Sunday, 9/10/2023
Just in case, we put our rain fly on the tent the night before. Good thing! With only an 8% chance of rain. We awoke to sprinkles and then packed up in gentle, soaking rain after a light breakfast.
We left the ocean and turned back east around 9 AM. Immediately we found ourselves in foothills with a mix of barren, scrubby trees, bushes, palms, nice homes on hills, cactus, and some green fields. There was plenty of stop and go traffic on Highway 76. We have seen gas for up to $5.79 per gallon. We found ourselves going past citrus farms, nurseries, and palm tree farms.
We entered into an area with low mountains and huge blonde rocks with dark green scrub brush. We stopped at the city of Temecula and paid $60 for gas! It was $5.05 per gallon at Costco which is cheap for California.
At 1,700 feet we neared Lake Perris, which is an area of barren, low mountains and no trees. Near Palm Springs there were still bare mountains, but the landscape was dotted with thousands of small wind turbines and power lines.
We got a kick out of a sign that said “Avoid overheating. Turn off air conditioning next 10 miles.“ The temperature was 102°! This morning it had been only 69°.
We listened to Graham Parsons (who died near Joshua Tree) and U2's "Joshua Tree" album. We saw barrel cactus and low shrubs again, and the temperature went down to 100° with wind.
It is impossible to describe our drive through Joshua Tree National Park. We loved it! There were a variety of plants and landscapes, mountains and rocks. We stopped at Live Oak for lunch and climbed huge rocks there. So much fun! We drove along the north edge of Joshua tree, and saw desert, desert, desert! We loved the muti-colored rocks! The sand was fine, crushed rock.
The Mojave desert went on and on. There was a lot of desert without much difference in color tones. The nearby mountains were both north, and south of us. “No services for 100 miles.“ We did find ice cream sandwiches in Parker Arizona… the first ice cream we had seen in about 200 miles!
There were jagged mountain peaks west of us as we headed north along the Colorado river at 100°. It really feels hot! There were dry, rocky, dark-reddish brown foothills and huge dunes everywhere! We saw rays of sunlight and colors from cream to red, gray, and light and dark brown.
We stayed at a motel in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Woody drove to get the "best pizza in town" for us. Two men offered to buy the pizza from him as he walked to the car... +$10! He managed to resist the temptation.
Later on, we enjoyed a lovely sunset and one of our first football games of the season!
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