My Trails

You know you’re getting close to the border when no one at the local Walmart is speaking English. I’m parked for the night at the Walmart lot in the town of Calexico, CA, only a few short miles from the Mexican border. I spent an hour or so browsing the store and selecting some fresh fruit, all the while hearing nothing but Spanish from every shopper. Even the announcements over the PA system were in Spanish. Thankfully the checkout teller spoke English.

I’m slowly making my way across the southwest toward San Diego, CA. Along the way I’ve been staying at BLM visitor areas and checking out interesting places along the way. Two days ago I stopped at the Imperial Wildlife Refuge, situated on the Colorado River above Yuma, AZ, and enjoyed time looking at exhibits and learning about the history of the area. The Colorado River literally gives life to an otherwise desolate, barren, wasteland known loosely as the Yuma Desert.
It is shocking to drive into Yuma. For miles surrounding the city, and I’m sure why it thrives, canals from the Colorado transform the landscape into lush green fields and towering groves of Date Palms. It is amazing what a little water can do.

Prison Cells

I spent the night in Yuma and early the next morning visited the Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park. From 1876 to 1909 the Territorial Prison at Yuma was home to more than 3000 prisoners. Some of the southwest’s most harden criminals, including 29 women once served time at the prison. I visited the prison cemetery, browsed through the museum, walked along the cells block, and read plaques in the yard. It was quite interesting if you like that sort of thing, and I would recommend it to anyone passing through.

I stopped last night just inside California at the Pilot Knob LTVA. The landscape is nothing but sand and small shrubs, broken only by a distant black fence that separates the US from Mexico. I walked for a quarter mile before I was out of site of the other campers and found a bush big enough to hide behind and pee. It is really that flat and open. You could land an airplane out there. While I walked towards the border I got an uneasy feeling that the Border Patrol would fly over and think I was trying to cross illegally. That thought made me turn around and hoof it back to my van.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2012 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Adventure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.