Bye bye California

  Tucson, Arizona, United States
Friday, December 14, 2007

Howdy Folks,
Well it's nice to be out of California. The pace is just to hectic and the cost of living is much more. We are paying over 50c a gallon less for gas since we left.
We finally had our shocky replaced and couldn't get out of there fast enough. The urban sprawl around LA is amazing.
South East is the heading to some warmer climes, the cold winds and low overnight temps are getting to us a bit, we need to thaw out.

Brekkie at Salton

Through Palm Springs our first stop, still in California was the Salton Sea. Below sea level it is a  huge captive salt water sea that way back used to be part of the sea of Cortes until the silt removed in the making of the Grand Canyon Gradually blocked it off. It dried up and then around the turn of the last century an irrigation levee from the Colorado river broke and filled it up again.

Picnic at Salton

The river flowed into it for 18 months before it was stopped. Since then it has been gradually drying up and is very salty and now is proving to be an enormous environmental challenge for the Californian government. We loved it though, heaps of birds and a lovely outlook with the mountains behind it. The volunteers that worked there were very friendly and informative.
Off again the next day, the plan is to get down to Mexico and find a spot on the gulf coast for Christmas. We hit Arizona and boon docked in the desert north of Yuma with hundreds of other campers on government land. They spend the winter in the sticks for a few bucks a day not far from the Colorado river and a couple of dams.It's close to the border now and as it is with us unless it is a top spot we could enjoy we are off again.

Military museum Yuma

Tank crew

Got an early start and hit Tucson early afternoon and headed for the highly recommended Sonora Desert Museum.

Furry friend

Desert park

More like a Zoo than a museum we had a great time and spent hours watching all the native wildlife living in their natural environment. Mountain lions, Coyotes, Otter, tarantulas and the pig like Javelina to name a few.

Emily on a bucking big horn!

Not to mention the huge walk though aviary with dozens of birds and the hummingbird enclosure where you are inches away from these amazing delicate creatures.We camped in the state park campground just down the road ready for the next day which got a bit more exciting.
In Tuscon itself is a huge air force base which we drove past where on one side of the road is the bone yard that has thousand of planes scrapped for parts and on the other side over 6 thousand jets in mothballs. Squadrons of them from fighters to transports all lined up with their cockpits and engines  all taped up. A chap told us they are currently taking jets out of mothballs and rigging them with remote controls to send out over the Gulf of Mexico for target practice.From here we went to the air museum they have full of military aircraft. Over 150 of them from Restored WW11 bombers to the SR71spy plane.

SR71 spyplane

Who's driving this thing?

The boys loved it of course and Emily wasn't to badly behaved either.

Emmily's favourite

Biggles goes to Tucson

We cut out of town that night and found a park down the highway for a freezing cold night. The water taps outside hadn't thawed out before we left about 9 the next morning.
Heading for Texas,
Adios Amigos,
The McGregors6!!