| So we finally left Chula Vista and the San Diego area after the
longest stay we have had in one place. Now we are starting on our long return
east by heading towards Yuma en route for Scottsdale (Phoenix) in Arizona. |  |
 | But before we got to
the state border we stopped near Mountain Springs Station at the Desert View Tower
near where the Inkopah tribes lived. The tower commemorates the pioneers
who helped to open up this area. It was built in the 1920s and took Bert Vaughn (a former
mayor of San Diego) ten years to build. |
| The tower is some 3000ft above the Anza Borrego desert which you
can see to the east. The view is quite spectacular over 100 miles of
virtually nothing, with the I10 snaking through it. There is a steep
downgrade here and the stagecoaches had to be pulled up with teams of oxen. It is difficult to comprehend
that our day trip to Yuma would have taken over a month. |  |
 | In the 1930s an
unemployed engineer called W T Ratcliffe passed by and paused (for a couple of years)
to carve out of the rock these mysterious creatures which inhabit Boulder Park,
behind the tower. One can marvel at the creatures and wonder about the sanity of
man. |
| As we closed on Yuma we passed Imperial Dunes, a favorite haunt
of the off-road ATV drivers. With the Thanksgiving weekend coming up there
were hundreds of RVs camped at the foot of the dunes (no facilities) over
about a ten mile stretch. |  |
 | Yuma is quite a
large town very close to the Mexican border. It is always full of tourists
and so attracts the sort of thing which some folk think tourists like. This
'train' is pulling out of a gas station. |
| Actually most of the folk who come here come because there are
hundreds of dentists and doctors on the Mexican side of the border who are MUCH cheaper
than in the US and just as good. It is also a cheap place to buy
prescription drugs. So the place is just full of RV parks and snowbirds.
These tanks had obviously attracted the brush of some large scale artist. |  |
 | The weather moves in
from the sea and clouds form as the weather hits the land. This results in
some quite spectacular sunsets, possibly better than on the coast.
Unfortunately the roads aren't perfect and you get camera vibration and you
only have a few minutes between light and dark this far south. |
|