I Owe You A Few Pictures!

My question from the last post was what movie was the quote "What Hump?" from?   And the winner was Uncle Norm. It was from the movie Young Frankenstein.    Congratulations Norm.

What was Paul Revere's occupation?   

Well, I have been trying to get pictures on with no success tonight. So I will try again later... 

Anyway,  our last post had us leaving Ogilby Road BLM Property, at the California border . We are  headed to the National Parks in Central California. I have a few great pictures of the sand storms we seem unable to avoid along Interstate 8. There is a portion of the road that is just so beautiful and the boulders along the road are huge and just seem to be perched on top of each other. I am in awe of each area that is more spectacular than the one before. Stay tuned for pictures.

We headed up Interstate 8, cut north past the Salton Sea. This is a large salt water lake that was created by a break in diversion canals from the flooding  of the Colorado River between 1905 and 1907.  It is the largest lake in California and has no outlet.This is partially what causes it to be salty as well as being in a salt basin.

We continued our beautiful drive in the bright California sunshine. We passed Palm Springs and saw some of the  golf courses that draw  celebrity  golfers from all over the world. We drove under the Bob Hope Highway, Gene Autry Trail,  Jack Benny Road and Bing Crosby Drive. Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shores spent many years here.  There is a tram in the area that takes you above the beautiful city. The view is breathtaking. The tram rotates 180 degrees. In 10 minutes you go from 2600 feet to 8500 feet elevation up the sheer cliff of the Chino Canyon. Wow!

The whole area is a huge solar energy farm with solar panels and wind turbines. The area is quite windy due to the location in the Chino Canyon. The  huge amount of sunshine the area gets makes it a great spot for the solar panels. The average rainfall in this area is only 4.8 inches per year. The temperature in this area averages 74 degrees. Nice!

We found a nice campground in Yucca Valley, California. I needed to catch up on laundry and we needed to do some grocery shopping.

Next on our list was Joshua Tree National Park. The Park Campgrounds were full and experiencing heavy volumes of tourists due to Easter Vacation and Spring Breaks from school. So we took our trailer and went to the overflow area which was another BLM (Bureau of Land Management) Property. We were ready for dry camping. I truly believe it was a dried up lake bed. The ground was so cracked and hard. The dogs could wander all they wanted unleashed but poor Toby couldn't find a single rock to christen. It was so windy that their ears kept lashing their faces and the breeze whipping their tail was very disturbing. It took Toby several tries to get that he could not pee into the wind.

We got to recognize returning campers over the four days we were there. The sunsets were beautiful and the stars, oh my.