Last night for this trip
28.09.2022 - 28.09.2022
Back on the road, not far out of town and Pete spotted the aircraft storage facility the commercial planes were moth balled at during the covid shutdown. Flying over it was a black hawk.
It’s going to be another hot day, 30c before 9am, by midday it was 36C.
For some way it was quite green with healthy cactus and shrubs before it was again crispy dry. Through a small Rocky Mountain pass and Yuma lay below us. We spotted a lot of F35B’s, some flying singly others in formation flying 4 at a time before peeling off.
We stopped at an online recommended shady picnic spot beside the Colorado River in Yuma.
Gateway Park, online reviews said:
Shady, true but with the temp sitting at 38C (100F) even the small breeze was still super heated
Beach, kinda true depending on your definition
On the Colorado River, also true but have to admit we expected more from the mighty Colorado. There was a woman wading in the river leaving us thinking if she wanted to, she could literally walk across it.
We had lunch there but have to admit, it’s not a picnic destination I’d race back to.
Not far past Yuma we went through another border patrol stop, again just waved through and we were in California. To our left the wall between USA and Mexico with obvious border patrol activity. To our right the canal. All around us sand dunes. Very thankful for the AC.
We arrived in the desert town of Borrego Springs about 2.30 with the temps in the high 30’s. This is where the famous apparently moved to in the late 60’s when the commoners found their retreat, Palm Springs. I had a rough map for the locations of the huge metal sculptures scattered around the town. Initially we couldn’t find any but Pete persevered and they started to appear. Some are massive and really intricate. A dragon spanned the road and undulated for quite a distance either side of the road. A huge eagle had a snake it was feeding to its babies. Many pics later we went and checked into the motel. It’s a classic 1960’s mom and pop motel but in great condition. There’s a pic in the office of the pool with people in 60’s swimwear lounging around it with drinks. It looks the same today other than the addition of the nanny state pool fence. We had to wait a few minutes cos the carpets were cleaned today and weren’t quite dry. Once in the room it was hot despite the AC being as low as it could go.
After a couple of hours I went to the front office to say it’s not cooling the room. He came and checked and decided to switch it out with another unit! It only took about 10 mins and almost instantly the temp dropped from stifling to slightly cooler. In time it got down to chilly 😜
We did the usual big repack we always do on our last night. Emptied the car completely, packed and weighed the suitcases. We came with 3 checked bags one of which only had the eski, soft day eski and the picnic gear in it. Another one had little more than 2 other suitcases in it in case we needed extra room going home, our allowance between the 2 of us is 5 X 32kg per bag. Pete gets an extra one to make up the 5 cos of his status with QANTAS.
We got everything into 4 cases including the 5th case which is packed in one so we did pretty well.
A quick audit of food and decided to grab some hummus to go with carrot sticks, crisps and jatz for dinner. Once I make tomorrows breakfast & lunch all that will be thrown is a half jar of mayo and 1/3 of a cabbage so feel we did well.
9pm it was still 31C outside, we ventured out for a few minutes to marvel at the stars. This is a night sky town so there is very little light and the sky is amazing.
Back into our chilly room for the usual bit of work, some shows and sleep.
Posted by Sue n Pete 2022 19:06