Yuma to San Diego, well actually Chula Vista

Not very far out of Yuma we drove through several miles of sand dunes. Made think of some old westerns, and the cowboy killing his horse and crawling on his belly with the scorpions. I wondered if I had enough water in my couple of bottles of Dansi water I had bought the day before. These sand dunes also reminded me of Provincetown, Mass. There is a place on the Cape that you drive through between Truro and Ptown that has dunes like this. Only when you are on the Cape - you know it's only 1/2 mile to the ocean. Here it is probably miles and miles in either direction.

Where ever these GPS coordinates are, the highway was 61 feet BELOW sea level, well technically the GPS unit was 61' below sea level. I left it on this screen for awhile, my clue was- while I was driving by a silo or water tank in a farm field, I noticed it had a mark painted 2/3 of the way up the side of it that said "sea level". So I changed the GPS screen so I could see the elevation and the lowest I saw it go was 85' below sea level, but I didn't feel like stopping again.

We were driving through the Imperial Valley which appeared to be a very rich farming community. Saw lots and lots of ice berg lettuce and broccoli. and lots and lots of irrigated fields being farmed.

As we were driving I could see mountains up ahead, and was surprised when we got to them they were huge rock piles, rocks and rocks and rocks. I don't ever remember seeing terrain like this. There were many road side assistance phones along the way, and as we started to climb, I started to notice pull outs with signs for radiator water every so often. Not sure what was in the cement tanks pictured below. When I pulled over to take the picture below, a car load of Mexicans pulled over ahead of us beyond the pull out and were backing down the highway. So I decided not to get out of the car and go look inside the cement tank... It took a long minute to pull back on the highway because of the number of cars in the right lane. As soon as I pulled back on the highway the car that was backing up, pulled out behind us and followed me for quite aways. I'd like to think that they were good Samaritans, that wanted to be sure we were safe... but you never know. It sort of spooked me, and I didn't pull over for anymore pictures. Before the day was over, I stopped and bought a couple of canisters of pepper spray.

After we got out of the rock pile mountain pass, we came to a border patrol stop...

He was not very impressed that I was taking his picture.

We decided to stay in Chula Vista, half way between San Ysidro and San Diego. We got a motel room in Chula Vista, CA. Was very shocked that the price with breakfast was only $50.00 a night and it has a pool and hot tub too. The $50.00 was taxes and all.

View looking east from the third level. Our room is on the ground floor though.

Sunset looking west from our motel. On the other side of the bay is Coronado.