Another sunny blue sky day in South West California. We were up early and took our time, breakfast then some comp time before setting off about 9am with only a vague idea of the direction we wanted to go in.

Setting the GPS for Yuma avoiding highways, main roads etc Along winding roads we steadily dropped down from the leafy heights of Julian to a more desert like terrain with long stretches of straight roads. The trees gave way to salt bush and cactus with high bare rocky hills on either side.

As we left Oak Hill Inn we had to stop for a turkey crossing the road, a few miles on the winding road out of town we had to stop again for a small family of quail crossing.

Out f the hills and it was dead straight roads through flat desert with little signs of life, human or otherwise. Here and there signs of humans, a nearly deserted RV park, ATV rentals at a small general store etc By 10am the outside temp was around 35C but felt warmer.

Turning more south we could see where we were last year, the Salton Sea off to our left. The border patrol stations started appearing too. Date palm plantations, green crops and sheds full of hay began to appear. There's an irrigation ditch beside the road, our first sign of water in some time.

We passed a manure power plant, that's a first for us lol past Calexico there's a hydro electric plant, rather a strange find in such an arid place.

Our first gas tank fill of the the trip happened in Calexico $2.25/gal or about 55c/lt. Even with the sucky exchange rate that's still way less than we've paid for years back in Aus. The local Walmart had some awesome berries and cone and I picked up some thongs too. In the fresh produce department there were bins of beans and rice which people were scooping into bags and buying in bulk.

We arrived in Yuma a little after one, the hotel check in is 3 and our room ain't ready so we went to a local park and had some lunch under a shelter. Despite the cover it was very hot, like over 40C hot!

From there we drove around checking out the the town. It was all a bit too hot to be doing much other than staying in a/c really.

Back to the hotel at two and we were able to check in, essentially we moved from the cars a/c to the rooms a/c lol

I put on another slow cooker meal and we had that and some of the super fresh corn for dinner before crashing out early.