2004 – 05 . . . Journal Entry #3 - Rain, rain and more rain = flowers, flowers and more flowers

It was not the best weather winter . . . but oh, the wild flowers!

We did leave Quartzsite and move onto Yuma about the middle of February. No matter how much we like the desert it was oh, so nice to get onto the dry, unsandy pavement. We thought we would stay on the pavement until there were two days without rain . . . it never did happen, so we left anyway and headed off to a California State Park - Anza-Borrego Springs.

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

The main attraction in the Park is the wildflowers. Because there was so much rain this season, the flowers were not only very early they were in great abundance. I wanted to get a lot more pictures than I did but then everything has its limits!!

Here's just a few!!

Brittle Bush

Henderson Canyon

Barrel Cactus

Desert Lavender

Desert Primrose

Ocotillo

Desert Vervain

Desert Lily

The Desert Lily was quite a find, it can only be seen in bloom about every 10 years or so.

The downside of all the rain was a lot of dead trees and cacti. Because many of the trees and cacti are adapted to retain moisture, many of them got too much water and rotted from the inside out. We saw a number of trees (such as the Palo Verde) and cacti (the Saguaro in Quartzsite that had 45 arms) rot and collapse.

We stayed at Borrego Springs for less than a week and travelled around quite a bit but were not that terribly impressed - except for the wild-flowers.

On to the hot springs in Holtville Hot Springs. We were surprised at the number of people we knew from last year and realized that many Canadians spend the majority of their winter there. Besides the hot springs, it seems the primary activity is going to the flea markets in Calexico, California (right on the Mexico/California border). Now these are much different from the swap meets you generally see in Yuma or Quartzsite. From what we heard, a lot of the stuff is manufacturers over-runs, returned merchandise from department stores and discard supplies and equipment from places like large hotels replace them routinely every few year. The big thing while we were there was the duvets - now tell me, why would anybody want 20 duvets? The rationale was generally that they sold for

$2.00 to $5.00 each. Still!!

Too many people . . . too close!!

If it hasn't been obvious, we are really not joiners. We joined the Escapees group because we thought we might be able to find other RV'ers we had things in common with AND we wanted to attend the Escapade in California as our last adventure before heading north. (We envisioned the Escapade as being very similar to the Seminars in Kelowna).

Holy Cow!! As the time got closer, I felt more and more like I didn't want to go. Now, Kelowna has maybe 150 RVs . . . as word had it, this Escapade was expecting over 1200 RVs. That's a lot of people but I was willing to give it a try. We arrived early in the morning (we are usually early for everything) and watching them getting all those RVs parked was like watching a dance troupe run through its most complex routine. Needless to say, we were not stacked but very close to it. We were on was the back lot in the fairgrounds and I'm sure the field over the fence had just been fertilized with the left-overs from the barns so the flies were abundant.

The sessions I attended gave me some good information and I did meet some folks with common interests (writing, computers, photography and using digital cameras and editing software) BUT the rooms they held them in were not very good. They were either too small or too big with horrible acoustics. Mind you, I wasn't feeling too good (I think I had a sinus infection and I know I had a urinary infection AND I just found out that Buddy, our dog had just died) and that could have influenced my perception.

I did talk to the editor of the Escapee Magazine and may have an article or two to submit.

Ready to go Home!!

With all that, I was ready to head on home. Fuel cost are getting pretty spendy (as they say down there). In California we were paying up to $2.40 per American gallon but they were still less than gas prices up here.

We stopped for the weekend in Quartzsite and visited with friends there, then went up to Mesquite, where we waited out the snow storm that was happening around Salt Lake City. The next night was spent in Idaho and then we drove right through to Lethbridge.

Even with the six months of mail and dust it was good to be back in Canada and good to be home.