We left Willcox to continue our journey west in what seemed to be a futile sun quest.  There was a new storm system behind us that we needed to avoid, but we had enough time to make a detour south to visit Tombstone, “the town that wouldn’t die”.  Tombstone didn’t die because it lives for tourists.  There are re-enactors sitting in the middle of the street enticing you to go see their gun fights, gunmen in spurred boots and long coats darting in and out of saloons as they tip their hats to passers-by, but it wasn’t our scene and after driving/walking around town in the frigid wind, we drove on south.

 

The drive south was scenic and the next town was Bisbee.  We heard that the weather in Bisbee is the most temperate in Arizona, but it certainly wasn’t that day.  The town is pretty though and the colourful hills around it contain many different kinds of minerals.

 

We drove further south and then west along the Mexican border through Naco, where we noticed a strange dark ribbon stretching along our route to the south.  When we drove into Naco, we realized that it was the famous wall.

 

This is what you would see if you were in Mexico, or if you had your back to the wall.  Pun intended.

There are border patrol officers everywhere, in trucks, on horseback, and in check points.  There are checkpoints checking for illegal aliens and those are situated on the highway, away from the border.  This may explain our small navigation error when we reached one of those checkpoints, or so we thought, and the confused guard didn’t want our passport, but insisted on an access card.  We basically tried to force our way into an army base that was sort of on the way to Tucson.  When we realized our mistake, we humbly turned around and took his directions to the highway.

Our stop for the night was at High Chapparel Campground in Eloy where it poured rain all night.  We now have to worry about flooding as well, but at least we don’t need to worry about the sand storms that everyone is talking about.  Or snow.  Life is good.

This sign actually says Sunshine Boulevard. Ironic isn’t it?

A sign on the highway made us take the 11 mile drive to Painted Rock Petroglyphs.  The petroglyphs are impressive and just the sheer number of designs is incredible.  There are over 3800 individual designs on 428 boulders!  There is also a BLM campground there that we may check out if we go back that way.

 

We ended up staying at Copper Mountain RV campground in Tacna that night where they put us right under the Canadian flag.

I wonder if they treated all Canadians to this patriotic camping experience.

This is a good place to talk about Passport America.  We activated our membership just before leaving Denver and it already paid itself off.  We needed to use RV parks because of the cold weather, and the 50% off the regular price is amazing.  As we write this, we already saved US$68 and since we will probably stay in a few more of these campgrounds, the savings will grow.  The membership is US$44.  Well worth it if you think you’ll need to go into RV campgrounds occasionally.

We checked the weather forecast again and it was still cold and yucky, so at a whim we decided to keep on driving all the way to the warmer San Diego and come back when it warms up. We just drove through Yuma with its gazillions RVs; in campgrounds, on the roads – everywhere you look, and kept on going.

FYI, California has checkpoints to make sure no forbidden produce or plants go through.  The officer asked if we have any produce or plants and we automatically said no.  She waved us through and as we were driving away we realized that we had a bunch of tomatoes sitting in plain view…if you remember the half tomato we lost at the Canadian border to that miserable officer, you may consider this, like we did, sweet revenge.

We hit sea level in Plaster city and drove through the mountains to 4,200 feet and a quick descent to San Diego. Finally, the weather was nice, sunny, and warm!  We made it to warmth and sunshine!

San Diego has an amazing dog beach where dozens of dogs and their friendly owners frolic, so we spent some time there.  We drove around San Diego a bit before turning around and heading back over the mountains towards Yuma.

 

Passed the mountain ridge back to Yuma at night and since we were a bit tired, we decided to look for a place to stop for the night.  I found a place that looked good around Jacumba and after driving down a dark dirt road, we reached closed iron gates.  A woman leaving the compound said that the place was closed, and added as she was fumbling with her robe, that it was clothing optional.  Looks like I took us to a nudist resort…could have been interesting.

She said we can just sleep there by the side of the road, but we decided to leave and, tired as we were.  We just drove to the other side of the mountains.

We stayed at the Rio Bend RV Park in El Centro, a nice Rv park where everyone was fully clothed.

 

We crossed back to Arizona the next morning after a quick stop at the dunes recreational area.

We are back to Yuma now and looking forward to some boondocking in the desert.

BY THE NUMBERS

• cost: CAD$328 (US$246)
• distance: 1,484km (922 miles)
• fuel average:  7 km per liters (16.5 mpg) 

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