General Patton Memorial Museum

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

After breakfast this morning, Yuma and I decided to drive over to the other side of the valley to check some rock formations.  I wanted to check out the rock formation at the end of that dirt road going up the mountain.

Here is what it looks like from the south side of the valley, looking towards Joshua Tree N.P.  I-10 is below and just above that and before the Cottonwood Mountains is the dirt road we are staying on.  It is the white line.

Here is a zoom photo.  We are on the second white line, above the truck on I-10.  The south entrance to the park is through the valley in the Cottonwood Mountains above us.  Click on it to enlarge.

While walking around, I came on these beautiful cactus up against a nice green bush.

We didn’t stay long on the other side.  The rock formation turned out to be nothing exciting.

When we got back to camp, Dolly was putting her metal detector together.  We have carried that thing around for three years and never took it out of the box till today.  Here’s Dolly metal detecting.  We found one can pop-top on our maiden voyage.  She found it and I dug it up.

After lunch, we left the poor doggies in the MH and drove five miles east to the George Patton Memorial Museum.  The reason it is located out here in the desert, is because General Patton started Camp Young here in 1942. 

The camp was created to train World War II trainees how to live and fight in desert conditions before being sent to South Africa to fight the Germans in the desert there.  Over one million men were trained here during the war.

 

 

See you later.

Windy Day

Monday, February 22, 2016

Starting about mid-morning, the winds began picking up out of the northwest.  They came over the mountains and out of the Joshua Tree N.P.  25 mph with gusts over 35. 

Luckily, I had positioned the MH so the door was pointing to the south.  We could sit outside and the MH protected us from the majority of the wind.  But finally, I had to pull in the living room slide and we stayed inside most of the morning.

This is the tree in our camp.  The only tree.  Maybe someone will know what this gnarly tree is.  There are a number of them around the hillside.  This one gives me a little shade when sitting outside in my lounge chair.

At around 2 P.M. the winds dropped to around 12 mph; much more reasonable.  Yuma and I took a walk around the area.

This is looking at the mountains to our north and on the other side is the Joshua Tree N.P.

I think this area was used by the Army during World War II for desert training.  The George S. Patton Museum is about 5 miles down the road from where we are staying and we plan to go there tomorrow.  Hopefully, I will learn more about what they did and where.

I took photos of stuff I saw on the hillside near our MH as we walked.  It appears to me there were camps here at one time.  Probably, tents because there are no structures, only rocks and some concrete.

 

Got to have your old freezer with bullet holes to make a good desert scene.  I was sure I would find a body in it, but there wasn’t.  It was empty.

 

Here is rock formation.  In my mind, there was a large Army tent here and the soldiers surrounded the tent with rocks.  There were a lot of formations like this throughout the area.  Gave a personal look to the tent area.

Looking over toward Indio, California, the sunset was pretty with all the wind blown dust in the air.

See you later.

Move to Joshua Tree N.P.

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Dolly was mad at me the other day when I said we would move on Sunday, but she didn’t tell me why.  She assumed I knew the Daytona 500 was on Sunday.  I knew it a few days back, but had already forgotten. 

Of course, she didn’t tell me why she was mad.  I don’t know why women do that.  I would have changed our move date, if she had only reminded me that Sunday was Daytona 500 day.

Anyway, this morning we drove to Gringo’s gas station to dump tanks and take on water.  When we got there, I found they are closed on Sunday.

I was talking to a nice stranger who told me a place to go.  The stranger mentioned he was heading into town to watch the Daytona 500.  My forgetful brain knew why Dolly was mad now.  Later that morning, I said I was sorry, but the milk has been spilt and there is nothing I can do to make it right.

Got everything done and we headed on to Salton City and made a left on hwy 86 heading to Coachella to the Neighborhood Walmart. 

While waiting for Dolly to do the shopping, I took the dogs for a walk and got this photo of a beautiful hotrod sitting in the Taco Bell parking lot.

Picked up all the food we need and headed back to Mecca. 

We stopped at the gas station in Mecca and I must say that was the busiest place I have ever been.  There were lines at every pump and they had lots of them.

I kept my patience and soon we had two pumps going.  The front one for the MH and the back one for the jeep.  Made good time and got out of that busy place post haste.

The reason we back tracked to Mecca, was because I wanted to take Dolly up through Box Canyon for the view.  I had driven through there last year and liked the views.  The entrance to Box Canyon is at Mecca.

At about 4:30 P.M., we exited Box Canyon at the road to Joshua Tree N.P.  As we climbed the hill, we made a right at the power line road.  Luckily, we found a beautiful spot overlooking I-10.  It is three or four miles down the hillside, so we can see the traffic, but hear no sounds.

We are all tired.  For some reason move days are tiring.  I think it is the stress of driving in traffic and having to deal with the crowds after a couple of weeks with nothing but solitude.  Coachella Valley is a crowded place. 

There is a full moon tonight.

See you later.

Borrego Metal Sculptures

Saturday, February 20, 2016

You can’t come to Borrego Springs without visiting the metal sculptures strewn around the area.  They are located on many of the roads on the outskirts of the town.

This afternoon, we took a jeep ride to view just a few of the 130 sculptures. 

 

 

See you later.

Christmas Circle

Friday, February 19, 2016

Happy Birthday, Yuma!  Today, our sweet Yuma is two years old.  He has been a great addition to our family, even though Fergie would disagree. 

Late in the morning, we went into Borrego Springs to the Friday market at Christmas Circle.

 

Each Friday, vendors put up their tents and sell their wares. We walked around and looked, but did not see anything we especially wanted, so bought nothing.

We did enjoy the beautiful morning.  It was a perfect temperature, with no wind and clear blue skies.

Both Yuma and Fergie enjoyed the green grass.  We don’t get to walk on grass in the desert.  This is one of the few places, other than the golf course that has grass.

Nice to have shade trees.

Carlee’s Place across the street from the circle is a popular place to stop for some good food.

After walking around, we went to the west end of town to the laundromat to do laundry.  However, when we walked in, the place was packed.  Every washer and dryer was taken.  We will just wait till the next town to try doing laundry.  No way are we going to stress out over laundry machines.

Driving back east on the main drag, Palm Canyon Drive, toward Christmas Circle, I got the photo below of Font’s Point off in the distance.  The traffic in town was heavy for such a small place.

See you later.