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We woke quite early to another sunny, clear blue sky day. There was a good breakfast on offer but a crowded breakfast room so we grabbed what we wanted and went back to our room to eat. Watching the news there's still flood alerts for SC from the hurricane but a message to Veronica and Larry found them to be ok other than copping a lot of rain.
We set off before ten and were soon out of town passing desert, a rodeo yard full of horses that appeared to be getting worked, nut orchards, desert, more desert and fields of sorghum & soy. It was mostly flat with the mountains all around us in the distance.
Just out of Theba there were huge installations of what looked like solar reflectors which went on for miles generating energy for some sort of plant off in the distance.
There's a lot of solar installations too, one in California was both sides of the road for a couple of miles and went as far as we could see back from the road in both directions. On the hills there are wind farms, Aust has a lot to learn about cutting back on fossil fuel power.
Approaching Yuma we saw three hercs flying low, one after the other. A road sign to a Marine Corp base explained it.
Not far out of Yuma we crossed into California and were stopped at an agricultural check point wanting to know what fruit we had on board. It was a pretty casual thing, we said we had bananas, apples and tomatoes. It took a bit of translating to get across what we had, to-may-toes vs tomatoes etc but we got there and were quickly on our way.
Then we found ourselves surrounded by sand dunes despite being a long way from the ocean. On our right there was a parallel water course, irrigation Chanel or something. On our left we could see the fence between the US and Mexico only a very short distance from us.
As soon as the dunes appeared they were gone replaced by the same old desert nothing much. There were occasional patches of land under agriculture, only when there was a aqueduct nearby though.
We slowly rose from well below sea level, up through rocky mountains and over canyons with no sign of water other than the frequent concrete containers marked radiator water. We got to over 4,000 feet before beginning our descent to the coast.
45 minutes short of San Diego we were again were stopped at a border protection check point. This time the dog checked us out, a guard gave us the eyeball and directed us to carry on; not a single word was exchanged this time.
Heading towards our hotel it was very different, lots of trees and despite being still drought affected it was far closer to green than we'd seen for awhile.
After checking in we caught up on what had happened over the day. Aust had won their game against England and they were now out of the running. Pete couldn't help himself, he grabbed the English Bobby doll Tal gave us and our Skip and set up a tableau to stir Andy Lister. In turn I couldn't help it I did another with the kiwi coming for them both. We thought it was pretty funny
We contacted Jeff and he arranged to pick us up at 7pm. We met his wife Kristie and we all set off for a Mexican restaurant with an excellent view of the city. We got there and were seated only to find since they were last there a big building had gone up blocking the view! ah well, the best laid plan and all that. :-)
Dinner was good and we chatted a lot which is a nice change from it just being the two of us as it mostly is.
After dinner they took us down to the shoreline where we could see the city and the various pleasure boats using the boat ramp heading out to fish, drop lobster pots etc
It was a nice interlude and good to meet Kristie before we are back in San Diego next year for MACNA.
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