Great Breakfast and leaving soon 3-31

We were up and off on our walk before 7:30 this morning, we had a breakfast date at 8:30. I would usually have just let Larry go without me, I would have lounged around and then got ready to go, but I need to quit being lazy and get in better shape, so I jumped out of bed, dressed and went with him. There was no wind and it was a lovely walk, I did two laps and Larry did three.

We met Chuck, Fran, Stan and Maxine at Chuck's and off we went for breakfast at Cocopah Casino...$6.00 buffet. They make the best omelets and all the rest isn't bad either, it was pretty empty so we just relaxed and took our time and the lunch stuff was out before we left.

We took another lap after we returned from breakfast. Larry talked to Darel and we don't need to be in Greenville yet, we are leaving here on Thursday, but we still haven't decided where we are going to end up yet from here. I cut Larry's hair, it turned out nice of course, then later instead of taking a nap we took another walk, a lot of people pulled out this morning so its really empty feeling around here.

Later after dinner we walked another lap and more people were busy cleaning and packing up to leave tomorrow. It is hard to believe we have been here three months and are pulling out ourselves in a couple days. It goes by so fast and if we didn't have things to do we would be tempted to stay another month...spring seems to be slow in coming up north this year.

Cinnamon buns and scams 3-30

I don't have much to share today, but Larry told me I'd better get blogging before I get thrown into blogger jail!

I skipped my exercise this morning, I was on the phone...my sister called and it was to windy to walk. Larry was on the phone after that taking care of something or other.

This entry is mostly to torture Mavis...Maxine made us fresh, hot, homemade cinnamon buns for coffee this morning AND because I was thinking of you I thought I should take pictures to share....tee hee. There were just six of us left now...Stan and Maxine, and Chuck and Fran and us. But we managed to find plenty to talk about and didn't break up until after noon. We are all meeting in the morning to go to breakfast.

The rest of the day was just discussions, computer stuff and I cleaned the bathroom...woo-hoo! Not very warm today, the high was only 75, brrrr.

If you buy or sell on the internet, be watchful for scams! Our daughter was scammed today, but didn't fall for it....they were making it look like it was from PayPal....it all looked really official, but there were little discrepencies that tipped her off and she contacted PayPal directly and confirmed her suspicions. They use the company logos and everything....so be careful out there!

Agaves & Shopping 3-29

Larry tried to get his laps (these are one mile laps by the way) done before the wind came up today, but only got through about one and a half before it started blowing. I took the day off from exercise today, what a rebel...tee hee.

Our excursion today was to the Mall where we made a stop at Game Stop to get a video game for one of our Grandsons, then onto Joanne's where I picked up a skein of yarn, to Bed, Bath & Beyond for a super absorbent hair drying towel and then to Kohl's to pick up a few more colors of my new favorite t-shirts that were on sale.

There were a few different types of agave plants in bloom that caught my eye so we stopped so I could get their pictures. They are interesting looking plants, and the bees love their flowers and being desert plants they don't bother with petals, they just burst out with the basics for survival...stamens and pistils.

One of our neighbors pulled out today and another pair of our Canadian group left this morning...Clay and Lynn. The park had filled up the last few days with a Spring Rally group from somewhere and most all of them pulled out today too so now it is starting to look really empty around here, though there are still a surprising number of people about.

Today during the sunshine hours was windy and the high was 86...hopefully the wind quits for the next few days. The wind and fluctuating temperatures are why I like the Autumnal season better than Spring. I love the flowers of Spring, but not the weather...to erratic.

Quiet Day 3-28

A quiet day for us today. We did our laps and had coffee with the last three couples, Mavis and Neil left today and tomorrow Clay and Lynn will be heading north. Clay and Lynn's neighbors joined us for coffee this morning and the gentleman of the pair is a wood carver and he shared with us a beautiful carving of two rams butting heads.

After coffee we did the laundry and that was about it for us. The rest of the day we just did our usual...read, did computer stuff and made some phone calls. The weather was nice, it topped out at 84 and the low was 51.

Windy & Shrinking Group 3-27

The wind rocked and rolled us for a few hours last night and then it just settled down to windy! It was cooler today and breezy for much of it, but calmed down just before sunset; the high was 76 and the low was 59.

Larry did his stretches and calisthenics and then did a couple of laps in the wind. I broke out my DVD of Denise Austen’s Personal Training System and did the complete workout…a nice difference from my Shred…it is longer when I do all the segments, but the whole body gets worked and it breaks up my routine. My current theme…is changing the routine.

We went over for coffee, we are only eight now…just a teeny group and then all went off doing our things. Neil and Mavis are heading out tomorrow so were getting stuff cleaned out and put away. Larry borrowed their compressor and aired up all of our truck and trailer tires and blew out our laptop computers and our vacuum filter. Then we went to Walmart and then to the Market Place to do some shopping and then back home.

Clay stopped by to return something to Larry and caught us napping in our recliners, it was a rough day, what can I say…I just hope we weren’t snoring or drooling! Later we wandered over to say ‘bye to Neil and Mavis, some leave early and we weren’t sure if we would catch them in the morning.

The pictures above are of a barrel cactus and I forgot to put these pictures of the whole silvery Ocotillo in the blog the other day so you could see its entire prickly self. Not a plant you would want to grab hold of!

Road Runner and Wind 3-26

A couple of days ago while driving back into the park we saw this Road Runner running by. Larry hung out his window and got its picture.

Today was a tidy up day. Larry went off on his power walk and I decided to break with routine and I cranked up my favorite music on the radio and I got my house work done. With doing my workout first thing, then breakfast and visiting at coffee, it is almost noon before we ever get started on doing anything. Not that we have a busy schedule or anything, it’s just that when it gets hot I find that I do not think about cleaning…well I might think about it, but then I find something else to do…laugh.

We went over for coffee and it was a small group this morning, two of the couples left had gone to Mexico this morning. We spent the rest of the day doing our normal stuff. It got up to 86 today and the low had been 58. We took a walk around sunset and the wind came up strong before we got back to the trailer…yuck….I hate chewing sand.

Andrea and Will have the keys to their new home that they just got done buying…they are very excited. It is a three bedroom/two bathroom duplex, two story and in a nice location in town; walking distance to a lot of things. They now have their foot on the first rung of the home ownership ladder. The closing took longer than they would have liked and it will be close, they are moving this weekend….we didn’t want to arrive in Ukiah until they were done moving….”we ain’t stupid”!

Lots of Beauty 3-25

I found good subjects here in the park yesterday. Notice the bee in flight to the right of the cactus flower...you can see its cute little antenna and shiny wings.


There is a beautiful Ocotillo here too, it has no leaves and its thorny stems are silvery topped by the orange-yellow flowers, a stunning specimen.

Today was warmer than the last couple of days, it reached 84 and the wind stayed away, the low was 53. We did our walk, had coffee with warm from the oven cinnamon rolls (the best ever) made by Maxine from scratch and then did a little shopping. Then for dinner it was a wiener roast at Neil and Mavis's, everyone is trying to get their refrigerators emptied out. We all said good-bye to Don and Linda; they are heading back to Alberta tomorrow.

The painted lady butterflies were migrating again today, they are coming from Mexico and are heading north. My daughter wanted to know where the photos were of the migration but all you would see are dots ....they don't photograph very well so I haven't bothered trying.

Catching Up 3-24

We enjoyed the play we saw on Friday night, Don’t Dress for Dinner; it had 5 main characters and a sixth minor character in the second act. It was opening night and there were some awkward pauses here and there but it was still fun. We all went out for after play snacks at Denny’s and as our waitress was not very organized or quick we were there for quite awhile, but no one minded. We were home way after our bedtime!

On Saturday we pried our bods out of bed and got busy getting ready to hit the road for our friends place in Palm Desert, California.

I received a phone call from the dentist office in Los Algodones in answer to an email I had sent them on Friday and I confirmed an appointment for Monday afternoon. We were planning on being back on Sunday.

By the time we were all packed up we left here at ten a.m., the computer said the drive would take less than 3 hours. Well, I don’t think going through an agriculture inspection station and TWO border patrol checkpoints were taken into the time consideration! It took us another 45 minutes or so to get through all of those, they were in California. We made a stop at Costco to pick up a couple of goodies and made a stop for some lunch and we didn’t arrive until after 2:30.

Deb and Cathy’s place is up against the mountains so they are a short walk from natural areas and up out of the wind tunnel area down by I-10. Their house is a lovely “mid-century modern” bungalow and is bright with Saltillo tile floors and a nice pool and has the split floor plan that makes it wonderful for guests.

We spent the afternoon visiting and catching up and then we took a ride to their favorite park to check on the black swan that is sitting on her next. That crazy swan kept busy picking at the plant that she could reach with her beak; she is sitting on two large eggs and two smaller eggs that are suspected duck eggs. The pond was full of turtles of all sizes and you could see big fins of carp breaking the surface of the water, a very active eco system and a lot of the ducks looked like crosses of different species.

Palm Desert is big on the arts and beautifying so there are flowers everywhere and art pieces throughout the landscape, oh and golf courses everywhere too. The other thing that we like about it is it is surrounded by mountains that are beautiful and there are lots of palm trees. We’ll go back and spend more time so I can take a lot more pictures, there was inspiration everywhere!

We were going to come back on Sunday, but Deb thought we would be staying a few days, but we couldn’t do that with my dentist appointment on Monday which I wanted to keep…darn it, because there is a lot to see and do there…but now we know for future visits.

About two a.m. Sunday morning the wind started blowing and was blowing hard, it kept waking us up and by morning we had decided we would stay until Monday morning. The wind blew hard all day and I got some pictures of a box blowing down the street and there was a lot of other stuff rolling by! The palm trees were amazing the way their leaves were whipped around.




We went to town to go through a few of Deb and Cathy’s favorite art galleries (Deb is a professional artist and instructor) and the wind was very pushy, in a few places it sounded like the roofs were being lifted off. We saw some phenomenal art in a couple of galleries and in one gallery where the term art was a relative term we saw some phenomenal prices!


The large pieces of palm “bark” that the wind had ripped off the trees were strewn all over the place and one caught my eye because it had such a beautiful wood grain look. I thought they might work for a future art project and picked up a couple. As we were driving back to the house we saw a lawn covered with the pieces so we jumped out and gathered some more, we didn’t figure the home owner would mind a little help with the clean-up…smile!

We had first thought that we would go to Mexico on our way home on Monday until I remembered that we didn’t have our passports with us, so we just planned on leaving an hour earlier to get home first, get the passports, have some lunch and then head back over to Mexico.

We had a great, great time with our friends, we had great exchanges of ideas and I think we were all inspired after our visit! We look forward to getting together again!

On Monday before we left we discovered that the wind the day before was the worst in fourteen years and that the gusts were 70 mph. We were sure it would have been bad all the way back to Yuma and we didn’t really want our truck sandblasted.

We left as planned at 9 a.m. and got back to our trailer at noon…just three hours with no inspection stations! We had our lunch, got our passports, got back into the truck and headed for Mexico.

We trotted through town to the office. They were really busy, but I didn’t have to wait long and after an hour and a half of drilling out two old fillings and refilling and shaping of the new fillings I was done. I am a baby at the dentist…I was never hurt, but the fear, the Novocain, the lack of oxygen because I hold my breath too much, the being flat on my back with my eyes closed and my mouth hanging open that entire time, my hair standing off my head weirdly because it was squished by the dentist, and holding every muscle in my body tensed up I guess I looked kind of shaky and scary coming out of the back into the waiting area. I was elated that I had survived, but everyone kept asking me if I was all right as I emerged…I guess the numbness didn’t let my relieved happy face shine.

Then it was off to wait in the customs line, we got in line at four fifteen and didn’t get out until six oh three. We were entertained by an older man in front of us dickering and buying stuff from the sellers in line. The Customs agent I hit was being relieved and as she was leaving she opened my passport, asked if I had anything, I said no, dentist appointment and she waved me on through without even running my passport through the scanner. The last time I had to open my purse and my passport was scanned, you just never tell what they will do.

It was a really long day, mostly because of the torture I had to endure…..

Today was windy here and cool, we took our laps….I did three and Larry did five. During our walk we were able to say farewell to Marilyn and Ed as they were headed home. We had coffee with Neil and Mavis. After coffee we decided to all go to lunch at The Olive Garden where we had their soup and salad, which was really great. On our way home we spent some time watching a farmer knock down and weed the rows of what looked like young cantaloupe plants…farming technology is fascinating close up.

The rest of the day I was trying to get caught up here and I had taken some photos earlier today that I had to ooh and ah over. There is a pair of hummingbirds that are attempting to build a nest on the end of the arm on our satellite dish…would be fascinating to watch but we leave in a little over a week and that would be mean.

We caught the Prez’s speech and then the Dancing w/Stars result show and then we were reminded that it was Dairy Queen night, so as this will be the last one…tonight we were twelve and by next week we might be four…maybe even two; so we decided to go.

Now I am back, have showered and still need to get the pictures chosen and edited….I may run out of time and have to add the pictures tomorrow! It is already 10:30 p.m.

I'm Back 3-23

This is gonna be a blog quickie....I have three busy days to tell you about and not enough time tonight! We had a great time in Palm Desert and some day when I've made my first couple million I'm going to have a winter home there. I really liked it there, parks, art, flowers, palm trees, desert, rocks, cactus, art galleries and shopping, oh and friends.

Today I was in Mexico getting some work done and I hate having my teeth worked on, I am very traumatized...well I was, but I'm over it. So tomorrow I'll get caught up and pictures too!

Hot and Sturgeon 3-20

I thought I had better get an early quick version up before we go out this evening. We are going to a play with friends and I suspect we'll be late getting home.

Today's low was 64 and it is 88 now at almost 3 p.m. so I suspect it'll reach 90 again today. I did two laps and Larry did three, the sun was very warm, more people were breaking down their winter homes in preparation for leaving soon.

We did laundry and then sat around melting in the heat...I know, poor, poor us.

Now I know some of you out there are fishermen so I wanted to share these pictures our friend Lou sent Larry of one of his recent catches from his boat out on the bay somewhere. A lovely prehistoric sturgeon, takes me back to my childhood when Mom and Dad would catch the ugly things. As I recall they are lots of fun to catch and are good eating. Way to go Lou!

Hot in Yuma 3-19

I am in a noncreative mode right now so alls ya get are the facts and nuthin but the facts.

Today's low was 62 and it was lightly overcast today and the high was 93...very toasty.

I Shredded, but with the sloshing pounds of water I'm retaining in this heat it was like swimming up stream to get through my workout! Larry did his laps, we went over for the morning coffee gathering and had a nice visit and that was the extent of our ambition for the day.

At seven as it was finally cooling down we all gathered at Chuck and Fran's for coffee and dessert...it was wonderful. All the Canadians are working at emptying their refrigerators and pantries before leaving for home, so it seems like we are in rotational feeding mode all of the time....Laugh! Two more couples will be leaving this week and the rest of us will be leaving the following week...poor Yuma.

Okay, apparently I lied...that was a bit more than just the facts, the muse must have been in hiding!

Oh, we are going to the live theater tomorrow evening so I may not get blogged and then we'll be gone a couple of days visiting friends in Palm Desert...and I don't know if I'll have internet access.....warning you now you morning readers....you may have to find something else to read with your coffee!

Hot and Hamburgers 3-18

We deemed it to warm for an exercise day. Larry only did a couple laps and spent some of that time talking to a friend....one of the two laps he decided to run and he had bad asthma by the time he got back here. Something was in the air today because everyone was having allergy attacks of one kind or another. The low this morning was 59.

We went to coffee and had a leisurely visit and we were all treated to fresh home made bread, yum...thanks Maxine. It was after noon by the time we got back from coffee....oh well, it was a do nothing day.

We ran up to Fry's to get tomatoes to take to a hamburger barbecue at Ed and Marilyn's. It was a lovely gathering and Marilyn treated us to Pineapple Upside-down Cake for dessert, double yum. After that Chuck brought out his guitar and he and Ed entertained us for the evening.

It was hot today, 92 and the breeze would come and go. Life is Good!

Unexciting day 3-17

We were busy today but I can't really get excited about telling it, just basic stuff. It was a nice morning, we did our laps...I did three and Larry did four. We had coffee with our friends, a very small group now and then went back home to get our stuff together to head to Los Algodones, Mexico.

I had a dentist appointment down there to have a sensitive tooth checked out, fortunately it turned out to be nothing bad after having my teeth knocked on, touched with freezing cotton and then x-rayed. The dentist could have told me I needed to do something like have a crown or something pricey and I would have done it, but these people don't do that, which we like of course. Then it was get in the line to get back over the border. The line moved quicker today and we were out in an hour, fifteen minutes when the same distance last time took us a half hour or so longer.

We stopped and had dinner at Famous Dave's BBQ and then back home. Took another little walk to check in with our friends to let them know we made it back across the border and that was about it for our day, the high was 88 and the low was 55.

Exercise and Good News 3-16

Today was sunny and the high was 82. I Shredded and then did a lap with Larry. Larry did five laps. We wandered over to coffee, the group is shrinking...Dave and Nancy left this morning at 7ish and tomorrow Dorothy and Jim head north.

Larry went off to fill our water bottles and wash the truck, I cleaned the bathroom....always a thrill. After dinner we took a walk and said bye to Dorothy and Jim and brought home ice cream and a plant that they needed to find a home for, the plant is gorgeous, a bromliad, but is large, especially for our compact home.

We got happy news today, we are gonna have a new Grandbaby around November some time...courtesy of Andrea and Will, woo hoo!

Peaceful Day 3-15

We started our day with yoga and then just one lap around the park. I was feeling funky most of the day, drank lots of water and took a bit of a nap.

I did a bit of cleaning and that was about it for us. Around five we went to Fry's to get milk and produce and with people starting to head home the store was the least crowded we had seen it this year. We were gone by this time in the past years that we were here, but watching the weather in Nor Cal and Oregon we are glad we stayed another month.

We took a walk after we put the groceries away and our friends invited us in to watch a few "ends" of Curling, very big up there, almost as popular as hockey, at least with this crowd. It is a very interesting sport...men, 40lb rocks, brooms and ice...lots of strategy. As we left we had hugs with Dave and Nancy, they are heading for home tomorrow morning.

At nine there was a knock on the door, it was Dorothy and Jim wanting to see if we wanted to go to Dairy Queen with them...crazy rabbits! Larry was fresh out of the shower and in his jammies and I was on my way, so we passed, but they did stay and visit for awhile which was nice. They had never seen our spacious interior!

Oh, the other interesting thing...we noticed butterflies migrating by all day past us from east to west...don't know where they were going or where they came from, but over the course of several hours there were thousands of them.

Killer Hike, Part 3 3-14

It was a relief to finally reach the bottom, and I didn’t care if I walked up another hill for awhile. We decided to walk back the vehicle road to see what we saw along it. It started out okay until we saw the good part we were on end at a locked gate with Highway 8 running past it.

Sadly the next part followed the power lines…never a good thing, so off we went. It was very rocky, like walking a dry river bed (some of it probably was), but the worst part was we came to a HILL….oh man, very steep and rocky, but up we climbed, then of course what goes up goes back down eventually.

My left arm was cooking in the sun by now, but we took one of my pant leg bottoms (if that made no sense to you, you’ll have to go back a posting) and stuffed it in my shirt sleeve and that worked real well to protect my arm from the sun. So after too long on this rocky, not fun road we met back up with the foot path…yahoo! It was easier to walk. The ocotillos were really dark green in the bottom compared to those up on the hillside.

Larry was in front and he was the one to spot this lizard sitting atop the boulder. I quickly got its portrait before it ran off, but it didn’t so I moved around the boulder to get its “good” side. It had the most amazing tail and for a lizard was quite attractive I thought (Larry disagreed, his strongly dislikes reptiles!). As I was shooting its picture Larry spotted another one, which posed nicely too. In the last picture if you look closely you will find both of the lizards, one is in the lower left area and the other is on the largest boulder…in the upper right of the photo. They were both good sized, not as large as the previous ugly brown lizard though.

We drank all our water up by the time we returned to the truck, where we had more, but even after guzzling several more glasses after returning home, it took awhile before any started running back out! Our bodies really soaked it up. We were home by 2:30 and were we ever pooped; as hard as it was I was glad I had done it because it was so pretty and I saw so many stunning flowers. We were happy that we didn’t see any snakes.

Today was an extremely lazy day…we couldn’t seem to get out of bed and get going…I think it was almost ten before we were dressed and ready to face the public! We wandered over to coffee, my legs were better today…at least the calves didn’t feel like they would snap if I moved too quickly, and we sat with a smaller group today. Some had gone into town for the air show at the Marine Base/Airport.

After returning home I spent the day trying to figure out and get set up on Facebook. I don’t know that I’ll participate much there, but who knows? It is just tedious, not a lot of information to tell you what’s what, but I called my daughter Andrea and she explained some of it. So we’ll see….

This evening was potluck around the campfire…boy will we be sad as everyone leaves….we might starve! Everyone was in fine form tonight….one woman walked into the wrong house, fortunately it was a friends, thinking it was hers; another poor gentleman was given grief for his very white ankles and feet at the pool…a friend yelled across the pool, “don’t forget to take your socks off”, his legs are very tan, but from the ankles down, not so because he wears socks and shoes; another story was how two gentleman HAD to put their hands up a woman’s shirt because she had toppled backwards in her chair and landed in cactus stickers….they were “helping”…um hum…. and on it went. No names to protect the non-innocent…tee hee.

Fun, fun, fun….it was 80 today, perfect.

You'll probably have to click on this last picture to see both of the lizards!

Killer Hike part 2 3-13

The foot path eventually meets up with the road that goes up to the radio site at the top of the hill. We noticed it was paved; we thought at first…kind of odd for way out here, but we figured it out almost immediately. It was so killer STEEP that it needed to be paved so the vehicles the people use to get up there have traction going up and don’t slide off going down! Larry has been to a LOT of radio hilltops of course and I have been to my share of them with him, this wasn’t the steepest Larry has seen, but it was the longest steep road he had been on.

Now of course we realized it would be slow going, but until you start trucking up something that steep you don’t get how SLOW it will be and painful it will be and how you’ll feel like you are gonna die and how you think that you’ve made it THIS far you can make it to the top and…well you get my drift. It was only about three quarters of a mile, but it felt like five miles. Of course the corker is that people older than me had hiked it AND Larry could have been up and back in the time it took me to get myself up there, BUT it was worth it.

It was just such a gorgeous day and the views were pretty and the flowers kept me happy, but I had to stop and rest quite a few times and as we got closer to the top it was touch and go there a couple times for me whether I was gonna be sick. Partway up there is a resting rock, which I took advantage of…and then closer to the top the road bent and there was a piece in the shade that had rocks jutting out that I sat on and the rocks were still cool so that was somewhat refreshing. I considered at that point, stopping…the view was pretty good from there, but I HAD to get to the top. Though now I was worrying about going back down.

I made it and I signed into the book that they have up there, but there was actually another ridge top further along, as I was pooped and had to go back down, I gave Larry the camera and gave him my blessing…leave my carcass here in the shade and report back. I sat in the shade of one of the radio buildings and enjoyed the view, meditated, thought about how crazy people are to kill themselves to get to the top of mountains and enjoyed the breeze blowing through my sweat soaked hair and feeling the sweat trail all down my body….didn’t notice that while straining my way to the top, ick.

Larry was gone about 20 minutes or so and told me I didn’t really miss seeing too much because there were more ridges in the way. He said he would have liked to have seen them get all the concrete to the top that they used on all the buildings…there isn’t a lot of room to turn anything around up there. Hard to picture a cement truck making that road!

Going back down was no picnic either, but at least it was quicker. I was happy that my legs didn’t “noodle” on me after the climb up the hill, it was a concern, BUT it was really painful on the toes as they were jammed into the toes of our shoes at the sharp down angle we were walking. At this point I was really, really happy that it was paved and I didn’t have to slip around on loose rocks…I’m no mountain goat and even with my all terrain shoes I suspect my derriere would have made contact with the dirt a few times. We stopped at a short flat spot and I zipped off my pant leg bottoms so I would be cooler. After the pain of getting up the mountain I didn’t care about getting nipped by a rattlesnake!

So we made it down the mountain, now it was time to decide which path to take back…the foot path or see what the vehicle road was like………More tomorrow.

Today I was still feeling sore…calves and toes still, but I was able to get by without taking any Ibu’s. Larry decided to take his walk after stretching; I got myself together, made coffee, put on my shoes and sat outside reading….with the thought that I would catch Larry as he passed by for his last lap and would go along….HA…great timing for me….I missed him…..ah, too bad, so sad….he walked up and was looking at his completion time, he was done. Being the generous guy that he is, he offered to go around again with me….no, no, I said…that was okay…..tee hee; Time for toast…laugh.

We went over for coffee and then after we got back we decided we would go to El Centro, I needed something at the mall and we had some things we needed at Costco, it’s about an hour from here. We hit a flock, a group, a….I don’t know what you call a bunch of bugs…any way they slammed all over the windshield, we never figured out what they may have been…yuck. El Centro is around 36,000 people and we were of course the minority. We heard just about nothing but Spanish in the mall, even the sales people of course.

It hit about 80 today and was a little breezy, but another lovely day.

These last pictures are of the dunes in California west of Yuma.