I wake up early, I seem to be leaning toward going down and rising with the sun. Glad I did, when I opened my door the orange glow of the rising sun was directly in front. I could see the houses and trees of the village across the street silhouetted. On a tall power pole a pair of nested Osprey's were just changing shifts, or bring food to the little ones. What a great start to the day.

I fired up my small netbook and attached my GPS device to get an exact reading of where I really was. The exact reading was 28.2827 N, 113.9966W, but it's the only hotel near Santo Domingo, so should anyone else want to use this stop, it's not hard to find. There is only about another 25 miles to reach the border between the two Mexican states of Baja California and Baja California Sur, and the bigger city of Guerro Negro.

Near Guerro Negro are some large bays that the Grey Whale uses for winter breeding and nursing waters, there are several signs advertising tour boats that will take you out into the bays for a close up. As interesting as that would be, my day's riding will take me beyond that.

The Baja highway moves from west to east on this section, you rise up to the high backbone desert mountains and weave in an around the bigger ones. The preferred track seems to be to follow the spine of any ridge lines, so the views are spectacular on either side of the road. I remember one long stretch that threatened to rattle my filling out. Not really any large potholes, just a tough torn up surface that had been driven over by several years of large heavy duty trucks.

It's not that Mexico is ignoring this highway, quite the contrary. There is a lot of bridging work being done. I've long heard of the roads washing out after nearly every rain storm, but that will be far fewer when they complete the many projects they have going on. I passed one long series bridges over a wide dry valley that will soon carry the traffic up over the dry river bed and allow the flash flood waters to gush underneath, instead of over it as was the practice previously.

I passed the village on San Ignacio, the canyon walls close in on the interior spot and form an oasis that that now has the valley filled with Date trees, and plenty of resorts taking advantage of the plentiful water near the surface.

I would guess it was about 10 to 15 miles in the distant when I first could spot the Sea of Cortez from the mountain I was still on. The descent is quite spectacular, lots of twists, narrow cliff hanging kind of road. I was behind a large tanker truck that either spotted another truck coming up the grade or they use a common radio channel to announce their position, but in either case, the truck halted in the lane until the rising truck made it up past us, then he took his turn in going down.

Where the road hits the Sea is the town of Santa Rosalia. Originally established as a mining town, and there appears to be much of the same still tearing up the sides of the mountains around it.

The highway follows the coastline down to about 60 miles south of Mulege, although not necessarily along the waters edge. Many points you are high about the beach looking down at a line of motor homes parked right on the beach. They seem to be ideal place to camp, although getting some of the larger rigs to that spot could be an ordeal.

My stopping point for the night was Loreto. Again, on the Sea itself, with a well developed malecon strip. I was trying to find the hotel I picked out the Lonely Planet guide book, and was on my second lap around the town when I pulled over to check my small map again. A fellow pulls up along side and asks if I am looking for a hotel. “Yes, I tell him, I'm looking for the 'Posada Del Martin'.

“That's my hotel, it's on the next block, you can park your bike in the back.” Gotta love it when a plan comes together.

The Lonely Planet rated this hotel as the best deal for the money in town, and without having checked everything else out, I am pretty sure that claim still stands.

The room only cost 350 pesos, but had great WiFi in the room, and while there was not table to set up in the small space, the center of the hotel has a small courtyard with chairs and tables I could use. In the morning another table was set up with a coffee pot full of the what I needed to get going.

Another day over, and I'm beat. The sun goes down, and that's my signal to hit the bed as well. Many more miles to go, and I'm told the next section is pretty boring.