Ken & Christine's USA trip 09: Killing time

Not too much to report today.

We decided on another late start & headed out at 9am, the temp already registering 104F, throughout the day this hovered around 108F & probably higher. We did a couple of little detours (don't want to get to LA too early tomorrow) one to a little place called Salton City. For many miles we could see this lake, altho' everything around was dry and flat. We turned off hoping to get close to the water, in fact a yatch club was advertised but it had all obviously closed many a long day ago. There were, however, a number of huge pelicans enjoying themselves on the rocks. It was also nice to have a slightly cooler breeze for a short period of time.

There was a large Palm Oil plantation, made us remember the plantations we used to see in Malaysia. The area was quite green & very busy.

We continued on, along the highway, and came across the biggest wind farm we have ever seen. there must have been hundreds and hundreds of them, both large & small. We decided to turn off there & head towards the Joshua Tree memorial park, this took us approx 50 miles further inland. We went through Yucca which is a huge town, Joshua Tree which isn't very big, & then saw a sign saying the next service was 100 miles away. This made us re-evaluate our situation, & we decided to try for Hwy 40, which according to the GPS we could make. Guess what? Every road we took headed us towards a big Army Base, & a lot of the roads were dirt. We actually got to the front gate of the base but the young Army Marine (complete with side arm) didn't really know the directions. We ended up deciding to just get back onto the main road, get back to the freeway & continue on - which we did.

Around 2.30pm we saw a town called Banning, & decided to lodge there for the night. Have just had an extremely filling meal, staggered back to the room, & will head to the Ramada via Wing Stuff tomorrow.