Playing in the “Sandbox”…

The Anza Borrego State Park never stops amazing us… what a place this is… life in a sandbox… warning.. this blog may be a little longer than you want to read!

Today was another warm, no, hot… sunny day!  We decided to take a Jeep Tour first thing this morning as we are going to leave here tomorrow… and we could not leave without going out to Font’s Point!  

We wanted to go on this tour last year, but we couldn’t as we had only the motorcycles… not this year!   This is only 4 miles out to the point, but it is in very loose sand at spots so you need a 4 wheel drive vehicle…

Lots of rolling type hills on the way out…

The odd ocotillo got in our way, but we breezed by…

We made the 4 miles, and noticed the warning… and for good reason!

We are up around 1500 feet from the desert floor, but the view is … WOW…

The view cannot be told in these pictures, you all have to come out here and see this to believe it!

These are known as the “bad lands”…

Great spot…

This shot looks back at the Clark Dry Lake Bed, where we are staying…

So Judy is standing about 3 feet from a sheer 1,000 foot drop, and I kind of start freaking out… and it all goes down hill from there… small marital spat ensues… and it ends I think with me saying something like “it’s your life…”

We carried on from Font’s Point up “Short Wash”… what a great ride… we put the Liberty through it’s paces today…

We headed out to another Vista Point which was fantastic as well…

Our faithful Liberty parked in the Bad lands…

We worked our way along the wash almost to Ocotillo Wells… about 15 miles or so…  We came across Truckhaven… which was the big 4X4 event going on this weekend… there were lots of them and they had a blast playing in the sand…

A big obstacle course was set up for them to play on with the Jeeps…

This was part of the hard course…

This guy hung up his $45,000 Rubicon… yikes… guys like to play with the toys…

Everybody was getting in on the action… ya, the spectators just kind of stood wherever…

They had some big hills to climb…

Judy and I climbed a hill, and then the fun began as we were in the heat of the action…

The girls got in on the action as this “Blond Bomber” got her fancy 4 wheeler into overdrive!

This was and incredible climb, and many got hung up on this, just like we did in Rattlesnake Canyon!

We had a great time watching for an hour or so and then it was back home…

We had to take the RV into the State Park Camping Ground this afternoon and for $8.00 we got to dump our holding tanks after 6 full days of use… they were ready!

I went back to Town with the Jeep to the carwash and got 3 days of dust off the Jeep so it is ready for the trip to San Diego to get all fixed up again!

This afternoon, we replaced all the broken parts off of our Blue Ox tow package, which included a new light switch, a rubber boot, and the new Break switch!  All is good again and ready to travel!

Off to San Diego!

Till tomorrow…

Up, Up, in the air… (and down kind of hard…)

Today was simply a beautiful day down here in the Desert… Temperature was around 80 degrees F. (or 30 plus for you Celsius people).  

First thing this morning, I decided it was time for the second flight of the P-47, what a great day for it… no wind, nice an warm and sun a blazing…

So here is my finished plane back together, mind you it does have a few surgery scars that show, but that don’t matter, so do I…

I did a test of the “taxi ability” of my plane and had to made some corrections…

I had a bit of a minor mishap at first, no damage, just kind of flipped on the roof… the good news was Judy’s camera quit working at this point… just before the big one… again… I got the plane way up in the air, and was flying around, and then lost control again, and down she came… no pics to spare you all the grief… but not quite as bad as the first time…  seems my pilot ability is now at the level I thought it was… to ease my mind, I did fly my helicopter a few trips with great success so I felt better!  Back to the drawing board… it will fly again!

After flight school was over, we decided to go on a Jeep run and a hike!  It was too good a day not to!  We headed out to what is known as Blair Valley. 

Be very careful of what you see below, you don’t want to mess with one of these guys…

 

This trail was about 11 miles long, and rated easy… you needed a 4 wheel drive high clearance vehicle, however there were a few people that took cars out, and they would have been scraping…

That is our Magellan GPS you see mounted on the window… it keeps us in line!

It was an incredible ride through a cactus garden today, we really enjoyed the ride…

Lots of variety as we made our way along…

We had to drive by a dry lake bed with some campers on the edge so they wouldn’t get wet!

Check out this guy below, he was trying to listen to what we were saying about him!

Judy has a big smile as she enjoys the hike out to the pictographs… on the way we saw the following plants…yucca, mesquite, buckhorn cholla, desert mistletoe, ocotillo, catclaw, juniper, agave and cresote. 

 

These pictographs were made by the Kumeyaay Indians, many moons ago, and they do not really know what they mean. 

Judy checks them out… kind of cool!

It was 1 mile to the pictographs, and another half mile further, we found this neat little canyon pass…

We made it through the short pass, and look at what we found… an incredible view of the valley with surrounding mountains… this is where we ate lunch today!

As we enjoyed lunch, we enjoyed the view of Smugglers Canyon as this place is known.  The mountains you see are the Sawtooth Mountains, and the Laguna Mountains, and yes, that is snow on the tops of them… as we sat for lunch, we were at 3,200 feet of elevation and it was simply perfect weather!

This view is of the dry lake bed we passed on the way out… beautiful area…

Here was our laugh for the day, see I am not the only one that does strange things with a Jeep, although this is not a Jeep you see.  This guy was horsing around for his friends and got into a heap of trouble, and they were digging muck out from underneath by had… they had a long way to go when we passed by…

So that was the kind of day it was.  

We have changed our plans again, because we can… and will leave here on Monday morning, and hook up all our gear and vehicles, and head over to Mission Bay, San Diego.  We have decided to move over there and enjoy the Pacific Ocean for a couple days while we wait for our Jeep to be repaired at Jack Orr’s Auto Body.   We may end up staying to the end of the week and then will be off to Lake Havasu to meet up with David and Angela!  

As I blog tonight I am watching Toronto play Chicago and it is not pretty so far… in the second and we are down 3 – 0…   hmmmmmm…

Till tomorrow…

Off to San Diego…

When the light shines in at 6:15 a.m. in the morning, I  get up… why is that???   It was a beautiful day today at Borrego Springs with great temperatures in the high 70’s and lots of sun again!

We were on the road early at 8:30, well, for us anyways, and headed for San Diego!  We had to head across the mountains to Julian, and then on to San Diego… here are a few pics from the trip up to Julian, which is about 3,700 feet up…

It is about 1 1/2 hours to San Diego, and yes, that is a hint of snow you see up there…

It is a real nice drive, and yup, we ran into a lot more snow… none on the roads though, which was a good thing…

We came out of the mountains, and finally, hit San Diego, and the beach!  Hardly anyone on the beach today, and some had their winter coats on… go figure…

We hit the Ocean at Mission Bay, right near Sea World.  It is a neat little Beach with lots of little stores…

Dude was out hanging “10”…

The road stopped here, or you would have been in the Pacific Ocean…

They have a great road, right along the Ocean, and walkers and bicycles only please!  Gonna bring back my roller blades…

What a great beach… we brought our bag lunch and enjoyed it right on the Ocean… you don’t get to do that every day!

One reason we went to San Diego, was to find a Blue Ox Dealership, as we had a couple parts broken and missing from the bike incident.   San Diego Trailer Supply had every thing we needed, a new break away switch, a new 5 pin plug, and a new rubber boot for our Blue Ox Hitch, all for only $30.00!   In Ontario, it would have taken a week to find any of these parts and who know for how much????

The guy was so good at the store, he referred us to Jack Orr’s Auto Body, and we went over to meet Brian the owner.  He looked at our Jeep, and gave us a price of under $500.00 to replace the front bumper and lights that are broken!   Great, don’t have to go to the Insurance Company after all!  He will order these parts and install them early next week! 

Back home to Borrego Springs we went with a stop at the Vista in Julian, about 35 miles from home… check out the view, the Salton Sea is at the top!

Made a quick stop in Julian, to pick up some tarts and a cinnamon roll!   Great little Town…

Yes, an elephant is bigger than a Jeep, here we are back at Borrego Springs checking out the steel art in the Desert… we blogged about this last year!

Just another great day in the desert!   Enjoyed a nice phone call from my Mother up in Orillia, Ontario… rained there today, on top of all the snow… that is how to get rid of the snow!

Must say thank you to Ryan and Sara, out latest Blog followers… welcome to RVlifeonwheels!

Till tomorrow…