On To Borrego Springs

We woke up this morning with no electrical power from our batteries.  So I spent an hour or so figuring out what was going on, and finally found that one of the ground wires connected to the battery had a bad connection.  But, I also think that the batteries are not doing too well and may need to be replaced.  Last sommer I had left the solar cell on charging the batteries and it definitely overcharged them.

Our destination when we go on these trips to the south is almost always Borrego Springs.  Its elevation is less than 600 feet, it's about as far south as you can go, and it is usually sunny, so Doreen likes the nice warm sunshine.  We finally got going at about 10am.  It was a bit of a round about way getting out of here, finding a bridge to get across the river into California.

About half way towards Borrego Springs you pass through Imperial Sand dunes.  We've crossed here quite a few times before, but we always get lured into stopping at the overlook.  There's miles and miles of drifting sand.  Gives you an idea of crossing the Sahara.  Usually there are dune buggies racing all over the sand dunes, but this time there were none.

At the overlook there were several big RVs with dune buggies, so rather than seeing them travelling around out on the dunes, we saw them up close.  Wow, they are a lot bigger, more complicated and more expensive than they look at a distance out on the dunes.  How about this Eric?  The couple that own this dune buggy were very friendly, and they had a really cute little Down Syndrome girl.  I asked if they take her out, and they said not yet, but she was getting used to the loud noises, so they will probably take her out soon.

We arrived at Borrego Springs shortly after 2pm, after stopping several times along the way.  It should have been just a couple of hours drive.  And we headed directly to Doreen's favorite store in the world, Borrego Outfitters.  Here she is with her goodies, after getting her shopping fix.

Finally we headed out to the desert to the place on Rockhouse Road where we always camp, but there was absolutely no one there.  Usually there are RVs parked all over the desert.  And there were signs up saying Private Property, No Unathorized Persons.  So, that was that, what a disappointment. However, we drove back out and across the road to a place we had camped once before, and there were a few other campers there.  There are very few rocks around this place, however, so there are only a few fire pits.  But we did manage to find one, so here we are in our spot for the night (N33 17 34.5, W116 17 42.8).  The odd coloring is due to the cloud cover with the sun shining through.

It was pretty well clouded over by now, and there was quite a nice sunset.

After completely sunny days so far, they are forecasting chance of a shower for the next few days.  Miss Travelaire doesn't want to get wet and dirty after keeping herself so prim and pretty!

I walked down to the nearest camper to see if they knew anything about camping over on Rockhouse Road.  They were a fairly elderly couple, and he was a real Trump fan.  He said he's the best president they've had for 35 years.  (I expect the 35 years means Ronald Reagan was his last good president.).

We had a nice campfire tonight.  While we were over on Rockhouse Road, where we were not allowed, we found an old campsite with a fire pit that had a bunch of nice dry firewood, so we grabbed that up and used it for tonight's campfire.  You can see Venus through the clouds in this photo, setting just awhile after sunset.  It's just to the right of Miss Travelaire's roof, and above the red chair.