Yuma, Arizona

We drove from San Diego to Yuma yesterday as we slowly work our way back to Boise by April 1.

As we drove along Interstate 8 we came within a quarter mile of the USA – Mexico border.

As we drove along, I kept thinking of one of the funniest skits I ever saw on Saturday Night Live.  Tina Fey was Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler was Hillary Clinton. When talking about diplomacy qualifications, ‘Sarah’ implied she was qualified because she could see Russia from her house.

Yesterday, I kept mimicking Fey’s Palin impersonization, “I can see Mexico from my house.” Because, you see, I could actually see it and I was in my house (Homer). 🙂

Along the drive we also saw some amazing rock formations in the Cleaveland National Forest.

And we saw miles of sand in the Imperial Sand Dunes area, the largest mass of sand dunes in the state .  The dunes, which start near the Salton Sea, run for more than 40 miles and average five miles wide.

We started at an elevation of near sea level in Santee, topped out at 3000 feet above sea level in the Cleveland Mountains, and bottomed out at 200 feet less than sea level in El Centro, California…

I felt right at home in Yuma as soon as I hit the pickleball courts in the near 90 degree heat… 🙂

Santee, California

I LOVE visiting the ocean! The sound of the beautiful blue and white waves crashing along the beach. The smell of the salt water. And the energy charged breeze blowing all around. What’s not to love?

We drove to visit several of the beaches in the San Diego area yesterday. It was a grand day…

First thing we saw in Mission Bay was a guy on a Flyboard. My picture didn’t turn out, so here’s a video to show what the world’s best flyboarders can do… Simply amazing!

Then we came across a group of remote control pilots. They were flying everything from helicopters to gliders to drones. Again, simply amazing!

After leaving Mission Bay, our first stop was in La Jolla.

This kayak piece is outside the Museum of Contemporary Art.

What’s the perfect vehicle to drive along California’s Highway 101? A Volkswagon bus, of course!

Much of the beach at La Jolla has a granite base, perfect for tide pools.

But there are stretches of sand to walk along. We spotted some seals in the water and watched them for a long time. 

Then we walked a bit down the beach and found a cove full of them!

Including lots of babies!

California is full of healthy people. We were passed by joggers and bicyclers galore.

Then I looked across the street to see a man who initially looked passed out on the lawn.

Turns out he was doing push ups! And the regular push ups were too hard, so he switched to the easier kind…

The scenery was awesome…

From flowers…

to local hunks . . .   🙂

to more flowers…

We stopped at several beaches between La Jolla and Carlsbad.

It was the perfect ocean fix for me.

Santee, California

We are staying at Santee Lakes Recreation Preserve while we’re visiting my sister and her family in the San Diego area.

The preserve is “an award winning, 190 acre Park and Campground surrounding seven scenic lakes filled with recycled water.  The Park provides a safe and tranquil setting for camping, fishing, picnics, fitness, bird watching, boating, biking and special events in a natural environment.”

It’s a very nice park with lots of families staying for a weekend getaway close to home. I’m intrigued to see what it looks like on Monday morning.

There are lots of RV and tent sites, but there are also a few cabin boats and lake shore cabins on the lake.

It must be a good place to stay because our neighbor Joe and his wife have been here for five months! They are from Massachusetts and are visiting their children who live in the area. The park told Joe they can stay one more month and then they have to leave because California will want them to establish themselves as residents then so they can collect income tax. 🙂

I’m always on the lookout for vibrantly colored flowers.

The park has extensive covered storage for recreational vehicles, and all that storage is covered with solar panels. The park generates 50% of its own power usage. That’s for over 300 sites and all of the auxiliary buildings. Impressive…

The street lamps have their own solar panels.

The park is a bird paradise. Here are a a few of the birds that I saw…

A variety of ducks.

Ducks, coots, blackbirds, sparrows, and finches eating their morning breakfast at the Bird Seed Cafeteria. 🙂

A lone osprey keeping watch.

 We were surprised at how many people fish the lakes. Within three seven lakes are channel  catfish with the largest at nearly 40 pounds, bass over ten pounds, and rainbow trout. All lakes are frequently stocked so that fishermen are tempted to return frequently.

It’s been a great spot for us to visit the San Diego area from…

Santee, California

We went for a nice walk around Joanne’s neighborhood yesterday with her and her dog, Stitch.

Stitch is a rescue dog who is most likely predominately Tibetan spaniel as shown by his love of walking along walls. Tibbies walked monastery walks as guard dogs. Stitch is keeping the tradition alive. 🙂

Here is some of what we saw…

At the base of Joanne’s driveway there is a beautiful Bird of Paradise plant in bloom.

The rock wall behind the plant was made by the Civilian Conservation Corp during the Depression.

They also made this wall and the drain structure.

Loved this “Be Happy” sign in a neighbor’s garden garden.

Another neighbor is carving statues out of palm tree stumps. He’s doing a wonderful job as shown by these photos of a silver back gorilla.

This neighbor’s house is very unique in that the top level rotates around similar to the top of the Seattle Space Needle.

Nasturtium grows like colorful weeds.

Loved the pipe man holding the mailbox.

This beautiful home sits near the top of Mt. Helix. It is owned by the people who founded the stores that later became known as Sprouts markets.

The Bougainivillea  was in high bloom.

And here are a few more photos of the flora we saw…

I think this is lumpquat. (Update: loquat)

Bougainvillea close up.

Ice plant in bloom.

Not sure what this is…

Not sure what this is either, but it reminded me of the stephanosis bouquet I  carried on my wedding day.

Joanne and her family live on Mt. Helix. The top of the mountain offers 360-degree views to Mexico, downtown San Diego, the surrounding mountain ranges, and the Pacific ocean.

It was a great tour of the neighborhood especially with Joanne as our tour guide. 🙂

Indio, California

We took a drive to the Salton Sea yesterday. It is a part of a California State Park that is located about 30 miles south of Indio in the middle of scores of date palm tree farms.

It’s a rather unique place on earth because it’s located at over 200 feet below sea level and it stinks to high heaven. Yet lots of people camp, boat, picnic, and visit there…

Here are a few fast facts about the Salton Sea from the California Parks Department:

Water and Geographic Facts

• The Salton Sea is California’s largest lake. It is the third largest saline lake in the nation.
• The Sea has no outlet.
• Its surface elevation is 227 feet below sea level.
• The average depth of the Salton Sea is 29.9 feet, its deepest is about 50 feet.
• The Sea’s watershed is 8,000 square miles.
• Annual inflow is 1.3 million acre-feet with an annual salt load of 4 million tons.
• About 1.3 million acre-feet of water evaporates from the Salton Sea each year.

Aviary Facts

• Located on the Pacific Flyway, about 400 different species of birds have been counted at the Salton Sea–almost half of the 900 species known to exist on the North American Continent.
• During winter migration up to four million individual birds are estimated to use the Sea each day. There is a greater species variety and more individual species here than any other place in the nation.

We saw lots of birds on our visit including a Great White Pelican and several types of herons.

The smell is caused by decaying organic matter and has a rotten-egg odor. In the recent past, massive die offs of talipia have caused an increase of the smell causing odor alerts in areas up to 150 miles away. Droughts cause an increase in the salinity of the water which causes fish to die. According to one article I read almost 8 million fish died on one day in 1999. Luckily, the day we visited the smell wasn’t that bad…

We were expecting the shoreline to be sand, but it was more than 99% full of shells and less than one percent of fish bones.

Turns out that the shells are from barnacles. According to a volunteer I talked with “The barnacles arrived at the Salton Sea during World War II because military sea planes would regularly land at the Salton Sea, thus bringing with them. The barnacles ended up flourishing in the Salton Sea environment.” And they die off by the millions…

While the Salton Sea is not the most pleasant place to visit, it is one of the most interesting I’ve been to. 
This is not my photo, but you can see why the Salton Sea is a bird watcher’s paradise!

Indio, California

We did the most touristy thing available for the city of Indio yesterday by visiting the Shields Date Garden.

The company was founded in 1924 by Floyd and Bess Shields. Floyd Shields was one of the pioneering date farmers in the still-young date industry of the Coachella Valley.

The buildings definitely have an early 1940’s feel…

Posters advertise what’s available inside. I love how the poster advertising the “Romance & Sex Life of the Date” movie states that it is “in sound & color”. That is a good clue that this establishment has been here a while…

There’s a garden to walk around, but we skipped on that because Sophie was in the car.

I came really close to buying some of this pottery. The dots were added so that they are all raised. Very cute and colorful!

We ordered a couple of beverages for our ‘dinner’.

Rich isn’t a huge date fan so he opted for a Root Beer Float. He hadn’t had one in years, and he’s had three in the past two months. He declared this one was the best.

The young woman making the date shakes makes them three at a time, and she never stops making them.

I had the quintessential drink for the store: a date shake. It was very good. The shake wasn’t saturated with dates and had just a hint of the date flavor until I got to the bottom where most of the date pieces had settled. Then it was very datey tasting–perfect for someone like me who likes dates.

Of course, I had to Google to learn all about dates…

From How to Grow Dates

Dates are grown on a date palm tree. Date palms are either male or female, and you will need one of each in order to have any fruit.

Date palms are not pollinated by insects or birds, but by the wind. With only a few trees, you are taking a risk that nothing will pollinate and therefore will produce no fruit. That means part of your annual gardening routine will have to be hand-pollinating your date trees.

Early each year, the male trees will produce sheaths of pollen. You will have to collect it (it’s just a fine powder) and then dust it over the female flowers once your female trees are in bloom. A sheath weighs about ten pounds.

The female flowers are quite pretty.

Here’s a bunch of dates that are ripening.

As the dates ripen, they are often covered with muslin to protect them from insects and birds. The dates are heavy, so the bags are stuck between the fronds to help hold the weight.

After seeing how labor intensive it is to grow dates, I now understand why they are so expensive!

Indio, California

We drove through and explored the Joshua Tree National Park yesterday. It’s an amazingly diverse park that encompasses two distinct desert ecosystems: Colorado and Mojave.

The Mojave Desert is the western half of the park and is at elevations above 3000 feet. Joshua trees, which aren’t really trees but a type of yucca plant, grow in this desert at about an inch a year.

The trees bloom from February through April. We saw blooms at the highest elevations, but I didn’t get a picture of one in bloom because there was no place to stop where they were blooming. Here’s what the blooms look like.

The Colorado Desert is the eastern half of the park and lies below 3000 feet. It’s a part of the Sonoran Desert which covers southern Arizona and northwestern Mexico.

My favorite plant here is the Ocotillo (awk-oh-tea-yo).

When it’s in bloom, most of it here was just starting to bloom this week, it’s spectacular. The tips turn a brilliant orange.

We drove to the top of the Keys View lookout point to take in stunning views of the Coachella Valley and the Salton Sea.

Another highlight was the Jumbo Rocks area with it’s  Flinstone-like rocks. There are other rocks like these that reside in the Hidden Valley which was a legendary cattle-rustlers hideout.

There are a lot of campers and rock climbers in the area. And by one group of climbers we saw this amazing car that warranted a picture. The customization includes a spider web door and bicycle chain welded to the fender wells.  

Indio, California

The Coachella (co-chell-a) Valley is 300 square miles and includes multiple cities including Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Cathedral City, and Indio.

The valley population is just below 500,000 which grows by 100,000 during the winter months with ‘snow birds’.

From Wikipedia:

The area is surrounded by three mountain ranges (Santa Rosa Mountains, San Jacinto Mountains, and Little San Bernardino Mountains) and the San Gorgonio Mountain. These mountains peak at around 11,000 feet and tend to average between 5,000 to 7,000 feet.

Elevations on the Valley floor range from 1600 ft above sea level at the north end of the Valley to 250 ft below sea level around Mecca.

In the summer months daytime temperatures range from 104 to 112 °F and nighttime lows from 75 to 86 °F. During winter, the daytime temperatures range from 68 to 88 °F and corresponding nights range from 46 to 65 °F making it a popular winter resort destination.

Due to its warm year-round climate the region’s agricultural sector produces fruits such as mangoes, figs and dates.

We went for a walk in the nearby city of La Quinta along a paved trail.

This tree’s flowers look like super-buttered popcorn.

While much of the vegetation was similar to that we saw in the Phoenix area, we didn’t see any cacti here.

Believe it or not, we actually saw a bit of snow on the top of this mountain. What a surprise! Later in the day it snowed even more up in the mountain ranges.

On the other side of the valley we drove along the south side of the Coachella Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

The refuge contains the majority of critical habitat for the Coachella Valley fringe-toed lizard. This threatened species is restricted to the refuge dune system and a few other small areas.

The refuge is almost entirely closed to the public to protect the lizard. However, there is a trail that runs through a section of the refuge available for horseback riders.

The Coachella Fringe-toed Lizard escapes the heat by “swimming” or burrowing beneath the sand. That’s one awesome looking lizard!

The refuge, at least the part of it we saw, was sand dune upon sand dune upon sand dune…

I have to admit that the sand reminded me of Fallon, and that’s one part of living in Fallon I don’t miss.

The sand is about to overtake the fence and cross the road…

We had a great day exploring these two parts of the valley. And we’re looking forward to exploring even more in the days to follow. 🙂

Indio, California

We’re in California. The 11th state we’ve stayed in in Homer.

Remember this old song?

California here I come
Right back where I started from

That’s approptiate for me now because Carol and I were born in California. So in a way, I’m back home.

It was raining so much yesterday that I didn’t get a chance to take pictures. It’s beautiful today, and here are a few photos from our park…

Sophie’s in heaven because there is GRASS!

After being in the Phoenix area where almost all grass is reserved for golf courses, grass in RV spaces feels decadent!

On our morning walk, Sophie and I were rewarded with a couple of road runner sightings. The female was camera shy.

Apparently these must be common sights here because I was the only one intrigued by them.

When I saw this azalea bush last night, all the branches were upright. This morning they are heavily laden with raindrops.

I love the canoe and its occupants in this license plate.

We’ve only seen two of these off road RVs in our travels. This couple has their own travel blog: traveljoy.ch.

And, of course I checked out the pickleball courts as soon as I could.

The great thing about our spot is that I can hear that heavenly sound of balls bouncing so I know when to head over for play. 🙂