one.  Like my good buddy Dirty Harry likes to say, a man’s got to know his limits, and I hit mine.

Scouting for Deer

Out in the boonies with good buddy J, proving that beer doesn’t work well as a mosquito repellant.

Good buddy J and I snuck away to an undisclosed location to scout deer. Where we were and where we’re going is a closely-held military secret, but we saw lots of game, we’re going back heavy, and we’re looking forward to bringing home the bacon (or, I guess I should say, the venison).  We camped on this trip, which is something I hadn’t done in quite a few years.  J makes camping seem like staying at a 5-star hotel.  It was fun.  Except for the mosquitos.  Those little bastards were brutal.  I probably won’t be able to make it up there the same time as J (I’ve got another secret mission to Asia coming up real soon), but if I don’t make it on the trip with J, I’ll be there a few days later.  Venison beckons and all that.  I’ve got a .300 Weatherby load with a deer’s initials on it.

Bonneville Speed Week

Joe’s trek to Wendover for Bonneville’s Speed Week was awesome, and you can get to his posts here…

Salt 1
Salt 2
Salt 3
Salt 4
Salt 5
Salt 6
Salt 7
Salt 8

Reading Joe’s blogs was a real treat; I felt like I was riding along with Uncle Joe.  You will, too…click on the above links if you haven’t seen these great stories and enjoy some of the best motorcycle story telling in the world!

Winging it to Wendover, Gresh was…

Joe has another trip planned in the near term for the Yamaha Endurofest.  I’m looking forward to the photos and the stories on that one.  I love reading Joe’s stories!

The Big 50

Hey, what can I say?   My classmates from our Class of ’69 did one hell of a job putting together an absolutely amazing 50th high school reunion.  Surprisingly, I didn’t get a lot of photos…I was having way too much fun.  I did get a few, though, and here they be!

Just a few of my classmates taking a tour of our old high school.
Good buddy Tad, whom I met in the 7th grade, with his Honda Gold Wing.
Good buddy Mike, reminding us there’s no talking to the driver while the bus is in motion!

At one point, we started grabbing photos of folks from the different elementary schools in our area.  Here’s one of the crew who went to Deans School…my elementary school alma mater.

I’ve known everyone in this photo from kindergarten. I had crushes on every girl in this photo at one time or another.  Don’t tell Sue.

We then thought it would be a good idea to take a group photo of everyone who had detention in high school…you know, where they make you stay late to wash blackboards, clean erasers, and stuff like that for cutting up in class. I’m guessing they can’t do that anymore.

The kids who had detention in high school. I was the king of detention.

I can’t remember ever having as much fun as we did at the reunion.  Everyone looked great. Some of the folks there I first met in kindergarten, and most I had not seen in 50 years.  One of the young ladies you see in the photos above had saved some of our high school newspapers, which had a column titled Exhaust Notes.  And you can guess who wrote it more than half a century ago.  That’s a story for another blog, and it’s coming your way soon.


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The Three Flags Classic: I dropped out

If you’re waiting for blogs from me on the Three Flags Classic and updates on the RX4, you won’t get them.   I dropped out before I even started.  I don’t like to think of myself as a quitter, but that’s what I did on this one.

It came down to this:   I’ve been on the road for the last two months nearly nonstop and I needed a break.   I am not doing a very good job at being retired, and the travel just got to a point where it was overwhelming.  I had a consulting gig with a large agricultural firm in Colorado, then it was more expert witness work (analysis and a deposition), a trip back east for my 50th high school reunion (that was a lot of fun, but it was another week of travel), a trip to Seattle for a friend’s wedding (lots of fun there, but yet another week of travel), a couple of runs up the coast to be with grandkids (more fun, but again, more travel), and on and on it goes.   I don’t think I’ve been home more than two or three days in a row in the last two months.

Three Flags for me would have involved a full day on the motorcycle in 100-degree weather to get to Mexico today, a 681-mile motorcycle day tomorrow starting at 3:30 a.m. to get from San Luis Rio Colorado (in Mexico) to Cedar City (in Utah) through 110-degree weather on a holiday weekend, and another 1500 miles of riding to get to Canada over the next week.  And then another 2200 miles or so to get back to southern California. It would be two more weeks on the road.

Baja John was going to ride with me, but when he considered the distances and the temperatures and the timing, he decided not to go.  When Joe Gresh heard I wasn’t going, he thought about taking my place, but after an initial burst of wanting to go he came to the same conclusion as John did.  Those two guys are smarter than me.   What was I missing?  At what point in your life do you decide you need to stop and smell the roses for a bit?  At what point do you say:  Hey, I made a decision that was too hasty and I need to reverse it?

For me, that point was yesterday.  There’s nothing wrong with the RX4 motorcycle (in fact, it’s a great bike and the new ones are in port waiting to clear Customs now) and there’s nothing wrong with the 3FC19 ride.   The timing’s just not right for me.   I know I’m disappointing a few people with this decision, but I’m also pleasing a few people, and I’m one of them.

An International Motorcycle Rally!

It’s weird, I know, but I usually get the pre-ride jitters on every big motorcycle ride I’ve ever done.   This time, I’m going into Mexico, back into the US, across the US from our southern border with Mexico to our northern border with Canada and then on up into Canada, and then back across the US to arrive home after riding roughly 4500 miles on the 2019 Three Flags Classic.  The weird thing this time is I’m not apprehensive at all.  I can’t wait to get started on this ride.

I was able to hook up BajaBound Insurance with the Southern California Motorcycle Association and they are now the recommended insurers for the Mexico leg of this trip (hey, that’s what happens when you advertise with ExhaustNotes), and I’m going to get my insurance as soon as I’m done with this blog.

The CSC RX4 I wrote about earlier is running like a champ, and the guys at CSC Motorcycles have done a super job prepping the bike for me.  There really wasn’t too much to do…I asked for the big Tourfella bags so I can carry my Nikon and my laptop to give you folks all the great photos and blogs you’re used to seeing on any ExNotes ride, a mount for my cellphone, and a set of running lights.  I could have done without the running lights (you know, the spotlights) because the headlight on the RX4 is so good, but don’t tell CSC I told you.  You should buy the spotlights anyway.  They look cool.

Man, I am looking forward to this one.  I’m going to make new friends and see new sights.  I can’t wait to meet the other 249 Three Flags Classic riders. And I’m going to do it all on the first RX4 in North America. It’s going to be great.

Salt 8

It seems like tents get larger the more time they spend exposed to sunlight. But the thing is, man, camps were made to be broken. As much as I liked the hot sun, dusty gravel lot and 4-mile walk to the KOA facilities, we had to go.

I’m good with the two days we spent on the salt. I feel like we got a really good idea of the situation and the Southern California Timing Association had their hands full. They didn’t need me prowling around stirring up the troops. The salt was in no mood to be trifled with and we left it to bake and heave, a different salt from a few hours ago and different from that salt in a few more hours.

There’s no good route east from Bonneville except for the hard slog on Interstate 80. From there it’s a long hot day south and the Husky beat out a steady tune all the way to Moab, Utah. The place was an endless parade of tourists, every one one of them healthier than the last. Their bodies were so chiseled they looked like they subsisted solely on finely ground pumice. Their smiles were stretched over perfectly dazzling teeth. I felt like Quasimodo lurching among this mob of Fits.

We swung through Monticello, Utah, a place where 11 years ago me and Hunter left Dave at a motel room with a broken foot and two hamburgers on his night stand. The past days and present days are crashing together on this ride. If you let your mind wander it’s easy to lose track of where you are on the continuum. The hamburger place where we stocked Dave’s nightstand is still there. Maybe Dave is still in that room. 11 years has gone-and-went representing one tiny tremor of time. What happened?

I rode away from Monticello on Godzilla back then. It was a hard pull up the grades.  Sometimes the old two stroke held 55 mph. Now I rip up the same hills with the Husky spinning free. So much air pumping past 500 CC’s of modern 4-strokery. I’d still rather be on Godzilla. You earned a hill with that bike, man.

Tonight we’re giving Switchblade, the panhandler with a pickle, another shot at my ribcage in Window Rock. I wonder when I will be back to remember this place, to remember Switchblade. I wonder what the last place will be?

Get it while you can, boys.

Ride Easy, Mr. Fonda…

All good things must come to an end, I guess, and Peter Fonda’s life was a good thing that ended earlier today. It was too soon. He reached the ripe old age of 79, which is more than most, so in one sense I guess you could say he got his money’s worth. But it would have been better if he could have stayed longer. I liked the guy.

Peter Fonda first entered my life with the release of Easy Rider, a movie that hit the silver screen when I was a goofy teenager. Choppers entered the scene through that movie for me, and Wyatt was a character I think most guys my age wanted to be at one point or another in their lives. Billy, not so much. It was Jack Nicholson’s big break, and the movie put the idea of long distance motorcycle riding in many of our minds. It spawned a cultural and seismic shift in how most folks viewed motorcycles. It launched a motorcycle magazine of the same name where my short stories would later appear (yeah, I wrote short stories for Easy Riders back in the day). Easy Rider, the movie, by any measure was a big deal.

Fast forward a year or two, and it was a 750 Honda for me. I didn’t have the panhead Harley chopper, but I bought me a Captain America helmet and I was (at least in my mind) as cool as Peter Fonda. I wore that helmet on a motorcycle ride to Montreal. It’s all about the look, and I had it.

Fast forward a lot of years, and one day I was leaving Glendale Harley Davidson after stopping there to pick up a part and Peter Fonda was walking up the sidewalk as I was leaving. I said hi and he said How’s it going, man. It was a chance encounter I remember like it happened 10 minutes ago. He would have been in his mid-50s then, and I told everyone I knew for weeks after that I had seen Peter Fonda in person. I like to think that he told everyone he knew for weeks after that he had seen Joe Berk in person, but that was before I started writing the blog so deep in my heart I knew he probably didn’t. But for one brief instant we were equals: Peter Fonda nodded at me and asked How’s it going, man, like he had known me all his life. You can’t put a price on that.

Ride easy, Mr. Fonda.  Thanks for the memories. And to answer your question, it’s going well, thank you, in no small part due to the influence you’ve had on many of us.

Salt 7

During Bonneville Speed Week enterprising teens set up salt washing stations.

The rough wet salt did not bode well for the speed trials this year. After seeing how the situation unfolded yesterday Mike and I were in no hurry to get out to Bonneville and in fact it was almost 11:00 a.m. before we paid the SCTA man another $20 entrance fee.

The ticket man told us to avoid the start area as it was getting churned up and the competitor’s vehicles were getting stuck. It was kind of a pain because the start area was where we wanted to go. One thing I’ve learned in my short life is that there’s no sense in railing against mushy salt.

My hamburger-stand-at-noon meter told me there were fewer spectators and contestants than yesterday. Bonneville isn’t spectator friendly to start with as the courses are far in the distance. You pay to be surrounded by the ambiance: great things are happening just over the horizon.

The pits are very open, you can go bug the racers all you like. They really seemed to appreciate my helpful suggestions for grabbing that final 1/10 of a mile per hour.

I don’t know why my motorcycle brothers were being so obtuse on the track today. They consistently failed to clear off the course after their run much to the dismay of the hundreds of waiting competitors.

Even without the motorcycle guys gumming up the works wait times between runs stretched to 15 minutes. Multiply that by 100 or more competitors and you start to get at the immensity of the problem caused by Mother Nature shutting down three courses.

Bonneville is one of those events where it’s easier to compete in than spectate. After one really lengthy pause in the action we decided that racing may be over for the day. We headed back to camp feeling ill-used for our $20 entrance fee but it all goes to a good cause: The pursuit of speed.

Unrelated to anyone’s efforts on the salt, one of the bolts holding the luggage rack to the Husqvarna had fallen out somewhere on the trip to Bonneville. I removed the opposite side bolt for a sample and took the thing to Ace Hardware where they had no metric bolts. The next place I tried, CarQuest, had two of the small, 4mm bolts.

As soon as I located the correct bolts I should have known I was in trouble. The Husky uses those captivated-nut type of deals where a threaded nut is crimped into the aluminum frame tube. It gives you something sturdy and steel to screw into.

When the sample bolt was removed the captivated nut became a free range nut and it wandered off into the frame tube. Of course I had no idea any of this was happening.

I kept trying to screw the sample bolt back onto the Husqvarna. The thing would not start. As I became more confused I became more irrational. It was hot, Mike was making suggestions and I was not wanting to hear them: “I just took the bolt out of the F-ing rack minutes ago! Why won’t it start?” Semi-blind from sweat I removed everything off the back of the bike and it became clear that the bolt was never going to thread into the hole because there was nothing to thread into. It was a void, man.

Back to Ace hardware for a $35 drill motor, a $14 drill bit set, and assorted 1/4″-20 bolts and nuts. That bastard rack was going to be secured by any means necessary. I drilled all the way through the frame tube and into the plastic inner fender. Now the longer bolt was slotted through into a locknut on the other side.

This all sounds simple but it took three separate trips to the auto store and hardware store to achieve. I gave Mike the new drill motor hoping the shiny bauble would make him forget all that he had seen earlier. I spent the remains of the day sitting by the KOA swimming pool and drinking gin & tonics. Tomorrow we break camp and start heading back to God’s country: New Mexico.


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Salt 6

A Ukrainian guy crashed his 900-volt electric bike at 150 miles per hour. He’s okay but the bike is a bit bent. It’s been a hard day on the salt for motorcycles and not much better for the cars. The course is rough and soft.

I hear the grumbling as I cruise the pits. “No records this year.” “We might as well go home.” “They should call the whole thing off.” Conditions have restricted the racers to one course for experts and one course for rookies. At the start area the blue course lines are close together and they get wider apart the further down course you go.

A Buell rider was 5th from the start line when racing was called for the day. He’d been in line since 7:00 a.m. and the line is a mile long. It takes patience to go fast.

The Bonneville speed trials are spread out over 8 miles. There are thousands of rebars pounded into the salt and miles of yellow plastic tape denoting areas but it all seems so random. We ride over and under the tape. No one bothers us. The tape is just to give your mind something to work on in the featureless white plains. Mostly the pit area is near the middle and the course is a quarter mile away. Bring binoculars or all you’ll see is a tiny object speeding from your right to your left.

Walking the pits is a 6-mile proposition. It’s huge and the blinding white salt burns your skin from underneath. You really need two hats: one on top as normal and one with the center cut out and the brim circling your neck like a Queen Elizabeth collar.

The place is solid enough where compacted. Out towards the edges and further north the salt gets crunchy and damp. It feels like the water table is a few inches down.

2:30 p.m. and racing is over; spectators and racers wander away from the salt in dribs and drabs. It’s a slow exodus with a heavy flat head V-8 feel to it.

Old Salts tell me attendance is down this year but that guy who waited all day for his run thinks that there are plenty of people. I’m a rookie so it looks fine to me.

The track radio announcer who is from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is also in charge of the Porta Potties. There are 74 plastic potties spread around the 8 miles. I told him number 68 out by Mile Marker 7 was not sitting level and could he shim the thing properly. He wants to set a record with a ZZR Kawasaki but has run out of money. Announcing is a slow business with 75% of the track closed but he makes a good job of keeping it interesting.

I met a chick with a turbo CB125 Honda. She was in the empty impound area where the record setters await a second pass to make it official. She said the track was rutted and bumpy but she managed 57 miles per hour. Somehow that was a record. The soft salt sucks power. It’s like racing through sand.

On the ride back to town you’ll pass hundreds of campers parked alongside the road. It’s a free camp area but the facilities are zero. It’s primitive but for the guys watching TV in motorhomes it all looks the same.

My buddy Old Iron says that to find a good restaurant in West Wendover look for salt in the parking lot. The more salt, the better. If there’s a turbine powered car parked up you’re golden. It works, my brothers.