It sounds like Dave Dudley’s country western hit (I think that was 6 Days on the Road), but this isn’t about Freightliner fever or 18 wheelers. Nope, this is a suggested itinerary for an 8-day, 2000-mile ride from southern California through some of the best that Baja has to offer. It’s based on the multiple tours I’ve led for CSC Motorcycles, it’s best done sometime in the January/February/March time frame (that’s when the California gray whales are in Scammon’s Lagoon), and it uses Loreto as the turnaround point. Yeah, I know…you could go all the way to Cabo, but I’ve been there, done that, and I’m here to tell you that the there’s not much that’s interesting or pretty south of Loreto (unless you have a penchant for overpriced touristy hotels and refrigerator magnets).
To get to the point, here’s what a really great Baja adventure ride might look like…
A recommended 8-day Baja ride…it’s all explained further with the detailed itinerary and photos below.8 days and 2000 miles, taking in some of the best Baja has to offer, with only a couple of high mileage days.
One of the things you’ll want to make sure of before you start this ride is that you have Mexican insurance for your motorcycle (your regular insurance policy won’t cover you south of the border), and the best I’ve found is BajaBound. We’ll have another blog on BajaBound shortly, but you can trust me on this…I’ve tried several companies and BajaBound is the best. They are the only folks I use.
I can’t explain everything about the trip in one blog, so there are other articles on the ExhaustNotes Baja page about traveling in Baja. And if you have specific questions, please ask them here in the Comments section and I’ll do my best to get you answers. What I thought I might do here is add a few more photos, showing one or two from each day on a ride like this.
Day 1: Enchanted Ensenada
The first night in Ensenada. Doc Mike is checking out a new ride.
Day 2: The Long Haul to Guerrero Negro
A stop for fuel in Catavina.
Day 3: Whale Watching!
Whale watching in Scammon’s Lagoon. This is one of the most moving experiences I’ve ever had. Everyone who does this says the same thing. Up close and personal with 45-ft California gray whales and their babies. It’s awesome.
Day 4: The Sierra San Francisco Cave Paintings, San Ignacio, Mulege, and More!
The 10,000-year-old cave paintings, left behind by an unknown civilization.The Sierra San Francisco church.The 300-year-old San Ignacio Mission, still in use as an active church.In the Las Casitas courtyard in Mulege, one of my all time favorite hotels.
Day 5: Bahia Concepcion, Loreto, and Santa Rosalia
Along Bahia Concepcion, just north of Loreto…the prettiest part of Baja!The all-wooden Frances Hotel in Santa Rosalia. It used to be a brothel.
Day 6: Santa Maria
The Transpeninsular Highway, headed north to Santa Maria…
Day 7: Tantalizing Tecate!
Street tacos in Tecate…good times and good food.
Day 8: The Short Haul Home
No photos here, folks…by Day 8 it’s a beeline home after a fabulous Baja ride! The last day is roughly 250 miles back to the LA area, and it’s an easy run.
I know if you’ve never ridden Baja you might have plenty of questions, so ask away!
Our series on Baja cuisine continues. Previous blogs covered the stretch from Rosarito through Ensenada, and then the stretch south of Ensenada down to El Rosario. In this blog, we’ll cover Catavina and Guerrero Negro.
Catavina
There’s not much in Catavina except rocks, a few structures, and the Desert Inn, but it’s a part of Baja I dearly love. My all time favorite Baja photo (the one that is the ExhaustNotes Baja page banner photo) is one I shot from the saddle of my CSC Mustang on a ride through this region, and it also adorns the cover of Moto Baja. The region has an other-worldly feel to it, with its vibrantly green and pale beige colors (as displayed by huge boulders and gigantic Cardon cactus) contrasting sharply with brilliant blue skies, all bisected by Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway. Amazingly, the boulders were formed by wind erosion (as my geologist buddies tell me). It’s a stark and beautiful land. I love it.
On Mexico Highway 1, headed south through Catavina. This is one of the prettiest parts of Baja.
So, back to the topic du jour, and that’s the cuisine in this part of the world. The Desert Inn is a hotel chain spanning nearly the entire length of Baja. The Desert Inns are a bit on the pricey side for Baja (which means they’re still inexpensive by US standards), but the food in these upscale-for-Baja hotels is always good. The restaurant at the Desert Inn in Catavina has a cool arched ceiling tiled with bricks. It’s a cool motif.
CSC Mustangs parked in front of the Catavina Desert Inn, headed south to Cabo San Lucas. We had a fine dinner that evening!
The trick is to get arrive before the tour buses do, but even if a crowd gets in before you do, the wait staff is pretty good about attending to your hunger pangs quickly. I’ve tried nearly everything on the Catavina Desert Inn’s menu; the good news is that it’s all good. That statement kind of invites the question: So what’s the bad news? More good news…there is no bad news. I like this place.
Guerrero Negro
It might be part of the Scholastic Aptitude Test: Diamonds are to Tiffany’s like fish tacos are to…well, there can only be one correct answer, and that’s Tony’s El Muelle food truck in Guerrero Negro. Baja is known for fish tacos, and to those in the know, there are none better than those whipped up by my good buddy Tony.
Tony, happily engaged in the production of the finest fish tacos on the planet. I’m not exaggerating.
Tony guy was killing it with a gourmet food truck before the gourmet food truck trend caught on in LA, and before that, he was selling fish tacos from a hand cart (I know, because I started enjoying them nearly 30 years ago…a story you can read about in Moto Baja). Just after you’ve crossed into BCS (Baja California Sur, about 500 miles south of the border), hang a right and follow the signs to Guerrero Negro. Tony’s El Muelle fish taco truck will be on the right as you enter town.
When you see Tony’s truck, you’ll know. You’ve arrived.Happy riders, after a fish taco lunch at Tony’s. This is the place to stop after you’ve gone whale watching!The stars of the show, and what Baja is all about…Tony’s fish tacos!
You can’t miss Tony’s. Just look for the people with knowing, anticipatory smiles standing in line. This is another one of those places that, all by itself, makes me want to hop on my motorcycle and head south.
Hey, there’s more. Tony is moving up in the world, and his new restaurant is under construction in Guerrero Negro.
Another favored dining stop and watering hole (especially if I’m spending the night in Guerrero Negro) is Malarimmo’s. Their restaurant is tops for breakfast, lunch, or dinner (everything is good), and they have an interesting bar. You’ll see a lot of cool objects hanging on the walls and from the ceiling in Malarimmo’s bar, all things swept south by the Pacific currents and picked up on the giant land hook around Bahia Tortuga. Buoys, driftwood, signs, parts of US Navy test aircraft…you name it, and it’s hanging in that bar. Taking it all in while enjoying any of Malarimmo’s dishes with a Tecate or a shot of Tequila (after the bikes are parked for the night, of course) is a most enjoyable experience.
My KLR in front of Malarimmo’s. The hotel, the restaurant, and the bar are all outstanding.A group of riders enjoying a fine dinner at Malarimmo’s.
There’s one more place I like a lot, and that’s the restaurant at the Hotel Don Gus in Guerrero Negro. It’s right across the street from Malarimmo’s, and I’ve stayed at the hotel and dined at the restaurant several times.
Rode hard and put away for the night at the Hotel Don Gus. We had just finshed a fine dinner when I took this photo.Good buddy Jim enjoying chile rellenos in the Hotel Don Gus restaurant.
The Don Gus restaurant has great food and it’s a little less expensive than Malarimmo’s, which means it’s very inexpensive. I like the place, and I’m betting you will, too.
Photo ops abound in New Mexico. They have at least four different license plate themes. It’s cool.
Wow, we are enjoying our travels here in the Land of Enchantment. Every where we’ve been, the roads have been awesome and the photo ops have been amazing.
Yesterday we were up near the Colorado border in the little town of Aztec, New Mexico, and we came across a National Park Service Native American ruins site. I never heard of Aztec, I certainly never heard of the ruins there, and the roads were amazing. We stopped for a few photos, and then it was on to Colorado.
A kiva, a large multipurpose room. It was cool.A storm on the horizon…As we viewed the ruins, thunder boomed. It added to the mood. It was a great stop. Sometimes the unplanned ones are the best.The view through an ancient Native American door.
Mesa Verde is coming up next, but that’s a topic for another blog.
More cool stuff…it seems my friend Dan the K is planning a trip to the northwest territories on his 250cc RX3, I invited myself along, and Dan told me that’s great. It looks like Gresh may ride with us for at least part of the run, too. All adventure motorcycle tours are great; I believe the ones on 250cc bikes are even more so. We’ll include you in the planning for this ride, and you’ll be able to read all about it on the ExhaustNotes.us blog.
It was another broiler-hot day out of Ajo this morning, but it was an easy run…Arizona 85 south to Arizona 86, stay on 86 for about 100 miles, and a right turn on Arizona 386 for the twisty 14-mile climb up to Kitt Peak National Observatory. The La Luz saga continues. Gobi and me, we got some blogging to do. Maybe a video or two. We’ll see. So will you. And for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, you’ll find out soon enough.
The topic du jour: Kitt Peak National Observatory, a gem of a destination and a seriously cool place. And, it’s a great ride to get there.
Kitt Peak is up on a ridgeline at roughly 6700 feet, about 50 miles southwest of Tucson. On our ride there today, the skies were clear and the visibility was amazing. Once again, it’s best left to the photos to do the talking…
A glorious set of twisties, with Kitt Peak as the piece of cheese at the end.Impressive credentials!No tigers?That’s Baboquivari Peak on the horizon, the holiest peak for the Tohono O’odham Native Americans. Kitt Peak National Observatory is on their land. The Tohono O’odham believe their creator resides on that peak.The Case Western Reserve University telescope. There are a lot of different telescopes on Kitt Peak.This telescope dominates Kitt Peak. We could see it 30 miles away as we rolled across the desert floor.We didn’t see a single one. Seeing signs like this is a cool thing.One of many cool and colorful explanations at various Kitt Peak observation points. The views are impressive.
It’s Tucson tonight, and we should make Las Cruces by nightfall tomorrow. I love these road trips. The ride today was awesome, but hey, they all are.
I’m gathering my thoughts on the Zero electric motorcycle. It was a fun day and a fun ride, that day last week at Art’s Douglas Motorcycles dealership. It’s way different than any motorcycle I ever rode, and it’s also way different than CSC’s City Slicker. They’re both good bikes, I loved riding both, and they both have their strengths and weaknesses. The differences are driven by what each company designed their bike to do. Different missions, like we used to say in the Army.
Watch for the Slick vs. Zero blog. It’s coming. I’ve been thinking deep thoughts about both bikes, and sometimes when I think really deep thoughts on any topic, I can’t think for days afterward. I’m in that mode now, so I’m simply enjoying the trek to Tinfiny. La Luz, Gobi, Tinfiny…I know it’s confusing and I’ll explain what it all means soon enough.
Whoa, it’s toasty…as in 112 degrees Fahrenheit. The folks out here are complaining about the humidity, but it feels dry as a bone to me. Certainly less humidity than we’re getting in So Cal, and way, way less than in other parts of the US. The drill today was Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Ajo, and Why, Arizona (Ajo means garlic in Spanish, in case you were wondering, but I didn’t see a single one).
We were right on the border in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and we opted for the 21-mile dirt road loop into the Ajo Mountains.
Awesome. South of Ajo, south of Why, and right on the border.One mile. I didn’t to go any further because I didn’t know if I’d be able to turn around.Yep. The real deal.The star of the show, the Organ Pipe cactus. They grow here and no place else on Earth.Our route….a 21-mile round trip through the Ajo Mountains. It was beautiful.
After the ride through Organ Pipe, we settled into Ajo for the evening. It’s a cool place, even though it’s still 109 outside.
They like murals in Arizona. It’s a photographer’s paradise.
And that’s it for tonight. I noticed there were a couple of questions and comments on the ebikes (thanks very much for posting those). I’ll do my best to get answers for you.
We’ve already covered my favorite Baja places to eat from the border down through Ensenada in our previous installment of the adventurer’s guide to Baja dining. This next set of Baja dining recommendations covers the corridor south of Ensenada, through San Quintin, all the way to El Rosario. This region covers the wine country and the agricultural district, which ends in the San Quintin area. After San Quintin, Baja’s Highway 1 (the Transpeninsular Highway), continues south through low-lying coastal plains hugging the Pacific coast. Then it’s a brief climb through a set of twisties into El Rosario.
There are great places to eat through this stretch of Baja, folks. Let’s take a look…
Palomar
This is a cool little place that’s on the right side of Highway 1 after you’ve passed through the mountains south of Ensenada. The food is good, it’s reasonable, and it’s always fresh. I like their chicken tacos; my friends seem to always gravitate toward the shrimp.
The El Palomar, a nice spot to stop for lunch.The Pemex next to the Palomar restaurant.
There’s a little general store next to the restaurant, and if you need Baja kitsch, this is a good place to get it. More importantly, there’s also a Pemex station. I’d advise topping off here. If you’re on a motorcycle (and of course, you should be), this will get you all the way to El Rosario.
San Quintin
What can I say? I love this area. It’s one of the last vestiges of the northern Baja agricultural region. There are three places I like here. One is the restaurant in the Mision San Quintin. It’s a hotel restaurant (it’s pricey for Baja, but it’s cheap compared to US prices), and it’s good. I’ve stayed at the hotel and had breakfast and dinner here; both are great. The orange juice is always freshly squeezed, and it’s fantastic. To my great surprise, I didn’t have any photos of the Mision San Quintin when I prepared this blog entry. Sounds to me like a good excuse to ride down there again.
Another is the Molina Viejo restaurant, near the Old Mill Hotel, which is right on Bahia San Quintin. The good news here is that the 4-mile ride to Bahia San Quintin is now paved (no more white-knuckle soft sand or deep mud, thank God). Even before the road was paved, though, the ride out was worth it. There are two great restaurants hidden away back here (the Molina Viejo and Don Eddie’s), and the food at both is stellar.
Fried mushrooms at the Molina Viejo. They’re awesome.Good buddy Dave on his FJR. Fortunately, the road into Bahia San Quintin is now paved!
Both restaurants are literally right on the bay, and occasionally a gray whale will find its way into the bay. When that happens, it’s an amazing thing to see and hear. The Molina Viejo has a fried mushroom appetizer that’s a favorite, and any of the entrees are excellent. This place rivals the décor and feel of any restaurant in the US, but it hasn’t been discovered yet (and that means the prices are low).
The Molina Viejo, a great restaurant right on Bahia San Quintin.Having a beer or two before dinner at the Molina Viejo.The real deal…Mariachi singers in the Molina Viejo.A good day, a good ride, and a Tecate overlooking Bahia San Quintin. We saw a California gray whale swim by this very spot one night. Life doesn’t get any better.
The other restaurant, Don Eddie’s, is on the opposite side of the Old Mill Hotel. It’s not as fancy as the Molina Viejo, but I think the food is even better. If you call ahead, Don Eddie (he’s a real guy) will prepare a buffet-style meal for your group. We do that whenever I’m leading a group tour, and the breakfasts are particularly fabulous.
An incredible Don Eddie dish….shrimp and pasta. Bring an appetite!The seafood medley at Don Eddie’s. The food is off the charts. The prices are ridiculously low. Hey, that’s Baja.
El Rosario
El Rosario is the last town on the Transpeninsular Highway before you enter the Valle de los Cirios. That’s an experience like no other; it’s the barren and beautiful wilderness that is Baja. But I digress; the focus here is the dining, and El Rosario (as any Bajaeno knows) means two things: Top off at the Pemex (it’s the last one for 200 miles if you’re headed south), and eat at Mama Espinosa’s.
Decals and more at Mama Espinosa’s. Get one for your motorcycle; people will know you’re the real deal.I’ve parked my bike here many, many times.
Mama Espinosa’s is a Baja icon, a legend among many Baja legends, and perhaps their most legendary dish is the old gal’s lobster burritos. This little tiny spot is a “must see” on any Baja trip. It’s literally world famous. It’s a stop on the Baja 1000. There are zillions of decals from folks who race and travel Baja. It’s got a cool wall-sized Baja map so you can get a feel for where you are. But you really don’t need the map. Ride into Baja and you know…you’ve arrived. You’re in Heaven.
Lobsters at Mama Espinosa’s. Folks, this is the closest you’ll ever get to Heaven without a one-way ticket!Mama’s chicken burritos, my personal favorite.
Mama Espinosa’s is known for their lobster burritos, but my favorite is Mama’s chicken burritos. I think they’re great. The bottom line is this: You won’t go wrong with anything on Mama Espinosa’s menu. It’s all good.
So there you have it. The next push south on our culinary cruise will take us all the way down to Guerrero Negro, and the best fish tacos on the planet. I’m not exaggerating. Trust me on this. But that’s a story for the next installment of our ExhaustNotes dining tour.
Here’s an interesting story that popped up on my news feed earlier today. It seems an errant scooter rider, a young one at that, was stopped by the Maine State Police riding his scooter on the Maine Turnpike late last night, using only his cell phone for a headlight. There must be more to the story, because after stopping him, the police gave the guy a lift to his destination some 70 miles away. I can’t make stuff up this good, and if you doubt my word, you can read the original story here.
So that story naturally pulled my attention to a somewhat similar experience with my good buddy Baja John and his girlfriend Annie. This goes back to 2006 again, shortly after John bought a place right on the Sea of Cortez in Bahia de Los Angeles. Literally, right on the sea. Oceanside housing. It’s awesome.
Casa Baja Juan, in Bahia de Los Angeles.Baja Juan, probably telling a fish story, in his back yard.
I had just bought a new Triumph Tiger. John and Annie invited me to their new place. Who can say no to an offer like that?
My Triumph. On the ride down to Bahia de Los Angeles, we hit very dense fog. We stopped and waited for it to lift. At one point it was so thick I couldn’t see the ground.
Here’s where the story gets interesting. When John bought the Casa Baja Juan, it came with a VW bus. John worked on it for a week and got it running, and it became his get-around-town wheels. He never registered it, so it had no plates, but it was cool. I love old VWs, especially the buses.
The VW bus that came with Baja John’s oceanside estate. Lights? We don’t need no stinkin’ lights!
That night, we took the VW and went to dinner at the best taqueria in town, just a short distance away…
A typical Baja roadside restaurant. You can get some mighty good food in these places.
John, Annie, and I had a great dinner, a few Tecates, and then it was time to head back to his place. There was a problem, though. The sun had set, and the VW had no headlights. The three of us pondered this situation a while, and then John remembered he had a flashlight.
John handed the flashlight to Annie and she hung out the passenger window, lighting the way as we rolled down a dirt road to John’s house. We couldn’t see squat (the flashlight was pitifully weak), but we were laughing so hard we didn’t care.
Then we drove past another restaurant on that dirt road. Imagine that: Another restaurant on that same dirt road. Then I saw who was sitting under the veranda as we went by. Uh oh, I thought.
There were three Mexican police officers having dinner, sitting out front, just a few feet away as we passed. The police officers saw us, we saw them, and Annie waved, using the flashlight, which I thought would only accentuate the obvious: We had no lights and the VW wasn’t registered.
The police? They waved back, holding up their cervezas in a salute to our ability to adapt, improvise, and overcome.
Ah, Baja….
Sunrise, the next morning, looking east over the Sea of Cortez.
Just over 45 years ago when I was getting out of the Army, I interviewed for a job with US Gypsum in Sweetwater, Texas. I was mustering out from Fort Bliss (near El Paso), and I wanted to stay in the Lone Star State. US Gypsum seemed like a nice outfit and the people who interviewed me were great, but I wasn’t too sure about living in Sweetwater (a town I had never heard of before my interview). I had a good interview, the US Gypsum folks took me to lunch and peppered me with more questions, and they offered me a job. I asked about what it was like living in Sweetwater, and what people did around there when they weren’t working.
It was the right question to ask. Up to this point it had been kind of a standard tell-me-your-strengths/tell-me-your-weaknesses interview. But when I asked that question, everyone started talking about the Rattlesnake Roundup, becoming more and more excited as they spoke. The Roundup, they explained, is kind of like a bass-fishing contest. “The boy who won the Roundup last year brought in nearly 3500 pounds of rattlers…” one of my hosts told me.
I was stunned. In four years of crashing around the Texas desert in armored personnel carriers and jeeps, I had seen exactly three rattlesnakes, and they weren’t very big ones. 3500 lbs? That’s a lot of snakes, I thought.
“How can you find 3500 pounds of snakes in a day?” I asked.
“We strip mine the gypsum,” one of the USG guys told me. “Our boys just bulldoze up the earth. Every once in a while, these old boys will turn up a snake den,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “They look around to make sure no one else has seen them, they mark the location, they cover it up, and then when the Roundup rolls around, they know exactly where to go…”
You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had no idea such things existed. Snake dens? For real?
Suddenly, all the rattlesnake kitsch I had seen (but not really noticed) at the airport, the hotel, the US Gypsum plant, and even at the restaurant’s cash register (belts, belt buckles, bolo ties, hats…all based on rattlesnake skins, rattlesnake heads, and rattlesnake fangs) started to make sense.
Snake dens? Seriously?
I experienced three revelations simultaneously: Sweetwater was not a town for a nice Jewish boy from New Jersey (that would be me), these people were seriously into rattlesnakes, and at some point in my life I had to get back to Sweetwater to see the Rattlesnake Roundup.
That interview with US Gypsum was in 1977. I told the above story three decades later when we had a couple of friends, Marty and Liesel, over for dinner. Marty listened intently. Marty is paid to be a good listener (and he is), but I could see my story was getting more than his usual intense focus. Marty was mesmerized.
After dinner my wife and I took Marty and his wife home. By the time we returned to our home, I had an email from Marty. He had found the Rattlesnake Roundup on the Internet, it was still going strong, and he thought it would make for a good motorcycle ride.
Hey, why not?
Sweetwater is about 200 miles west of Fort Worth, which means it’s about 1200 miles east of Los Angeles. That’s two days by motorcycle…two long, boring days of droning along I-10 for 1000 miles, and then I-20 for the last 200 miles. Like I said, why not?
Sweetwater originally started the Roundup because the town had a serious rattlesnake infestation. As one of the locals explained it, the snakes would slither right into town. The Sweetwaterians (is that a word?) were experiencing five or six snakebite cases a month. The idea was to thin the herd. Hence the Rattlesnake Roundup. When Marty and I went there in 2006, they had already been doing this for nearly 50 years. As the photo below shows, though, there are a lot of rattlesnakes still out there.
Whoa…this is the stuff of nightmares!Fascinating, no? Western Diamondbacks at the Sweetwater Annual Rattlesnake Roundup.
The Sweetwater Annual Rattlesnake Roundup was a big show. Those pens you see above? There were dozens of them inside Sweetwater’s Nolan Coliseum. There were all kinds of exhibits and zillions of snakes. Zillions, I tell you. Snake handling. Rattlesnake milking. You could touch a snake if you wanted to (while the handler held it, of course…I took a pass on that one). Grand fun.
Woohoo!Wanna touch? The handlers were impressive. They took the live snakes around to the spectators. You could touch them. You could. Not me.There were a couple of pens where the snakes were being milked for their venom. The handlers put the snakes’ fangs over a funnel, and then squeezed the venom glands. About an ounce of amber-colored fluid (almost like thin honey) came out of each snake. It was impressive. The photo ops were amazing.
One of the spectators asked a snake handler the inevitable question: “How many times have you been bit?”
“Never,” they said. I imagine they were telling the truth. I think in that profession, one mistake is all it takes to get into a new line of work.
Another spectator asked how long it took the snakes to replace their venom.
“About two weeks,” the handlers answered, “but these boys ain’t got two weeks…”
We would soon see what they meant.
The look on this young lady’s face says it all. This was one hell of a show.Good times. Good photo 0ps. Everyone there was building up a good bank of stories.David Sager, master story teller, doing his thing. The largest Western Diamondback ever brought in to the Roundup was 81 inches long! That’s just under 7 feet! Bad dreams to follow…
David Sager put on quite a demonstration. He’s a good old boy, with a Texas twang, a flair for the dramatic, and a sense of humor.
Sager told a story about road runners and rattlesnakes. The former eats the latter. The roadrunner flaps its wings and entices the snake to strike at it futilely and repeatedly. The road runner is faster than the rattlesnake’s strike, and that’s saying something. We saw the handlers induce the snakes to strike several times. The snakes are faster than the eye can follow (more on that in a bit).
A road runner will tease the snake to strike repeatedly, and ultimately, the snake will tire and simply coil up. When it does this, the road runner then hops on top and pecks at the snake’s head until the snake puts its head under its coils. The snake becomes docile, and the roadrunner pecks at the snake’s head to kill it (and ultimately, to eat it). The snake keeps its head low in its coils, trying to hide from the roadrunner. Beep beep, Dude. Time’s up.
Mr. Sager played roadrunner for us. He put a rattler on a table and started lightly pecking at its head with a snake-handling rod. The rattler immediately coiled up, entered a trance-like state, and hid its head under its coiled body. If you think that’s something, read on…
Sager then swept the snake off the table with his right hand, and caught it in his left. Yep, he picked up a rather large, very much alive rattlesnake in his bare hand! That’s the snake’s head peeking out on the right side of this photo.
Is the roadrunner gone? The phrase “not for all the tea in China” comes to mind.
Mr. Sager explained that rattlesnakes sense heat, and he proved his point by irritating the snake with a long orange balloon. The snake dodged and weaved, trying to get away from the balloon.
Dodging, weaving, and trying to stay away from the balloon. Quit bugging me!
Sager then pulled the balloon away from the snake, rubbed his hand on the balloon’s end to warm it up just a scosh, and started to move the balloon back toward the snake. The rattlesnake struck instantly. It happened in the blink of an eye. Less than the blink of an eye. Their strike is very fast, faster than you can see. The balloon exploded with an amplified bang. Grown men screamed. I was one of them. That, my friends, was a rattlesnake strike!
Look at those fangs! They are about an inch long. Check out the rear-slanting teeth, too! It would be hard to break free of that grip, and that’s the idea. A desert rat, a small rabbit, whatever. It ain’t breaking free.
The Roundup even has a beauty pageant, and yep, there was a Miss Snake Charmer 2006. This was a major event in west Texas. I thought it was great.
Miss Snake Charmer 2006.It was a 1200-mile motorcycle ride to get to Sweetwater, and it was worth it. A tiara, a banner, and camo slacks. Where else are you going to find this?
Back in 2006, I was using a Nikon D70, one of Nikon’s first digital cameras. I was getting great shots and I was having a blast. Motorcycles. Rattlesnakes. Pretty girls. Texas. Life just doesn’t get any better.
Note the pit just behind the snake’s nostrils. That’s how it senses heat. It also senses vibration with millions of nerve endings in its belly. And sight. And smell, of a sort. When a rattler flicks its tongue out, it’s gathering molecules in the air that it then flicks against the roof of its mouth. The Jacob’s organ (hey, I can’t make this up) “smells” the molecules. It’s called sensor fusion (sight, vibration, smell, and heat), and it’s how the rattler decides if it’s going to strike. Sensor fusion is a concept we used in the smart munitions business, but that’s a story for another day.I held my camera directly over this bucket of snakes, snapping away like the happy photographer I was, until one of the handlers told me the snakes could reach me from there.
The Roundup ran like a production line. The snakes came in, they were weighed, they were milked for their venom, they were slaughtered, they were butchered, and then the skins and the meat went their separate ways.
All of this was done right in front of us. It was definitely not a place for the squeamish, but we were in Texas. Ain’t no snowflakes in Texas.
The end of the line for the stars of the show…ye old chopping block. You thought you were having a rough day?The world needs belts, boots, bolo ties, and hat bands. And food.Even the heads are used…there’s a lot of belt buckles and bolo ties in that bucket.
The Roundup had a long line of people waiting to buy fried rattlesnake for lunch. I looked at Marty. He looked at me. In for a penny, in for a pound.
Nope, it didn’t taste like chicken.
Marty tried one bite and spit it out. That was enough of a testimonial for me. I didn’t try it. Marty’s reaction and the rancid odor were enough.
The Roundup was fun, but a half day was plenty. The weather in Sweetwater was balmy…a sunny and humid 80 degrees. Marty and I decided to head back home. We had a 1200-mile freeway drone in front of us.
We hit I-20 and just kept going. We wanted to make New Mexico to get a jump on the ride for the next day. We cruised through El Paso at around 8:00 p.m., and stopped in Las Cruces for a quick dinner. Lordsburg, New Mexico, was our target that night. It was dusty, dark, very cold, and the wind was awful, with gusts in excess of 60 miles per hour. We were leaning our bikes at 30 degrees just to maintain a straight line.
We finally made Lordsburg, only to find that the Days Inn where we thought we would stay had no vacancies. You know the drill…you see the sign outside that says “No Vacancy,” but you have to go inside and ask anyway. “Everything is sold out,” the lady behind the counter said. “There isn’t an empty room in town, what with all this wind.” All the truckers were getting off the road due to the high winds.
We had passed an older motel on the east end of Lordsburg on the way in. Willcox, Arizona, was the next town up the road, but it was 80 miles west and I knew I couldn’t ride another 80 miles in this wind. We doubled back and tried the older hotel. We got lucky. We nailed the last room they had.
Daybreak in Lordsburg, New Mexico.
It snowed that night. We had a good breakfast the next morning and waited a couple of hours until the snow turned to sleet, and then we were off. We pushed through a combination of snow, sleet, and cold rain for the next 60 miles. We made Arizona (where the sun came out), and then rode another several hundred miles through sunny (but cold) weather.
The Roundup was a bit of a shocker. Lots of venomous snakes and the butchering was kind of brutal, but it was fun. And, no matter what anyone says, the myth that rattlesnake tastes like chicken just ain’t so. Sometimes I wonder…what if I had taken that job in Sweetwater? Would I be out there, rounding up rattlesnakes, instead of writing the blog?
