Southern California

California, southern California, Sunny California. The navy has an air base here because they can fly almost every day and Yuma has the Guinness record for the sunniest place on earth.

We drove through a section of a sandy desert just west of Yuma, the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, where hundreds of people each year injure themselves badly or kill themselves in the name of recreation - dune buggies, motor bikes and 4-wheel drives in large numbers and unregulated. It's a horror story.

Also winding its way through the sand is the Coachella Canal, built 80 years ago, that takes water from the Colorado River almost 200 km north for irrigation. It's wide, cement lined and surely must fill with sand, leak and evaporate.

To get to San Diego we had to go over a steep mountain pass 4000' high. There were radiator filling tanks every mile or so.

The country is naturally dry but any areas that can be irrigated are. I wonder if they have salt problems like we do. They certainly have water supply problems - or will have in the future.

PS All of the above photos were taken from the car as we were zooming along at 75 miles an hour. They don't have pull overs on the National Highways.