San Diego, CA - Playing on the Dunes

We’ve had some colder weather here in Mesa over the last few days - cold enough for - frost on the car windshield? You’ve got to be kidding. What am I doing here? Yep, frost. Where is the scraper? Can’t find it. But, hey, any good Iowan knows this trick.

A credit card does the trick on light frost. Ha ha.

We had planned to travel to Organ Pipe National Monument on the 1st of January when we left Mesa and stay there 4 days before heading on to San Diego on the 6th. Well, the best laid plans - and all of that. We looked at the weather forecast - a nice travel day followed by 2 nice days followed by 2 days of heavy rain., meaning that we would be sitting at Organ Pipe in the rain one day and driving to San Diego in another day of rain. Not my cup of tea especially when we had no hook-ups. Yeah, I know, we have a generator and enough tanks to last a week or more but - we decided to move directly to San Diego instead of Organ Pipe. I called the campground in San Diego and they said that they had our space free. We’re off.

We split the trip in two sections: one day to El Centro, CA and the second on to our campground in San Diego. We drove down to Yuma a few days ago so this was just a repeat. But from Yuma on to El Centro it was exciting with lots to see. Of course, most of the trip was desert with scrub brush.

First we passed by Felicity, CA, a most interesting place to visit. We were here several years ago and stopped in here. I would recommend stopping here for an interesting visit. The owner calls it the ‘Center of the Universe’ and has erected an amazing amount of granite tablets with a ‘Museum of History’ engraved on them. My favorite is the stairway.

After Felicity are miles and miles of sand dunes. Here you can see the ‘plank road’ which was built around the turn of the last century to connect San Diego to Yuma. But, you can also see hundreds of ATV’s roaring all over the dunes. Since this was a long New Year’s weekend, there was lots to see. Everywhere we looked were motorcycles, ATV’s, Jeeps and whatever, buzzing all over the dunes.
But, first, the dunes put on a show all by themselves in the shadows of the afternoon sun.

As you can tell from the tracks on the dunes, these 5 raced to the top, raced back down then raced back up.

These guys are doing what I hear guys do: stand, around, look, appraise and chat about the best line down the dune, the noisiest vehicle, the fastest speed and how to right the vehicle when its upside is down.

Some go up, some go down.

And, of course, there are RV’s all over the base of the dunes.

Lots to see and entertain us as we traveled. We got to El Centro, found the Walmart and stopped. I went inside to ask if we could stay overnight and found myself in a long line with only one clerk at the Service Desk. But - I had a great conversation with the two young women in back of me so the time passed quickly.