On the road again: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday

Monday we left Big Bend and headed toward New Mexico.  Our first stop, however, was just outside the park at Study Butte at a small restaurant/store/gas station.  Memory is a funny thing, as we all remembered this as a place where we had had a great breakfast in 2011.  Ah, memory plays tricks on us all does it not?  The price was higher than we remembered and the food not nearly as good.  Paul even had to ask the waitress if the hash "browned" potatoes could, in fact, be fried some more so that they would be "browned."  This did happen, but....well...what we had remembered was a great breakfast for a great deal but our memoriy had failed us.  After we left, we remembered that it was really not such a great breakfast and for not really such a good price.

Monday night we overnighted in a rest area on I-10 near Gage, New Mexico!  It had been a moderate drive that day, so we stopped early for dinner and then just went down the road a bit for our overnight.  We find it interesting that in this part of the country you can overnight in the Interstate rest areas.  Well, put it this way, in Texas and New Mexico you can and we believe that is also the case in Arizona (but don't quote us).  Even though we had moved as far away from the highway as we could, that put us close to the train tracks, which were busy all night long!  It really wasn't so bad though.  We decided to fix our own breakfast because we could do that while we were having coffee AND we had the food, so why not.

This is what it looked like leaving the Big Bend area.  And once you are on the open road, there are Border Patrol inspection stations where they ask if you are American citizens as well as if you are carrying anyone else in your vehicle.  It amazes us, seeing this vast dry area, that anyone could survive crossing it without assistance from locals to give them water or shelter.

We have seen our share of dust devils along our route.  (Capturing shots with the iPad isn't the same as with the big camera, but much easier to handle.). In the far west of New Mexico we have seen many signs warning of potential dust storms.  It is so flat and so dry it is easy to imagine such a storm developing.

Tuesday evening we were in Tucson visiting with Paul's cousin Curt and his wife Elena.  They live in a wonderful home filled with art work, both Elena's and others.  They are fascinating people who graciously hosted us and with whom we had a lovely afternoon and evening.  They fed us a wonderful lunch and so Dee and Marty fixed dinner using some of the meat (Pork Tasso) that had been purchased in Ville Platte, LA last year and frozen to use for a special occasion.  This was that indeed!  The meal prepared was a spicy stew with onions, peppers, and the tasso and other sausage served over rice!  YUM, if we don't say so ourselves.

  This is the dish in the cooking process.  Imagine the smell of cajun spices filling your noses!

Early Wednesday am David and Marty pulled out by themselves and hit the road.  Dee and Paul needed to stay behind in Tucson for an additional day as Paul needed to see a dentist.  We expect to  become reunited Friday at Joshua Tree NP.

The sunrise on Wednesday am filled the entire sky with soft pinks and oranges.  Below is what David and Marty saw in the West as they headed toward Casa Grande on I-10.

The speed limit on these highways ranges from 70-80 mph which are a lot faster than we want to drive the campers.

Once past Yuma and into California, the scenery changed and we saw sand dunes and eventually irrigated fields where crops were flurishing.  These huge fields obviously require a tremendous amount of irrigation water, most of which comes from the Colorado River.  We expected to see the Colorado bone-dry as we crossed it at Yuma, but were surprised to see it with a healthy flow.  Maybe what we saw was water yet to be used for irrigation in far Southern California.

At Ocotillo we took S2 northwest and headed toward Anza-Borrego State Park.  We were pleased to find a very large wind farm.  However, once we saw the signage for "high winds" we knew the wind farm was in the right place.  These really are rather magical structures (in our opinion).  Also seen, but not photographed in CA was a very large solar farm using reflectors.  There were thousands of these reflectors all lined up!

The S2 road goes in and out of the actual park and is often rocky and winding.  It's quite a drive and difficult to capture the essence of the place with just a photo here and there!  Much of the road follows the path of the Butterfield Stagecoach Route active in the nineteenth century.

This is the road access into the campground.  The sun will set behind that big hill (mountain) and it will hopefully cool off more quickly.  The temperature when we checked in was 89...and that's nearly 20 degrees warmer than usual for this time of year.  Pretty amazing that the heat is starting so early.  Global warming?  Your guess is as good as our opinion about that.

So, here we are, Marty and David, relaxing outside our camper in Anza-Borrego.  Tomorrow we'll do a hike in the morning and then later will most likely head to the public library to use Wi-Fi and post this so you can all read what we are doing.