After 4000 miles and a full month of meandering across the country we finally reached California. We crossed the Colorado River on I-10 and to be honest our entry into the land of sun and surf was anti-climatic. There were no girls in short-shorts rollerblading down a promenade, no surfer dudes, no movie stars, not even a visitor welcome center. No we were greeted by a border patrol agent at a stop disguised as an agriculture inspection station.
We entered the state in farm country, large fields of produce are all around and all made possible because of irrigation. There were extensive canals, dikes. and piping systems in and around all the fields. Oddly, I didn’t see any spray irrigation systems like we have in the east, all the systems out here soak or flood the ground. As soon as we reached the edge of the farms the landscape changed drastically.
We had to travel on secondary roads from I-10 down to I-8 and the area looked like a wasteland, desert in appearance but with mounts of earth everywhere. It looked as if they were dumped there, but it was too large an area for that to be feasible, it was a very strange passage.
The next surprise was a large expanse of sand dunes, the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation area. We stopped at the overlook parking area just as two dune buggies were trekking out onto the dunes. Down the road past the rec area we encountered another strange fixture, very large man made or sculpted mountains, all surrounded by a security fence, I’m guessing it was some kind of precious mineral mining operation. The land returned to agriculture as we approached I-8, once again only possible thru irrigation. In these farm zones I also saw several cattle operations, the cattle are raised in small pens. There is no grass in the pens, the cattle do have some type of shade structure to keep them from baking on the hoof in the desert sun but it’s a sad site to see, I’m glad I don’t eat beef anymore.
As we traveled west on I-8 we thought we were heading into wildfires again, as we could barely see the mountains in the distance. When we got closer we realized it was smog. From the sea level farming district we climbed a 10 mile incline up thru the mountains where we discovered another strange geographic feature. The mountains appear to be made of large round boulders stacked mountain high.
As we crossed this mountain range we were very close to the Mexican border and we started seeing green and white SUV’s of the border patrol. Exiting I-8 to go to our destination campground we could see the border fence snaking thru the hills. Before we got to the campground we had to stop at an immigration checkpoint where we were asked several questions about where we were coming from, our destination, citizenship, etc. It was much more than the one or two question cursory inspections I’ve experienced before. Later that evening as we were walking home from dinner at the campground cafe, we saw border patrol agents patrolling in the campground. As prevalent as the Green and white pickups and SUV’s are I think there must be a better solution to the immigration problem. The illegals are already thousands of miles past the border doing the landscaping in Myrtle Beach!
We have no phone service or internet service here in the campground but I will get this posted sometime today. (Saturday, June 09) This morning we are going over the hill to downtown San Diego, Our California adventure continues!
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