Odometer 28,430

Sitting on the bed in the Hotel, everything packed and ready to go, we take another look at the map and check our options, we have several: either drive up north towards Flagstaff and then maybe on from there to some of the National Parks, west to San Diego or east back to Las Cruces.

We decide the best and most cost efficient thing to do at the moment is to go west, so we can be in San Diego by tonight.

We leave the hotel and feed our navigation system with San Diego: 420 Miles. We take the shortest way to the HWY and stay on it until about 30 miles before Gila Bend. There we take an exit in the middle of nowhere and follow a gravel road out into the the Sonoran Desert. It is already noon and our thermometer show 106 Fahrenheit (41 Celsius). We still “park” the car in a riverbed and take a short walk out into the desert in the burning midday sun. We hike from one shade tree to the next and eventually we sit down on a rock and listen to the silence out here. Sometimes the wind is singing in the trees, or some birds are chirping or an ugly fly is bothering us, but otherwise it is completely still.

Back on the HWY we have another 290 Miles ahead of us. The closer we get to California, the higher the temperature raises. The highest is 115 Fahrenheit (46 Celsius). And this is how hot it is when we stop at the majestic Imperial Sand Dunes near the Californian border to take a few pictures. We stop a few more times along the canal to take some pictures. In some areas we see the canal and in the background the sand dunes divided by the fence between Mexico and the USA. The canal brings water form the Colorado River to the farming area around Calexico.

After 5 weeks of traveling, almost 5,000 miles and 4,500 pictures we arrive back in San Diego at around 6pm. The temperature meanwhile has dropped to 67 Fahrenheit (19.4 Celsius) – it almost feels cold here.

Before going back to “our” apartment, we have dinner at our favorite Thai Restaurant because we feel it’s too late to unpack, go shopping and cook ourselves, we can still do that tomorrow.

We are glad to be safely back although we already miss the gypsy life we had for the last few weeks – traveling around the South West is addictive – maybe we hit the road again soon – stay tuned.