The Last Leg

Well, our view at Lebec this morning is all I have to show for pictures today.

No snow and cool at night, but not enough to get Zeus all fired up, but did let him take off the chill this morning before making coffee. 

We got going at noon today and home at 8:30-9pm by the time we dropped everyone off at their homes. 

Several rest stops and slow going with only a 55mph speed limit due to the trailer one of us was towing slowed things slightly, but it was a good drive overall. We will have to take into account these new timings for future caravanning trips. 

A warm welcome awaited each of us from our two-legged and four-legged family members that couldn't wait to see us. 

It's also a time to begin the cleanup and put away process. Laundry and returning  Lou's things to his house are first on the agenda. I've been wanting to do some reorganizing in the BDV for some time, so maybe I'll do some of that one of these days soon. 

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

Well, we're on the road again. This time though is a bit sad as we say farewell to our friends at the Slabs and make our way home to go back to work next week.

Around these parts 'work' is a bad four letter word. So is 'snow'. Most people are retired or are snowbirds who are done with both 'bad' words. 

So, it took awhile to get things all packed up and the heat was bearing down on us and unfortunately no shade as the shade had to be put away first. I needed to go do tanks once more, so while one of us had more packing todo than the rest, I was able to go do another dump and fill run and get back in plenty of time for her to finish up and say our goodbyes. 

Our caravan got all connected with two way radios so all three of us could communicate on the road and proceeded to pull out. 

We headed up 111 and had a beautiful view of the sun on the Salton Sea as we passed by. I didn't get any pictures this time as I've been there before and have some from that trip.

We stopped at the Coachella TA rest stop for fuel (cars and people) and had an early dinner at the Country Pride Restaurant. It was pretty quiet there as you can see. There were others when we got there but they'd left before we were done. 

I had a nutritional stir fry with chicken but it was pretty salty for my taste so I'll likely end up drinking massive amounts of water before we stop for the night. 

Our caravan pulled into Lebec at 11pm and reached our destination for the night. 

The BDV says it's 42°F out and it's quite windy also at 12mph according to my iPhone. 

We're all pretty tired so it's off to bed for some rest. We've got more driving to do tomorrow. 

Nighty Night!

Chili Bob's Grand Tour - Part 2

This still applies to the same day, Jan. 15, 2014.

So, after East Jesus, we toured around Slab City a bit more, but decided to go out and see Sonny Bono Wildlife Sanctuary. We've been meaning get out and see some of the sights and tour the back roads around here, but end up getting caught up in keeping up with the ice, meal preparation, staying cool, shopping of various kinds and water runs, that we just never really got out there. Days are short, so when we sleep in and have campfire time at dusk, there just doesn't end up being a lot of daylight hours to do things.

Before we got out of Niland, we caught a glimpse of the historic plaque that tells the story about Camp Dunlap, what Slab City used to be long ago. You should be able to read it if you can zoom in some:

On the way there, we toured some of the backroads and found many beautiful lakes, out in the middle of the desert, all for the wildlife. Now, some are hunting lakes where duck and bird hunters can hunt, but others are safe from hunters and the birds can go there. We saw many terns, both white and brown/black and others as we drove past.

Here's one of the lakes surrounded by cattails and other plants the birds like.

We drove up one of the roads and saw where the salt lakes had receded and dried up so they are like the Salt Flats in Bonneville near Salt Lake City in Utah, but not quite as white and vast. 

We got to a place where there's two real volcanos that last spewed their innards at 0BC, yes, 2014 years ago now. That's a short enough geological time to make them still considered active. The time before that was 940BC or so. We saw a huge shiny black rock of obsidian, very much like glass from the earth's core. It was molten lava that was spewed out of the volcano cinder cone. The cinder cone has since washed away and the obsidian is scattered all about and used as road bed and water banks. It's quite heavy for the size and what looks like a good size rock is quite heavy. Wikipedia defines it as "Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock. It is produced when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimum crystal growth. Obsidian is hard and brittle; it therefore fractures with very sharp edges, which had been used in the past in cutting and piercing tools, and has been used experimentally as surgical scalpel blades.^[4]"

 You can read a lot more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian

This is the huge rock on top of the volcano:

So, we followed the road and got to a place where there's still some manageable pieces sitting around and went rock hunting. 

We had to be careful since the rock is glass and just as glass can cut fingers pretty well, so can this rock. Chili Bob found a really nice large one for me that weighs several pounds. I was looking for handful sized rocks and found several nice shiny black ones. After our tour, when we got home, I washed mine and Lou's up and displayed them on the table. We also found a nice sized piece of pumice, which Kim picked up with her find.

Here's my haul all cleaned up for presentation. It's pretty fragile, so you can see a couple wee pieces broke off of one already. 

We stopped and got a close up look at one of the many geothermal energy plants in the area. They take the really hot water found underground and extract the heat to make energy, then pump it back in to repeat the process all over again. It would be interesting to get a tour through one of these plants. The two pics need to be joined together. The bottom one needs to be on the right side of the top one to see how big this place is. 

Next, we came to Sonny Bono Wildlife Refuge. It is an almost 3.5 square mile wildlife refuge in the Imperial Valley, just outside Calipatria. They have a website here: http://www.fws.gov/refuge/sonny_bono_salton_sea/ that you can find out many more details. 

There was a large lookout area with binoculars to see snow geese on the specially planted fields of alfalfa for them. The field is sometimes so dense with snow geese, it's almost a solid white. We weren't so fortunate this time around, but definitely worth a trip back when they might be more plentiful. 

They also had a place all set up for the quail. It was quail heaven, I'm sure. There was plenty of shade, low bushes, food, a fountain with a waterfall and also lots of doves and rabbits too. 

They had a nice visitor centre with stuffed versions of all sorts of birds and animals that have been seen there. Even roadrunners! Beep! Beep! We saw a couple on the road going out of Slab City one day, but they were way too quick to capture by eye, let alone a camera! So, we were fortunate to see a stuffed one here that we could photograph.

This was also a well needed rest stop for some who needed to use the facilities as well as get out and stretch and walk around a bit more. They have some long walking trails around the alfalfa field where a bus load of school kids were there on a field trip that day. What an interesting place to learn about the area wildlife. This is the view from up top of the lookout platform. The trail is on the far side of this field. 

It was getting on past noon about the time we were done there and the sun was hot despite Chili 

Bob's jeep's air conditioning trying to keep us all cool. Around the water and lakes, it was nice and cool enough, but the sun was high and it was hot. Time to start heading back. 

We didn't go directly back of course. There was still some things left to see on our tour of Slab City. We drove around for a bit and saw the Olympic sized swimming pool that the marines used to use when the place was Camp Dunlap. 

The concrete structures for the tanks and changing rooms are still all there, although well worn and beat up over the years. 

We saw the pet cemetery where residents have buried their four legged furry family members that have crossed over. We saw where some key people lived and along the outskirts where I thought it was Lows camped up on the hill, it's actually open for others to camp up there. It would make a good alternative site if we lost the one we have now. It's much neater campsites up there and more pristine and flat as there's not as much shrubbery. 

We saw a couple person task force picking up and stacking garbage in piles so it's ready to be picked up and taken out. Obvious signs that a cleanup is in the works, which I'm sure will be a welcome change to the residents living here year round. 

We saw some people out doing things or hanging out drinking some sort of liquid beverage trying to keep cool in the noonday sun. There wasn't much opportunity to take pictures and some things were on the wrong side of the vehicle for me, but it was a very good tour and soon we were back in our compound for some lunch and relaxation.

I think the tour must have wiped everyone out as everyone was hot, no one felt like doing anything real but sleeping. A trip to Brawley has been in the works for a couple of days, but been put off because of the heat. For some reason, it's been kicking our butts these last few days. Not sure why. We've been here for almost three weeks, but in various degrees of sickness (that cold that we're almost all got through now), so why now? No one knows, so it was a lazy afternoon while people rested, slept and tried to just keep cool and out of the sun. I put out the awning again after putting it in the night before when the wind got up again and set up some shade. 

Later on, we started preparing dinner. I'll leave that for another post as this will conclude the Grand Tour.

Foreign Treasures

I'm a little behind on posting, so there's going to be a few in quick succession as quick as I can get them typed up.

I didn't want to put this in my original blog post for Mexico because it would ruin the surprise if it happened to get read before the presentation. I was waiting till all of us were together sitting chatting, but timing as it sometimes is out here just doesn't seem to work out the way one might expect.

So, during our trip to Mexico when we were walking around the merchant wares, we happened to spot a some wooden carvings/sculptures that caught our eye. We stopped to admire them and ended up picking out a very nice little turtle to present to Mountain Kimmie when we got back. I know how fond she is of turtles, so she should certainly be pleased. It was tough to take a picture of it as no matter what I did with the flash or lighting, all the details couldn't be made out no matter what. This one didn't turn out half bad though. 

It is hand made out of ironwood by the Mexican gentleman that sold him to us. Him and his family make all the wood sculptures we saw on display. As I mentioned in my Mexico post, I like to look for something unique and handmade by the person who is selling them.

The other thing I happened to find for KD (MK's trailer) was a couple little red tea light battery powered candles. I got a set for myself also. I guess these are considered foreign as they're probably made in China, but I thought they would be good for a little bit of ambiance when real ones are not desired for whatever reason.

These were presented last night during bedtime snack and chat after campfire time. 

Chili Bob's Grand Tour - East Jesus

I'm behind on my posts since we've been up late chatting, sitting around the campfire and generally doing nothing, so there hasn't been a lot of time for blogging, but things have been happening. So, this one is about yesterday, Wednesday, Jan. 15. We really saw a lot - too much for one post, so I'll have to break it up and give each part of the tour it's own post. Uploading time is a problem with too many photos.

There's been so much bombing, shooting and air traffic these past couple of weeks over at the Navy Seal training centre just on the other side of the canal from us, it's been something we have not experienced in the six years or so we've been coming down here. We've been here basically over Christmas and New Years and have gone home and gone back to work about the time people go back to work on training down here, so we've not been here over a 'normal' work week until this year. I've heard the stories about the military air shows, the loud booms and the constant hail of automatic machine gun fire, but having not heard it before in person, it was a little weird when we first heard it, but then realised what it was. The machine gun fire isn't so loud, but the bombs going off is enough to shake the place up a bit and make one jump out of their skin the first time you hear it that day or after a long bout of silence. So, anyways, one of our camp mates asked our friend Chili Bob about it and he mentioned he'd take us for a tour around the place and show us where all the action is happening - from a distance, of course! There are many signs around indicating to keep off the land as there could be undetonated ordinance and other hazards. You didn't have to tell us twice, that's for sure! So, anyways, a tour the next day sounded wonderful. I've been waiting on a chance to go on one of Chili Bob's tours of the area here for awhile now. When we went out to visit him in Colorado almost two years ago, he gave us a real good tour all around the sights of Grand Junction, so a tour out here I knew would be good. He's very well known for his grand tours. So, this is about yesterday's tour, which started about 9:30am.

Our first destination was the military training camp, but to get there, we took a long scenic tour through the desert on the other side of the canal with stories of adventures and tours requiring a tow out of a rattlesnake den from another one of our friends and neighbours, Seann. This time, there'd be no getting stuck. We saw the Slab City 18 hole golf course. There were a couple people out either playing or doing maintenance, not sure which, and just drove around some of the roads out there. We saw some mountains and villages or towns in the distance that were made for training missions. I guess they use those towns and buildings to learn and perfect their skills so they know what to do in the real ones. We drove some more and found the training centre entrance. This is the sign and driveway in.

There was no activity that day, so not much to see. That could be a good thing. I think the land boundary and fence is a safe enough distance to keep people safe, but you never know.

We drove around for a bit and our next stop was a place just down the road which I've been meaning to go to for a long time now, but just hadn't got there yet - East Jesus it's called. Most all the news and journalists that come out here always visit there and write about that place, not many other parts of the Slabs, so it was definitely on our list of things to see. I took a bunch of photos, but I'm not sure I can get them all up here or not, but I'll see what I can do.

I'll start with the entrance to East Jesus:

As the sign says, it's a work in progress, like everything pretty much is here.

Here's some of the projects and artwork these folks have been working on:

This is a pretty cool glass bottle wall complete with archways and everything:

And here's a panorama of a lot of it:

A wooly mammoth:

A crooked house:

A whole TV display:

A tower of art in progress:

This is on one side of the tower:

This was another:

There were some interesting vehicles:

And the half buried bus that someone's transformed into a home. It was on the private side but I thought it was neat. 

And even a boat!

This is for BillyBob, another friend who was out here for a couple of years but hasn't been able to make it back. He had a plastic duck called Fred and Fred ended up with some duck puppies the second year we came out and BillyBob got a good kick out of that. So, this is dedicated to Fred and his duck puppies, who all ended up coming to a terrible end over the course of a few years. 

And:

I thought of you BillyBob as soon as I saw this. Miss you out here. 

So, that's East Jesus in a nutshell - well, not quite, but there was so much to show, I couldn't keep it any shorter. 

I'll continue with the rest if the tour in Part 2. Stay tuned for more!

Hola Mexico

We had left home knowing we'd make a trip to Mexico during our stay because I needed more prescription eye drops and one of my camp mates had a slight mixup on a prescription that left not enough medicines for our entire trip. 

I think you can just go down there and get whatever you want without a prescription as long as you know what it is exactly. Name, dosage, size and quantity is needed at least. The prescription helps a lot because of the language barrier and ease of communication so you get what you really need or want. However, there are some limitations which are different whether you're a Canadian or a U.S. Citizen. Canadians can pretty much bring in anything they want as it's not considered as staying in the USA. I've been hearing conflicting stories about if US citizens have limitations or not. There's probably a website for that if you google it, I bet.

So, we left home a little later than we wanted, but still early enough. It takes an hour and a half to get there and get parked. 

There's a huge parking lot just at the border crossing where everyone parks and walks across. Oh, the place we went was Los Algadones. A lot of people go there to get dental work done as the skills are good and the cost is significantly lower than in the US. One of our group has had eye surgery there a couple of times last year and is now able to see much better than he could before. Most go down to the Purple Pharmacy to get their prescriptions filled. Medicine is much cheaper for the exact same thing we can get here. 

So, here's a few pictures:

The massive parking lot and the border crossing. You can see both flags on their respective sides of the border.

The actual border crossing where we walk across:

The Purple Pharmacy is right there when you cross the border. The roof structure can be seen from the parking lot. 

Here's a couple of pictures of the inside. It's pretty small. They also have a liquor store attached too but we didn't go in that part other than to pay. The card payment machine in the pharmacy was down so we needed to go to the liquor store next door to run it through. 

When we were done in the pharmacy, we walked around for a bit outside where the residents have their wares all set up and try to sell you watches, jewelry, purses, wallets and all sorts of other things. Most that I've talked to have made the articles personally (or their immediate family) and that's what I look for. Something I cannot buy anywhere else and is not made anywhere else. It's like bringing a little bit of a different world back with me and rewarding the people who work hard to make a living. 

I tried to capture some of the essense of what they have set up, but it was pretty busy and crowded and I was getting bombarded with offers of wares I didn't need or want. Here's a couple to give a bit of an idea. 

After we walked the block up and back, we said goodbye to Mexico and got in line to come back across the border.  The line was long, but it moved relatively fast and the people were friendly and talkative so the time passed quickly. We got to one point where the line broke into two and we went in the left line and another lady and her husband split up. She took the right; he took the left with us. We'll see who gets through faster she said. So, the race was on. However, the speed is not controlled by any one of us, so we were just idle participants at the hands of the immigration folks inside. It turned out our line was faster and she bailed hers and came to rejoin her husband and us in our line. It was really very quick. No fuss, no muss. Show the passport and the goods and we're through and on our way again. I wish all border crossings were like that, but I know this is a pretty unique one and so many people come and go often. One lady was going back and forth weekly for physical therapy for severe pain. She was feeling really good after this appointment and breezed by us saying now's the time to go for a walk while she's feeling well! 

So, we got back to the car and proceeded over to Yuma, Arizona for gas and a bite to eat.  Vanessa wasn't doing too bad, but it's cheaper to fill up in Arizona than California. 

So, Hello Arizona! I saw this unique welcome sign which I walked back to take a photo of:

It's a little old and was obviously there last year when we came down but didn't get a pic of then. Otherwise, this is the traditional state sign. 

We stopped for a bite to eat, a tank of gas for Vanessa and a bit of futile shopping. We stopped in at Target for a couple of cheap grocery items, but they didn't have anything real appealing and their prices weren't as good as in California. 

I did find some neat cacti in the parking lot.  You can see them here:

We came back to a quiet campsite and just relaxed for a bit before our other camp mate came home and a campfire was started.