Sand

 2/25- McIntyre RV Park, Blythe,CA

   The road out this morning dropped from desert with plenty of vegetation to virtually no vegetation. One side of the road was a California State Park. This is an OHV park which means you can drive just about anything anywhere. This is where people can use the 4 wheel drive vehicles you see advertised on tv to their hearts content. There is really nothing to hurt out here except maybe a few creosote bushes and rocks.

    We did notice in the (not that far) distance that they were shooting off missles at one of the naval gunnery ranges. You could watch the missle go up and do a big loop before crashing to earth. 

    It was amazing to me to see the amount and variety of all the different crops being grown here. On one side of the road nothing will grow except rocks and yet on the other side with some water all kinds of crops grow. As we went around the bottom of the Salton Sea there were lush fields of lettuce and alfalfa and hay. 

   We headed across the Imperial Sand Dune park. There was an observation park and you could see sand dunes in all directions. Of course this was the perfect opportunity for people to race their dune buggies and other such jalopies. It was cool to see big sand dunes with no vegetation at all. We are headed north now and the landscape just continues to be bleak. There are mountains but there is very little growing here except for some cholla cacti every ten feet of so. It just a lot of red rocks. The road crosses many gullies and washes and they couldn’t build bridges over all of these so the road is like a roller coaster. You drop into a dip to rise back up again and do this 15-20 times in a mile. 

    The campground for tonight is right on the Colorado River and so it was hot enough to jump in but I chickened out. I did wade out a ways and found it to be a bit chilly. We met a bunch of snowbirds for Manitoba here and went to a get together with them tonight. They have been coming here for over twenty years. They come down here to train their dogs. They train these dogs for competitions in field trials. They are mostly Labrador retrievers and they train them to retrieve fake birds. One guys dogs have been in national competitions in Canada. 

    We are heading for the hills tomorrow. Today was brutally hot and while I don’t want to complain I think we will head north for some slightly( note slightly) cooler conditions. 

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