Slow Baja - Called To Serve With Doug And Shannon Miller

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Doug and Shannon Miller return to Slow Baja to share their experiences of serving others while traveling. During their first family vacation to Baja, a flat tire forced them to camp next to Rancho Sordo Mundo, a home for the deaf and mute. Meeting the director and the students changed the course of their trip—and their lives—sparking 19 years of service-based travel.As we take a moment to reflect on gratitude at this time of year, enjoy this inspiring conversation with Doug and Shannon Miller. Special thanks to Azure O’Neil for the introduction.To learn more and support the places mentioned in today’s show:World’s Children Foundation click here.Casa Hogar Mulege BCS click here.FFHM Orphanage Vicente Guerrero BC click here.Rancho Sordo Mundo, Deaf Ministry, click here.PAW Animal Clinic Mulege BCS click here.To contact Shannon Miller about Baja service travel, click here.Support the Slow Baja Podcast here.Buy Baja Bound Insurance here.

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches and hands down my favorite tequila. Well, if you've been listening to me for a while, you know I'm an absolute minimalist when it comes to Baja travel, but the one thing I never leave home without is a good old paper map. And my favorite is the beautiful, and I mean beautiful, Baja Road and Recreation Atlas by benchmark maps. It's an oversized 72-page book jam-packed with details, and now you can get it from me. me at slowbaha.com. That's right. You can get it in the slowbaha shop. And in fact, you better get two, one for your trip planning at home and one for your Baja rig. And if you love maps and you can't get enough of them like me, let me tell you about two sites I am absolutely obsessed with. Eastview

Maplink and LongitudeMaps.com. Whatever you're looking for in maps, it's there. From the entire benchmark collection to Baja wall maps, to custom maps. You'll find it all at longitudemaps.com or eV maplink.com. You know I've long said it, ask your doctor if Baja's right for you. Well, if you've been hankering to get down to Slow Baja with me, you got to check out the Adventures tab at Slowbaha.com. All my trips are there, from my famed fall vintage extravaganza to my winter and summer expeditions which are open to trucks of any age. You know, on a Slow Baja expedition, your meals are always included, which really does take the sting out of camping.

And when we get off the trail, let me tell you, we have the happiest of happy hours. If good dirt roads, private campsites, ranch stays, great food, and great people sounds like you're kind of fun, well, you've got to check out the Adventures tab at Slowbaha.com. but don't delay. These trips are small, they're highly immersive, and they will sell out. And folks, just so you know, I am always here for you for your Baja trip planning questions. One question, 100 questions, the easy way to get me is slowbaha.com slash contact. And if you'd like to go to Baja and you don't want to go by yourself, you don't have a vintage vehicle, my winter trip doesn't work out for you, I am happy to talk to you about organizing and leading a private guided tour.

I've done it. I've loved it. The pictures are over there at Sondage. slowbaha.com slash adventures and you can check them out and if you've got some questions let's talk thanks for tuning in to today's slow baha maybe you can tell from the sound of this recording i am not in the shielman recording booth today i am mobile i'm just back from a week in baha doing some pre-running for the slow baha winter expedition and i am actually in the car i'm heading up to Dakota to see my in-laws. That's right, snowy North Dakota, about as far as you can get from Baja and still be in the United States. I don't know if you can hear that. That's Frank. That's Frank, my dog, whining that he wants to get going. He doesn't want to be sitting here with me recording

this right now. But I'm so thankful as we head into the season, and I just want to share a few things with you that I am grateful for. I've got some guys who are volunteers on my Slow Baja vintage trip. Edgar, JP, and Yvonne. They're fluid on both sides of the border from Tijuana, now living in the States, and they've started bikes for Baja. They teamed up with the Baja Bound Foundation so you can make a tax-deductible donation, but it's a pretty simple idea. They round up bicycles from all over Southern California donate bicycles. They get them fixed up, and then they put them in the hands of people who are truly in need, people who have no transportation at all, zero transportation, and people who are walking miles to school or to work.

JP was telling me a story about an 80-year-old man who burst into tears when he got his bicycle so he can get to work faster and get home faster and be with his family more. 80 years old. He got his first bicycle. Bikes for Baja, an amazing group, link in the show notes. All right, well, today's show is with Doug and Shannon Miller,

and they're doing amazing work as well. Great family. I've had them on Slow Baja before. It was kind of a loud, busy interview. We were in Ensenada during Nora, and there's all sorts of street noise and chopping of tacos and such in the background. But this conversation, we had a chance to see them at their home in Oregon.

I was up there for Overland Expo Pacific Northwest. And Noah and I sat down with them. Noah was on the camera, and I was in front of the camera when we recorded this interview. And Doug and Shannon are just beautiful people. They have been called to serve, and do they serve? They serve with all their heart and with all their family. And now Shannon is the executive director of world's children. And anyways, we'll get into all of that in today's Slow Baja.

Hey, Slow Baja. We're in Sisters, Oregon. I'm at your house. Doug and Shannon Miller making their second appearance on the Slow Baja podcast. A lot quieter this trip. We don't have the chopping of the tacos behind us. We don't have the buses or the modos. But it's really a delight to see you to and have, to see you to again,

because I just saw you at Overland Expo and to have this moment to really kind of catch up on what you're doing, what's going on with your family. And I was so taken, Shannon, by your talk at Overland Expo about giving back while traveling. I'd really like to take a deep dive. Feel free to cover everything we covered previously. Nobody listens to that old stuff. So I really want to just talk about, A, your family, your approach to parenting, which is astonishing and wonderful, how you got to Baja, how Baja really changed your lives. And then just seeing Parker speak so eloquently at the roundtable, 19 years old, you told me he was scattered and this and that, comes in looking pretty hip, dressed, you know, definitely is his own person.

and then he just speaks so deeply from the heart. It just kind of brought tears to my eyes, honestly. So Doug, Shannon, delightful to see you. Talk to me a little bit about that, well, let's jump into that first trip. You're heading down to Baja, and you have kids in a minivan packed the gills. And one, am I correct in this fresh out of open heart surgery? No, that's our second trip. That's the second trip.

Oh, yeah. All right. Well, you know, again, like I was speaking to a guy after my Baja 101 lecture, and he says, Baja, is it good, would you recommend it for kids? And I thought immediately about you guys. So take it away, Shannon. And that first trip, truck pack to the gills, minivan pack to the gills, kids wedding themselves, insanity, flat tires, I just, let's cover it all.

Yeah. So when we got married, I had never even really considered or thought about Baja ever. but Doug had a friend who had gone to Baja in college and so it always had kind of this dream of going down to Baja and so I don't even know what caused us to decide to go with a one-year-old and a two-year-old totally logical yep over Christmas but we decided to go on a week 10 days

it was about two weeks yeah and we talked friends into going with us who had slightly older kids and so we took two kids in diapers to Baja tent camping yeah packed to the gills like we would stick them in their car seats and then stick stuff all around them because we had so much stuff and we were I was kind of scared of Baja honestly like packed like boxed milk and all canned fruit and was like we're not going to eat anything because you hear about people getting like stomach bugs and all these different things and it was.

chaos, but we fell in love with it. So I don't think we slept at all because Parker, who was a year and a half at that point, would roll over us in the tent because he got so excited about seeing stars. So he'd yell stars and roll and then roll again. And yeah, he would wet the car seat. Yes, I don't want to throw Parker over the bus here. He seems like he's recovered from this period in his life. Yes, yes. Pick it up. He would, he put up put a lot on that trip. Yeah. So we would line both of their car seats with a garbage bag, a towel, a garbage bag, a towel,

because we weren't quite sure where we would have a place to stop to change diapers, which worked out pretty well, actually. And then Doug would oftentimes be like... A mother's guide to Baja, Shannon Miller. Doug would be taking sleeping bags into the Sea of Cortez to rinse them because they sometimes would be wet at night. And so it was crazy, but it was so fun. And just the sunrises and sunsets with kids and the simplicity of all of it that we could just make all these memories with them was worth every second of the hard stuff for sure.

Well, I had a family experience with the minivan, two two-year-olds and a four-year-old and a flat tire on day one. And I remember you had a seminal flat tire early on your trip, and my wife freaked out. Like, we're on a dirt road that's half mile long, San Catene, had a night in a stinky hotel, driving up to the main road, and we've got a flat. And I said, all right, well, as soon as I change the tire, there will be a tire repair shop within a mile of the road. They're everywhere. We'll get that tire patch and we'll be fine. And we never had another flat tire. And 2001, I'm going to say it, 24 years later, I've never had a flat tire.

Seriously? Wow. I have never personally had another. We have had so many flat tire. I don't know. I don't know. I carry glue tread. Andy, if you're listening on Amy from Glutread, I carry a glue tread. God bless it. I haven't had to use it. But pick it up. You had a very, you know, unnerving experience of early in the trip, you had a flat tire. Yeah. Yeah. Early in our trip, we were traveling kind of in the, in the Guadalupe Valley area,

and just so nervous. And everything just feels uncomfortable and almost threatening when you're first down there and not knowing what to expect and so yeah we got a flat tire in our minivan and of course kids in there loaded like crazy and so we just had to pull over off kind of off the side of a highway in a gravel spot and I think getting out of the car in that situation being so fresh in Baja it just felt really vulnerable and all these fears kind of came and it wasn't long before a car pulled over with Mexicans in it. And I'll admit, at first, I didn't know what to do with that. But what they were doing was they were checking to make sure we were okay and offering their help.

Mindset check. Yeah. Yeah. And suddenly, yeah, their mindset just does a 180. And you realize, oh, we're part of a community that are helping. And so we spent some time there getting the tire changed. And then we had to figure out what to do with the flat tire. So do you want to share the rest of that?

Sure. So we didn't make it to where we thought we were going to camp that night. Of course. But we, yeah, yeah, on the map, paper map. Hold your plans loosely, I think, is your exact phrase, which I've adopted. Hold your plans loosely. Yes. We wound up camping across the street from something called Ranto Sordramudo, and we didn't know what it was.

You didn't make it very far. No. That's Palli de Guadalupe. Yeah. Yeah, you're an hour in. Yeah. Yeah. And so got there right at sunset.

It was like an orange grove. It was real strange, but we were like, okay, this is fine. I think we're safe. And the next morning, we were like, what do we do with the tire? And so we were like, well, this Rancho Sordomudo place, maybe we can ask them. And so we go across the street. It's a school for the deaf and mute. And the director, Luke, takes Doug and leaves to the village to get the tire fixed.

And I'm there with, at this point, there's three kids, our three kids. Parker, while we had the flat tire, covered himself from head to, toe with blue marker so he looks real strange again great kid um and i think he this is our second trip i think so two three because at two edward covered himself with brown marker so he'd look like the other kids oh wow isn't that amazing wow like he took a brown you know there were those smelly markers yeah he covered his whole like face as a two-year-old could so he'd look like the other kids yeah yeah pick it up yeah yeah yeah Yeah. So, the Blue Man Group.

Blue Man Group. They were all, our kids were all in little matching, like, fleece, one-colored outfits. So that was probably real strange, too. But, and we didn't know what to do. So, because the kids didn't speak English, obviously. And they were using Mexican sign language. Yeah, Spanish sign language. Crazy. Yeah. And so we just started to play peek-a-boo and play games. And we were there all day. Like, they fed us peanut butter. and jelly sandwiches and the kids the thing that was so cool is the kids from rancho sordomudo just swooped up our kids and loved them and so like they were carrying georgia around yeah and uh again it just piqued our interest of like there's amazing places like this in baha like

how do we find them and so it just changed to every town we drove into i was looking for is there a kids program is there an orphanage is there in anything around um and so it just started us going huh maybe this is more than we thought it was so you said something quite powerful in the previous conversation um i hope i wish i had the phrase exactly you said you're adoptive people and you're going to an orphanage which noah behind the camera over here he he He's had a very emotion-filled overland expo because he fell in love with the dog. Yes. And, you know, I have this thing, you know, I've adopted, whatever, five, six doxins now.

Like, if I go to a dog rescue in Baja, you can be sure if there's a dachshund there or one that appears to be partial dachshund, it's probably coming home with me. And I just have to do some fast talking when I get home. But you might actually, you know, decide that this child is the one that's coming home. That is a great, okay. So you adopted children from China. Yes. With some significant medical needs. Can we just kind of come into that background of being adoptive people who are now interacting with orphanages in Baja?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so take it away. Now we have three kids adopted from Baja and then one. China. Oh my gosh, yeah. China, not Baja. One biological. Freudian slip.

And so obviously, like, kids, kids in hard situations are just a big piece of our heart because we know where, like, some of the stories of our kids. And so our first experience in Baja was we, on Christmas Eve, we checked email because you had to go to internet cafes at that point in time. And a friend had emailed us and said, said, hey, there's an orphanage in Baja, and my parents used to volunteer there, gave the name and the address. And so we were heading home, and it was right on the way. And so we were like, well, I guess maybe we're supposed to stop.

And so we stopped with our little minivan at the office of this orphanage. And Doug and I are having this conversation of like, this is real weird, because we're obviously an adoptive family, and we're showing up. We don't know how much Spanish or English they speak. And Raven are... So you two are sweating the details. Yeah. Yes. And in the back, our daughter is like, she's five.

And she's like, let me out of the car. Let me out of the car. We think she has to go to the bathroom. So we let her out of the car. I'm getting out of the car behind her. And she runs into the office, pulls herself up over the counter and says, Jesus told us to serve the kids. And we were like, well, there it is.

There it is. And they were like, great. Let's give you a tour. And we spent about two hours there. getting a tour, talking about the place, and then they said, why don't you come back and volunteer? And they'd never had a family come before. And it was the last day that we were in Baja, and we were like, I guess we're coming back again. And so we did the next year. We came back and volunteered for a week at this orphanage. And I think that's really when, like, our heart

for giving back to Baja really started, was just, um, meeting, not only meeting these kids, but meeting these amazing people that work there and pour their lives out to make the lives of these kids better. It was just like, how can we be a part of it and not how can we be like the heroes in it, but how can we back these people up and support them really well. And unpack that a little bit because you spoke eloquently about that in your lecture at the Overland Expo. You're straight up. You say, if you need me to clean toilets, I'm here to help you out. So let me know. And you didn't get taken up on that offer.

But you really also came with sort of your American. We have all the answers mindset in check. And so pick it up. How did that week go? Yeah. Well, it was a little clunky to begin with because they'd never had a family volunteer. They'd had individuals volunteer. And we'd never been a family volunteering.

And so, like, figuring out. And ages of your kids, approximately. aren't we? Five, four, and two. Wow. So they just want you to take care of your family and stay out of the way. Yeah. Maybe Doug gets to do something, right? That's exactly the expectation. Yeah. You have your hands full, mama. Yep. Yep. You just take care of your kids. And so it took some conversations of like, well, but we want to help too. And so would it be okay if, you know, we had bubbles? Can I bring bubbles over and our kids can play you know can we um bring over paper and markers and so it was just a lot of like but trying to be really humble in it of like not demanding we're here so we want

this experience with the kids for our kids yeah yeah which is also a lot of sort of yeah interpretation of volunteering the way americans americans go into volunteering yeah we do these nice things for them but it's really about us yeah so that we can get the picture and feel good about ourselves and you know the them gets help too yeah yeah absolutely it's good both sides so I'm yeah yeah checking my judgments yeah yeah and yeah absolutely um but kind of what we found was these amazing house parents that so this orphanage the the kids are all in casas it's all like one big building but there's two house parents that are helping take care of like 12 kids and they're said spread out that way about a little over 100 kids and they were desperate for

a break and so it became oh yeah you want to do art with these kids give those house parents a break sure you know and so we kind of did this kind of back and forth learning each other and what would work and now they have lots of groups come and lots of families come which is really fun but like day four they were like we're going to give you a break get take a half day off and I don't know if it's because we were working really hard or because they didn't know what to do with us anymore But we hadn't been to the beach yet. And so we got in our little minivan, and we're driving to the beach. And I was like, hey, kids, we're going to do this really cool thing.

We're going to the beach. And this is just your immediate family. Yeah, immediate family. So you're in your car, heading to the beach. Yeah, crickets. Like, the kids are absolutely quiet. And then Raven in the back seat pipes up and says, I want to go back to the orphanage. The five-year-old Oracle.

Yeah. And we were like, huh? And I said, well, why, honey? She said, well, because that's where my friends are. And that was really pivotal for me as a mom to instead of going, oh, we're helping these kids in a really hard situation, it just changed the whole narrative to these are your friends. And these are our friends in Baja that we get to go and we get to go help and we get to go see them. And just watching our kids naturally lead in that way changed us. And, like, learning to let them lead instead of me always trying to create a teaching moment.

And that just followed for years and years and years we would go. And really, our kids would start to plan, like, what are we going to do with our friends while we're there? And so, one year, Raven did a paper airplane party. I think it was when she was six. She decided she was going to make 100 paper airplanes and bring them down to her friends so that they could have a fun party. And the next year she decided she was going to do hair bows. And so, like, we told our friends, like, if they wanted to donate hair bows. And so she did.

And, I mean, she covered those kids, boys and girls, their heads with hair bows, you know. And, but it was just fun stuff. Kids being kids relating to kids, kids, kids from different lives and different circumstances. Yeah. Feeling equality with their friends. Yeah, exactly. valuable. Yeah.

Can we leap ahead a little bit to Mr. Gary's dead stuff? Yeah. You spent some time. Originally, your motivation in getting to Baja with your family was like everybody else's recreation. You know, you want to go fish, you want to go windsurf, surf, surf, you know, whatever. You were doing the kiteboarding thing, and so that took you to the East Cape and pick it up, of those those trips and how they morphed from being about you and having some fun to things people you met and things that happened somewhat in my recollection in rapid succession yeah you described it well michael i think our a big motivation for going down there was we lived in the columbia gorge at the time it's a real mecca for

windsurfing and kiteboarding in the summer and it's pretty cold in the winter And so many people from that area flee to Baja in the winters. And we had friends who were in Lavantana and had described it to us. And that was a big early motivation for going down. And so our first, I think, three trips, we had all the kids and all the gear and all the camping stuff and all the food packed into our little car, plus a bunch of kiteboarding gear. Sure. And wetsuits and kites and boards.

And so we were really packed out for sure. And one thing about La Ventana, for example, is that it's windy all the time. And that's just wonderful for the sport that it caters to. But when your dad out there kiting all day long and mom is on the beach with kids and diapers. Sandblasted. And the wind is 25, 30 miles an hour. It's a real mixed experience, I'd say. That's a kind way to put, Doug.

Well, and we were camped right across the street from a bar that would play great loud music until about 2 a.m. But every year, of course, we'd camp on the way down and camp on the way back. And, you know, one of the beaches, Coyote Beach in Conception Bay, south of Mulehe became a special place for us. And even on our first trip, we were able to rent kayaks from and, an older gentleman there named Gary. He goes by people down there call him Raven Gary. He's pretty broadly known. And he's a real character, as many as you meet in Baja.

And he had some retired Nol's sea kayaks that we rented from him. So we developed a relationship with him on our first trip. And in subsequent trips, we would stop and we would spend an increasing amount of time on that beach. And at one point, I think after the third trip, we realized, you know, this is actually a great family experience. It's very relaxing. It's a good fit for us right now. And we can kiteboard back home and not have quite that mixed experience in Mexico. So for that season, we decided this is kind of where we wanted to plant our feet for a bigger chunk of time in the winters.

Well, if you want to plant your feet for a bigger chunk of time at Coyote Beach with Mr. Raven, Gary Raven, he's a Raven expert, yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Mr. Gary's dead stuff is what we're going to get into. You're going to need car insurance because you're going to drive down there. We're going to have a minute to talk about Baja Bound. We'll be right back with Shannon and Doug Miller talking about giving back on Slow Baja. Here at Slow Baja, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser south of the border. When we go, we'll be going with Baja Bound Insurance.

Their website's fast and easy to use. Check them out at BajaBound.com. That's Baja Bound.com, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. Hey, big thanks to those of you who've contributed to our Baja Baseball Project. You know, we launched our gear deliveries on my winter expedition. Michael and Matthew from Barbers for Baja, we're along for the ride, and we got to deliver that critically needed baseball gear up and down the peninsula. It was really, truly amazing.

And on my last trip, I got to go to the state baseball championships and see some of our alums playing, some recipients of the participants of the Baja Baseball Gear Deliveries, and congratulations to Guerrera Negro and Mula Hay, the Ostonarros and the Cardinalitos won silver and bronze at the state championships. Big stuff. It's really fun to be there and fun to see them. All right, well, please help us continue this vital work. Make your tax deductible donation at the Barbers for Baja.

Click, barbers for Baja.org. Click the Baseball and Baja link, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I really do. It is so amazingly gratifying to be able to give these kids this chance to keep playing this sport. Keep them on the field. Keep them out of trouble. Please check it out. Baseball in Baja link at barbers for Baja.org. Thank you. I want to tell you about these new Rocky Talkie radios that I absolutely love. Heavy duty, beautifully made, easy to program, easy to use. We had 28 people, 15 trucks on the Slow Baja Winter Expedition. You can hand these radios to anybody from a 14-year-old kid to an 80-year-old,

and they'll know how to use it. They are that well-designed. One charge lasted the entire week. We are never out of range. I happen to upgrade to the accessory whip antenna for my radio and for my sweeps radio, the Donovan Brothers. We were never out of contact. I can't say it strongly enough.

Rocky-talkie radios rockytockey.com. Check them out. Slow Baja approved. Hey, we're back with Doug and Shannon Miller having a little Italian joke series here and tell me about those days when you pivoted and you said

okay, it's not about me anymore. It's not about I really want to do this thing that I'm passionate about and my family's on a wind-swept, wind-wipped beach. You know, Shannon's inside probably some tent that's flapping over, getting pelted with sand every time they walked out, loud music till 2 o'clock in the morning. And you find this little slice of heaven, frankly, and people who are probably going there every year, so there's community. You've got beautiful

scenery, beautiful weather, and community. Pick it up from there. Yeah, so I think it was our third trip that we decided to spend longer at Coyote Beach. And I think we spent a couple of weeks, and then each year we added more until we were staying for six weeks at a time on Coyote Beach. And we'll get into homeschooling later. Yeah, beach schooling. Beach schooling. And, yeah, because the first couple of trips, we were moving so much that you're just like, and we were tent camping. So you're breaking down and packing up and setting up and just all of those things.

But we started to make friends on Coyote Beach. Really, it started with Raven Gary because he had a palapa that said Mr. Gary's dead stuff. And we ran into his kayaks, super random, but you find these things in Baja. There's a puppeteer in Baja, by the way. Wow. Outside of Mule Ha, she lives in the middle of nowhere and does puppet shows. I'm going to need all your Mulee Hay trip. There you go.

Trip tips. There's a lot to see there. I don't know if we could find her again, but she does. Yeah, a full iron bed under the stars in the middle of nowhere. She's great. But Mr. Gary's dead stuff. He's hilarious. He's one of our dear family friends still.

And he had a palapa where he had saved whale bones and puffer fish and everything. And our kids loved it. So it's a mini museum hands-on teaching. In a palpa. And Gary's cool. Gary's amazing. Yeah. And so Gary, like that relationship morphed into as we started being there longer, we had to do school. And so the kids' teachers would send their work with them, but we had to figure out science. And so we asked him if he would be their science teacher. And so he created a whole curriculum surrounding Coyote Beach, the tidal flats, gastropods. We have all these videos he would make it's called Gary's galloping gastropods, where he would pull gastropods out of the Sea of Cortez. into a little container and he would use a GoPro and he would video them for hours and then put

them back and then he would speed them up and at night we would watch them in his RV and he would teach our kids about like what gastropods do under the water when they get cool um so our daughter who's 21 is studying marine biology um really loves gastropods and is really cares about conservation And coming from Central Oregon without a direct access to the beach and marine biology, you'd wonder where all that came from. Yeah, yeah. It came from hours of Gary walking the beach with our daughter and being so excited for every little shell she picked up and every little thing. He would just celebrate their little broken sun-drenched shells that they would bring and tell them all about them. And so he wrote her college application, like, letters.

Letter, referral letter. Amazing. Amazing. And you were there a bit and found this community, and I really want to pull some stories out of you about Christmas and what was happening and bringing orphanage kids to a beach, which they live next to, which they never go to. So let's fast forward right into that experience. I think that's something, again, like you don't know where these kids are. where they live and what they experience and you can make your assumptions but your assumptions were kind of off a little bit yeah yeah so after I think it was the

third year of volunteering for a week each year at this orphanage further north and then Vicente Guerrero yeah and we started bringing our friends and all these things like it was always such a meaningful experience and then we had high-tail it down to see Cortez yeah for your vacation for your vacation you got to have a vacation yeah and we got there and you're not wired to have vacations you're wired to serve yeah yeah and we're sitting there on this beach with all of these retired friends like dear friends of ours now um with their big rigs and kayaks and paddle boards and all this stuff and we knew them well and knew that that they had good hearts and started

thinking like what would happen if we could like combine an orphanage experience with coyote beach and And so we had gotten to know Laura, who runs Casa Hogar in Muleje, and just kind of said, so we had been there a couple of times, said, hey, could we do a day where we brought the kids to the beach and talk to all the people camping there and they were open to sharing their kayaks. And so we take, at this point, we had a Ford expedition and a real janky old trailer that we were bringing down with us. And so I brought it to Casa Hagar and they piled all the kids like 20 of them into. the expedition. Sure. Seat belts? There are 20 seatbelts in that absolutely. I drove real carefully. We had tread on all four tires. That's a good start. Yeah, that's true. Working headlights and tail lights. So we'll go for there. Yeah. And you know, Coyote Beach is maybe a half an hour from Mule Ha. But about the 20 minute mark, you come around a

corner by Santa's Pack and you see the Sea of Cortez. That's a gorgeous view. Yeah. And these kids who had lived 20 minutes from this view started yelling, Lamar, Lamar! They're freaking out, and I'm like, oh gosh, don't stand up. But they had never seen the Sea of Cortez before. And we get to Coyote Beach, and they run out of the car, fully clothed, into the ocean. And they don't know how to swim.

Are they shuffling feet together? Yeah. They still had shoes on. And so the whole community was waiting for them. They knew we were bringing them. And so it started this chaos of like, mass rescue. Yeah, all the adults are in the water, making sure the kids aren't drowning. And like everybody's just launching their like kayaks and their paddle boards as fast as possible.

And the kids stayed all day. And it just broke down all these barriers of, you know, Mr. Gary's teaching a kid from the, from Kosovoire, how to kayak. And our friend Bill, Banjo Bill, is in the water with kids, like just having fun and splashing. and our friend Roy came in with Santa Claus for the day and just all these things, Azure showed up. I heard the story from Asher. She's there with her boyfriend and they've got motorcycles and they're giving kids rides on motorcycles.

Is that right? On the beach. Do I have that right? Yeah, yeah. And the parking lot-ish part of the beach. And so it just was this thing that blew all of our expectations out of the water. And so we did it again and again. And it actually happened even when we couldn't be there for about a decade

until Casa Hagar is figuring out some stuff with the kids and everything. But it became the thing that everybody looked forward to every year. Santa Claus at the beach. Good times. Doug's nodding his head. So those experiences, Doug, you checked your need to win surf. You found this amazing community. you're interacting with Kasa Hagar in Mulejahay, bringing kids out to the beach, pick it up from there.

It seems like everywhere you go, you're finding a new project. Yeah. Well, I think it just, the more you find things, the more you have eyes to see. But really, one of the times that we went down, I was super stressed out. We learned because we were then doing homework. with kids in a tiny trailer which is a whole thing that we needed to tap each other out like and like we could read when the one of us was getting stressed out so I was stressed Doug gave me a drink and said go walk the beach so I'm walking the beach and I'm wrestling with

like the idea of just sitting in vacation which is good and everything that we had experienced and and what are we supposed to do with all of it you know because it stirs up all this stuff and you of like all kinds of things and um so i met a couple that was walking their dog and we started talking and they said oh we just got back from this pacific trip you should come to our house and see the video which seems like a weird thing in america you don't just go into a stranger's house and watch a video but i did and uh they invited us to actually they no they hadn't just come from it they just made a video from the one last year and they're like we're going next week you that should come. And what it is is a week-long trip that goes on the Pacific side to 14 different

fishing villages and goat ranches and is Santa Claus. And the mobile Santa bringing gifts. Mobile Santa in Crocs. To the most remote spots. Yeah. But the background of it is yes, there are Santa Claus with donated stuffed animals and things and toothbrushes, but the people who spoke Spanish on the trip would meet with the teachers, the principals, the pastors of churches, anyone who is kind of a local leader and see what that town needed and then would go down to La Paz and talk to the government officials and say, hey, this school flooded and their floor isn't working right. Or there's a disabled person who needs adult diapers and they would get all of the things and do the trip in reverse to give the towns what they needed. What they needed. Yeah. Yeah. Powerful. Yeah.

So they went and advocated and came back with the goods. The things that they needed, yeah. Wow. I'm just going to let that sink in for a minute. Let's talk about your nuclear family. Tell me about your kids and how they came into your lives and some of the needs that they had. And again, people go to Baja and they think they need a vehicle that's built. for the Terminator, you know, that can go anywhere, do anything and never, ever have to interact

with humanity. So, you know, you've, you've been there and you've, it's been an evolution, but you've been there in a minivan pack to the gills and other things. But you're also there with kids, you know, sort of fresh out of open heart surgery, children you've adopted from China. Yeah. You're, you're pushing some, um, boundaries that most people say, what the heck? What are you two doing? Yeah. What are you doing? what are we doing that's a really good question um yeah our three kids from china all have um pretty significant medical stuff so one has a like a platelet disorder so a form of hemophilia and two have heart conditions so yeah the one of our trips georgia had just been two months out of open heart surgery

so just too much uh two months out of open heart surgery you're off to baha because it's good for family bonding. But this is what I will say. Can you say that one more time? Because it's good for family bonding. It is. Um, this face. She's not kidding. I'm not kidding. A smile is legit. These eyes are legit. But we're all going to be crying here before the end of this podcast. But I will say we have an amazing medical team that so we never go to Baja without conversations with each of their like specialists to say, are they stable enough? And what happens if something? something happens while they're down there. And so like OHSU, when Raven was littler and we were still figuring out her platelet disorder,

they actually had a translator on call. So if we needed something that they would be ready to talk with the hospitals in Baja, and we had a whole, we have the most robust first aid kit on the planet all the time. That is true. And Doug, do you have any special training on that? Or Shannon, do you have any special training on that? I mean, you've had to evolve personally. Yeah, yeah.

To be ready. Yeah. I was a backpacking guide in Colorado, and so had my wilderness first aid. And so that's helpful, but it's also like our doctors, they're so great. Like our cardiologist is like, hey, when can I come with you? And so we talked through all the scenarios, and they've talked me through. Like, this is what happens of this. And so, sorry, am I talking with my hands?

Do you much? No, it's the chopping the one. Whoops. Yeah, it's one of those things. But they... Love it all. So they work with us in all of it. So, but yeah, the first year, second year that we brought Georgia down, we did the Pacific

trip and we camped at the goat ranches and fishing villages. So we get to this goat ranch and it's like this deep in goat poop where we're supposed to camp. And I kind of lost it at that point. and was like she's so young she plays in the dirt like I can't do this and um it was really great like Doug was really great and we actually pivoted it was in La Purisma right uh-huh yeah it was and so we found a little hotel and stayed there instead and so you know there are moments where you have to kind of weigh it all but the experience is for our kids I mean Georgia wants to be go into the medical field she's a senior in high school and part of it is

is her own experience. She wants to be in some sort of a medical field where she can be with people long-term and show them compassion kids. And part of it's because of what she's seen in Baja too. And so just the things that have kind of sewn into our kids that we didn't know. We're just like fumbling around going,

maybe we'll go back again next year. It's so deeply a part of them. Now Parker's going back on his own at 19, right? Yeah, all the time. In vehicles that aren't perfect, you know, without full plans and figuring it out. Yeah. And finding the best tacos. And, you know, stoking the stoke and others.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's something that it seems to me you've done that with your community. You've brought a lot of people there. So you've inspired others through your own travels and your own heart, leading with your heart. Shannon, we're just going to put you on a little soapbox to talk about your new. role last time I saw you were talking about going to this new job you're in the new job in the new job executive director of a nonprofit called world's children okay been there about a year and um

it's this amazing little nonprofit that started in 1965 and it was started by a pastor and his wife they lost a baby and they wanted to create a living memorial and they started looking for different areas where kids were in really vulnerable situations and trying to help them so that's what world's children does is we remove barriers to education for kids in vulnerable situations. So food security, shelter, education, and emotional care. But we work with local leaders. So same thing that we've done in Baja is finding people doing good work and saying, how can we help you? And so we're in India, Africa, Baja, and Ukraine. Amazing. If you were going to advise others, advise the Slow Baja audience and just, you know, if somebody wanted to get involved, listening to the show, they're inspired.

I often wonder if overlanders can be a source for good. You know, I think overlanders, having just been at the show, not making sweeping judgments or generalizations, but I do think that maybe overlanders, landers in a sweeping generalization, freely admitting here, maybe are a little bit introverted and they build these rigs that can go anywhere and do anything and have all the technology and they do all the research and plan the route and have the spreadsheet and the whole thing so they don't have to really interact with the human who are in these places. And I kind of wonder about what happened if they had your experience where they interacted, the first tire change leads to Rancho Sonomundo and then all of a sudden one thing leads to another and your kids are you know learning sign language in Spanish or at least just blowing bubbles at each other with other kids and really realizing that kids are kids are kids and people are people all over the world

what advice would you have for somebody and we're Baja centric here just how does somebody easily kind of get out of their shell yeah their comfort zone and step out and help others or get involved in something. Yeah. Sure, I'll start. Just a couple of ideas. First of all, much of what we described, I would say comes much more naturally to Shannon than it did for me. And so many of these situations she's described, I was scared to death and felt completely awkward and out of place. And I've learned by exposing myself to those situations that it pays to be courageous. It pays to step outside of our comfort zone. The other thing I've learned is to partner with people. who are already doing these things. Find people who, like, we found this group

that was already going on the Pacific Coast and visiting these towns, which gave us the courage to do it, but also they had relationships in all of these towns already. So it was a much richer experience than we may have felt otherwise. And so I think that's probably a couple of things

I've learned. And then one other idea is, you know, some of the things we've talked about line up well with our passions, our interests, you know, working at an, at an orphanage obviously connects with our heart for orphans and we have adopted in our family but you know michael some of the things you're doing through your passions with baseball some of the we have friends who are serving uh through potentially through prosthesis because

there are prostitians who met them sprag and natalia natalia lovely people our friend fred is a retired veterinarian and he's volunteered for years you've got some bahad dogs yeah yeah so think about what is comfortable what what are things about your passions that can be shared and that i think makes it a lot easier too shannon wrap it up so this is going to sound funny but um go slow so that's pitch for slow bahab not really but but really like slow down yeah and show up so it it means like at a taco stand actually try to have enough spanish to have a little conversation, pull out your phone and use Google Translate to say, you know, thank you for your tacos, you know, how are you? And then I'd say do a little research and ask people,

how can I help? So I really strongly believe in helping local leaders that are helping their community, their culture, because they know and understand where we can come in and think, oh this place needs to be painted or this these kids need better clothes or things and and we can be so far off the mark of what actually moves the needle for them um but yeah i mean i'm our reference dugs a reference ralts children has sites in baha so if there's something that people are like wanting to help and not sure how contact an organization that is doing stuff so in the show notes there'll be a few organizations that Doug and Shannon have referenced the website for your organization where they can see the work you're doing around the world.

That's some powerful stuff. Yeah, it's world's children.org. All right. And if you want to get in touch with Doug and Shannon, you can DM me at Slow Baja through the contact links, Slobaha.com. I can put you in touch if you want to talk to them about some of those things. And in the show notes for this show, there will be some links that you can see Casa Hogar, Rancho Sonamono, and some of the other things.

we've talked about. Yeah. Really a delightful morning. Thanks for having us. Can I say one more thing? Of course you can. So having just been in Africa, and then, you know, we've spent a lot of time in Baja at these sites, these are some of the most phenomenal humans on the planet that are using

their life to make the lives of children better. And almost no one visits them. And almost no one says, I see you. And, man, you're doing good work. And, like, can I just? do a little bit to help. And it goes so far for them because they're literally using their whole life to do it. And so if we show up and maybe it's you're introverted and not comfortable like being the one who actually shows up at the spot, that's okay. Like do a donation and write a letter

or show up and like drop off beans and rice. They're all working on a deficit. They all struggle to feed the kids. So showing up in some way encourages these people to keep going. A quick grocery run. Yeah. I mean, we challenged the folks on this low Baja winter, $500 and 500 pounds of dog food for Rickhouse dog rescue. And you know what? People rose the occasion. They were, they're fired up to do it. And just all it took was asking. Yeah, absolutely. Others are doing it. We're doing it. We're doing it. Let's go. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And it moves, it just moves the needle so far. Like, we think $500 is, you know, like not that much maybe, but for, that's half of a food budget for some of our spots. And among 20 people, it's not that much.

Yeah, absolutely. That's right. Well, Shannon, really a delight. I'm sorry we didn't get to crying on this one. That's okay. All right. Thanks again. It's been a delightful morning at your house here and sisters, Oregon, shugging, shugging, shugging, shudging, shagging.

It's all good. Shally from Cali. Doug Miller, thanks for making time. Thanks, Michael. Hey, well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation. I hope it inspires you to get out and do some good work or make a donation if you've got some tacos jingling in your pocket. You know, I'm still doing stuff there with Baja Baseball.org.

We're bringing baseball gear down to kids, helping coaches keep kids on the field. Frank has had enough of this chat. He wants to go. so I'm going to wrap it up and tell you about my friend, Mary McGee. You know, Mary McGee off-road and motorsports Hall of Fame of the first person to sold the Baja 500 on a motorcycle. That's right, that Mary McGee. Well, she had a pal, Steve McQueen.

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