Livingstone Journal

06/09/2026

This memory popped up on my Facebook feed this morning. It's hard for us to believe that our first trip in Livingstone was 13 years ago! Our inaugural trip was to the White Rim Trail in Canyonlands, Utah. Our goal was to test our limits and that trip succeeded! Parts of it remain the scariest (most challenging/dangerous) places we've ever driven!

We've really been missing life on the road, so it's past time for a road trip. Bruce is busy getting Livingstone ready, and if you look at the bottom of the attached photo you'll get a hint about where we're traveling this July to September.

02/14/2025

Our Valentine's Day greeting to Livingstone (a Phoenix Pop-up camper) was published in Truck Camper Magazine today. 🥰

11/08/2023

Our trip to Africa in Livingstone just got featured in Truck Camper Magazine! (Such great memories!)

The Heimbigners share their preparations, critical apps, safety experience, route, roadside repairs, and the mind-bending wonders of Africa.

03/21/2022

Happy first day of spring! We made it home about 5 p.m. today. We were gone 4 weeks and 1 day--almost to the minute. Bruce drove most of the 5,325 miles (8,570 km), but Laurie put in more hiking miles--over 40 (64km).

Two days before we left home the snow was thinning close to our house. It was still over a foot (.3m) deep in our woods though, so Laurie went snowshoeing. When we got home today the snow was almost totally gone, even in the shadiest places. We sure timed our trip to sunny Baja just right. We were ready for spring when we left, we got it in Baja, and now it's just about here! (Though we'll still get 1 or 2 more snow storms before spring is here to stay.)

Next trip: central Oregon and ??? in early July. We have some repairs to complete in Livingstone before then (including a new window, troubleshooting some electrical problems, and replacing the refrigerator (which suffers from broken rack supports after being thoroughly shaken in Africa), but even though we just got home, we can hardly wait to get on the road again.

03/18/2022

Our next stop on our way north was the very rugged Tabor Canyon. 4 years ago it had deep pools of water, but, after 2 years of virtually no rain in this area the pools were mostly dry.

03/17/2022

Our goal after leaving Cabo Pulmo was to return to the beach where we met Tina & Odo, overlanders from Germany. While we were in the south we discovered that the beach does have a name: Playa Regalito Sur. And it is on iOverlander. The 5" (13 cm) drop-off from the highway to the sand road is a bit of a deterrent to a lot of drivers though.The drive between LaPaz and this beach has one of the curviest mountain roads in Baja. It was a really fun drive in our 5-speed Jetta. Not so fun in Livingstone.

03/17/2022

We continued south from La Paz to Laurie's very favorite place in all of Baja: Playa Los Arbolitos--now part of a national park as well as a marine preserve that boasts the northern most coral reef in North America. The last 25 minutes of the road is unpaved and BUMPY(!!!) but it's worth it. This beach is fabulous for snorkeling in the summer, but is much windier and cooler in the winter/spring so we weren't able to get out our snorkels or kayaks. We WERE able to hike to "Dinosaur Egg Beach", though. You know you've arrived as soon as you start seeing its egg shaped boulders.

03/16/2022

La Paz is our favorite city in Baja. It doesn't have separate local and tourist sections--instead it's all mixed up and you really get the flavor of a Mexican city instead of feeling like you're in a sanitized "Little America" like you do in Los Cabos and Ensenada.

03/13/2022

Livingstone turns 9 years old this month and is starting to show his age. The water pump hadn't been turning on consistently so Bruce took a look and discovered that the screws that hold it together were stripping out the aluminum. Conclusion: unrepairable. He replaced it with the pump to the outside shower, BUT that pump had been our primary water pump until it started having problems with loose internal wiring somewhere in Africa. That pump got us 3 more days before it quit working. Fortunately, we were about to leave for Loreto. It's a popular place for sport fishing so our hope was that one of their marine shops would have a replacement pump since boats use similar water pumps to Livingstone's. We made a plan: go eat tacos at El Rey Del Taco--the best tacos we've eaten--THEN go hunt for a marine store.
In Loreto we found a parking space big enough for Livingstone a few blocks away from El Rey. As Laurie was getting out of the truck she noticed a store directly across the street called Ferre Mar. Since a hardware store is called a ferretería in Spanish and mar is the word for sea, she wondered if it might be marine hardware store. But tacos were the first priority so that's where we went. Our fish and carne asado tacos were every bit as delicious as we had remembered. On full happy stomachs we went the store across from Livingstone which was indeed a marine supply store. It had just the pump we needed. Hallelujah!
We got a space at a tiny RV park just a block from the tourist section in the center of town and celebrated by shopping for Mexican pottery for the house then went out to a delicious dinner. Since he's had a LOT of practice it didn't take Bruce long at all next morning to install the new pump. Running water is a glorious thing!
Then it was beach time.

03/13/2022

After we were done with our trials and tribulations at Mulegé, we spent the week beach hopping. We started out at Playa La Escondida--"the hidden beach"--but it turns out that it isn't hidden anymore. An enterprising local had improved the narrow rocky road leading to it and added palpas and pit toilets. He comes around weekly to collect the camping fee from whoever is there that day. It was crowded with mostly long-term term campers spending the winter there who gladly pay $52 for the week.
From there we went to Playa El Requeson--a beautiful beach with a sand spit leading out to a nice little desert island. As it always Requeson was crowded with campers, but we love it anyway.