Saturday, April 15th
If you take I-8 near San Diego you pass through many miles mountains. On the western side of them, overlooking the desert floor below, is Desert Tower.
I’d glimpsed the tower on the way in to San Diego and thought, “what the heck was that?” Then Sandra mentioned it when we went on the Goat Canyon hike and I made a mental note of the exit. On Saturday I decided to stop in!
As in typical crazy-person-builds-neat-monument it has since been filled with piles of stuff and turned into a tourist trap. Worth a visit!
Certainly leaving lush San Diego to head into this seems like a genius plan.
I was baking in my motorcycle armor so didn’t spend too much time scrambling among the rocks. Less than an hour after stopping I headed out and drove the lovely, long, undulations of I-8 as it slithers down the mountains and then out into the wide open desert.
On the western border of California, near Yuma, are the Imperial Sand Dunes. The highway cuts right through them, you look up and suddenly there are enormous sand dunes rising on either side. Shortly before reaching here I ran short of fuel and had to stop and fill up with my spare can (better planning would have avoided this). I stopped only briefly at the dunes, in the rest area surrounded by highway and sand. Then it was on to the first of many Airbnb’s as I began to explore Phoenix as a possible place to live.