Enough of Los Angeles Freeways!

We had a few small birds around the campsite this morning looking for handouts. (They seem to like Cheez-its too)

 

This handsome fellow, I think, is a California Scrub-Jay.

 

Doreen seemed to like this tree, which is one of the ones down here that has an almost white trunk and that has no bark. So I stopped on the way out of the campsite and took this picture.

 

Miss Travelaire has been complaining about traveling on these harrowing Los Angeles freeways, so we headed on away from the city, and after the first 5 or 10 minutes from the campsite we were on nice country roads with next to no traffic whatsoever. We could see Mount Paloma's Observatory off in the distance, where in this highly zoomed photo you can see the 200 inch telescope dome in the center peeking over the mountains.

 

It was only an hour's drive to where we began descending down towards Borrego Springs, one of our favorite spots. The road descends from 4000 feet to 500 feet at a 6 to 8% grade the whole way. It's not so bad coming into Borrego Springs this way; Miss Travelaire just has to gear down into second gear. But she tells me she'd like to go out another way! You can see the black bird here, sitting enjoying the view of the valley floor 3000 feet below.

 

And here we are in the center of Borrego Springs, at Christmas Circle. We've been to Borrego Springs many times now, but It is always difficult to pass by this big traffic circle without taking a picture!

 

The first order of business was to have breakfast (even though it was now 11am). And where else than at Los Jilbertos, the best Mexican eatery you can find. Don't ever pass by Borrego Springs without stopping for a meal at Los Jilbertos, right next to Christmas Circle! And here is Doreen out front of the restaurant, holding the leftover halves of our "Breakfast Burritos" that we could not finish.

 

After breakfast, we went to the Borrego Springs Mall, beautiful architecture, palm trees, and distant mountains, and a beautiful blue sunny sky.

 

Inside the mall area are some of the metal sculptures that you find all over Borrego Springs.

 

And here is Doreen's favorite store, Borrego Outfitters, the most expensive store in the world. (We actually got in and out with buying anything though!)

 

Just outside the library, there are always a group of people sitting, with their laptops and tablets, using the free library WiFi. (Not the first person in the foreground though!). It's nice that we no longer have to do this, because we have unlimited AT&T data time.

 

Finally, after touring around the mall area, we headed to our camping spot (N33 17 50.8, W116 16 59.6) out in the desert just outside of Borrego. Here is our campsite, after having picked out one of the many stone fire rings scattered around the desert floor. I won't bore you with Cheez-its in this picture today.

 

 

 

Inside Miss Travelaire there are many storage cupboards up around the edges of the ceiling. For example, this is one where we store our paper towels.

 

We had Miss Travelaire's door open all afternoon because it was so warm, and this little humming bird flew in. He almost exhausted himself trying to get out the window before I managed to direct him to the doorway. It was 81 F (27 C) all afternoon, but it didn't seem overly hot sitting in the shade of Miss Travelaire because it is so dry.

 

In the evening, it was so pleasant to sit outside without the least feeling of cold. The sky is so nice and dark here, and without the moon, the stars were so brilliant. While we were sitting, some really weird phenomenon happened; this bright fuzzy light appeared, slowly moved across the sky, and then expanded into quite an extended cloud before fading out. There is a large military area just to the east of here across the other side of the Saltan Sea, and there are often strange things that go on in the sky that you can never identify. There were many many flashes of light over that way also, as well as numerous airplanes lights all night.