Monday, April 29, 2013

Day One - San Diego to Dateland, AZ

It's Monday, April 29th and this is my first opportunity to post to the blog!  We are in Houston at John's sister Susan's House.

So, I'm going to back track and bring this up to date.

We left on Tuesday, April 23rd.  Didn't get away from home until after noon.  On the road at last,
we have to go half way across the country (1500 miles) to get to Houston.  It will be a long few days.
We take another look at our roses, which will be in full bloom within the next week.





The camper is packed and ready to go, and I follow John out to where we will leave our car while we are gone.  The camper looks good from the back, too!



The first thing I noticed was the vast number of wildflowers along the road.  Yellow Brittle Brush are everywhere, clusters of flowers low to the ground.  And large cream colored Yucca plants, large cones on spiky ground flowers.  And wild lilacs!  I thought these were finished blooming, but they are profuse as we head out of San Diego.





































The terrain changes quickly as we leave San Diego.  Rocky hills, the result of large glaciers that melted here and left the debris that had been frozen in the ice.



The temperatures outside have escalated quickly. It reached a high of 91 degrees before we were even in the dessert! 


And into El Centro, where we are below sea level. 

The rocky mountainous terrain has changed to flat lands filled with farm fields.  All of this within 110 miles of San Diego.




What are we doing to occupy our time while we are going through this landscape.  Listening to a mix tape put together by our friend Laura Kitzmann called "ROAD TRIP."  It's a loud, rhythmic, booming tape designed to take the stress out of last minute preparations and get your mind cleared of all the things you were doing to get on the road.  It works!   And it turns us into bobble heads as we  loudly sing along.  We get strange looks, but hey!  
Craggy Hills, farmland.  We are going through Arizona now, having passed through Yuma around 5:30.   

At around 7 p.m., it's time to stop.  We thought we would get to Tucson, but with a late start,  we won't make it.  So, at 7:00 p.m. we find an RV place in Dateland,  It doesn't look like much, but it was a welcome stopping point in the early days of road travel and a stop along the railroad line for steam engines that needed water.  It was also the site of two of General Patton's desert training camps.
And, you can buy eight different kinds of date trees here, primarily Medjool!   

I fill in with thee factoids, because this is where we stopped for the night.  

We had no complaints about the neighbors! Except for an unusual number of mourning doves who didn't know to quiet down at night.  And there was a full moon, which we didn't see much of as 
we collapsed into bed for our first night on the road.  

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