The Road to Kino Bay: Potholes, Semiremolques, and a Handful of Tiny Clams

We left Bisbee, Arizona on Sunday, February 22nd, 2026, my mother and I, and crossed the border at Naco like we were slipping through a seam in the map.

Mexico always changes the air. Not dramatically. Just enough to remind your body it is traveling.

From Naco we headed to Cananea, and then onto the highway toward Magdalena. It is a ribbon of pavement that would have been gorgeous and totally drivable if it were not also an obstacle course. The road is narrow, curvy, mountainous, and unpredictably pocked with potholes that seem to appear exactly where your tires want to land. And then there were the semiremolques, the double semis, passing each other on that same thin strip of highway like they have never heard of physics or fear.

I was genuinely glad my mother was with me. Not because she was driving, but because she was wise and practical, and she kept saying it was good to have four eyes on the road. If I had driven that highway alone, I would have been underprepared in a way that would not have gone well for a mere mortal. It would have been existential. With her there, it felt like a shared puzzle instead of a private ordeal.

While we were white knuckling through the mountains, my phone started lighting up. Friends. Loved ones. The messages all carried the same undertone: Are you okay? Are you sure you should be in Mexico right now?

Down near Puerto Vallarta, news was breaking that a major cartel leader had been killed, and retaliatory violence and unrest were spreading.  It was the kind of moment where the world reminds you it contains both beauty and chaos at the same time, and you do not get to choose which headline reaches your pocket while you are trying to stay alive on a mountain road.

We kept going.

Because we were not headed to Puerto Vallarta. We were headed to a place that, for me, feels like an exhale.

Kino Bay, the Long Beach, and the Localness I Love

We arrived in Kino Bay, Bahia de Kino, and met up with our friend Janelli Miller, who has been coming down here for decades. She earned her PhD in medical anthropology from the University of Arizona, and studied birthing practices among the Tarahumara in Copper Canyon.

Kino Bay is not Cancun. It is not a resort fantasy curated for tourists. It is a real coastal town on the Sea of Cortez, with daily life and fishing and families and the slightly messy honesty that comes with being local.

And the beach, God, the beach. It is one of the longest I have ever walked, the kind of shoreline that makes your mind go quiet because the horizon has so much room. Right at the water line, when the waves kick up the sand, you can see flecks of sparkly mineral deposits flashing like tiny mirrors, and in the evening light the whole beach sparkles as the wind lifts thin sheets of sand.Out across the water, isla Tiburon feels distant and mystical, the light on it indicating separation from the mainland.

It is also not spotless. There is litter in places, because it is not a manicured postcard. But I do not come to Kino for perfection. I come for presence.

The Children and the Tiny Clams

This afternoon I was sitting on the beach near a group of children playing. They were collecting something from the wet sand, and curiosity did what it always does to me. It pulled me into the moment.

I asked them what they were collecting, and they proudly showed me. Tiny clams, little shells with living weight inside them and hair-tentacles spreading out from one end. And then, as if I had been accepted into their game, they started collecting them for me, placing bunches of them into my hand like offerings.

I felt honored. Not dramatically. Just in that simple way you do when children decide you are safe enough to include.

I asked how to eat them. Between my broken Spanish and their adolescent awkwardness, we mostly created confusion.

Eventually I walked over to their parents with my handful of clams and attempted to clarify what the children had told me:

¿Puedo comerlos sin cocinarlos?

Can I eat these without cooking them?

They looked at me, laughed, and said no. They are too small.

So there I was, a grown woman on a Mexican beach, holding a palmful of micro clams like I had just tried to order a single grain of rice.

And honestly, I hope I never outgrow that part of myself.

I hope I never get too old to play with children, to ask questions that make me look a little foolish, to flirt with the edges of exotic cuisine, and to laugh when reality gently corrects me.

Because that impulse, the willingness to be a beginner in public, is one of the ways life stays alive.

Frigate Birds at Sunset

Later, walking along the shoreline, I looked up and saw three frigate birds gliding overhead, those impossibly sleek silhouettes that look like they are written in ink against the sky. The sun was setting over Tiburon Island, the light thinning and softening, and for a moment everything in me slowed down to match the scene.

Photo credit: Audubon Society

This is why I come here.

Not to escape the world’s headlines, exactly, but to remember that the world is bigger than them.

Tomorrow: Shells, Sea, and the Possibility of an Island

We are talking about going shelling tomorrow, and maybe taking a fishing expedition out to one of the islands, something halfway between here and the Baja Peninsula, where the Sea of Cortez starts to feel like its own universe.

For now, I am ending the day with sand still coating my body and the kind of quiet that only comes from long horizons, shared roads, and the gentle humiliation of being told your clams are too small.

And I would not trade it for anything.