San Diego to Las Vegas

Oy!  It was a long drive today.  San Diego to Las Vegas is a hike and a half.  We left a day early, having decided after a week in the city that we did not want to be driving in Monday morning traffic.  This is the first giant back up we saw going south bound, near Lake Elsinore.  The exit had backed up onto the freeway, blocking the left two lanes.  The backup went on for miles.  I think I would go somewhere else.

This is a dry lake somewhere.  It was pretty with the white of the alkali.

This is really cool.  This is the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in the Mojave Desert.  It deploys 173,500 heliostats that direct the sun's energy at three towers.  The towers get hot, boil water, make steam and that turns turbines.  It's eerie when you crest the hill and see these things glowing out in the distance.  Apparently it has not been as efficient as it was projected to be.  Clouds, contrails and weather are being blamed.  The facility was originally planned to be larger, but was scaled back so as not to infringe on desert tortoise habitat.  They are setting fire to birds who fly between the heliostats and the towers.

My sample size is only one, but I think I can say that departing Las Vegas on Sunday to return to San Diego is a bad idea.  This traffic jam literally stretched for 20 miles.  TWENTY!  Please make a note of it.  This gives new meaning to "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."

There are two 4,000 foot summits on the route.  There is a 10 mile 6% descent off the second summit.  There first truck stops are in Lenwood, CA, near Barstow.  Between San Diego and Barstow there are really no places for a Class A towing to stop.  You will want to manage your coffee consumption with that in mind.
Tomorrow we are moving on to Hurricane, Utah; which will be a short day.

Tucson to Yuma, AZ

We left Tucson today.  It was a good departure, only one very minor process fail.  We drove Interstate 8 to Yuma.  This is what it looks like out there.  Flat.  There are many blooming yellow trees.

Along the way we saw this.  Its the Solana Solar Farm.  It was built by a Spanish company, Abengoa.  It uses parabolic mirrors to heat tubes filled with heat transfer fluid (oil) that run the length of each curved mirror.  Once the oil is hot it can either go to a steam generator where it boils water to run turbines, or it can be directed to store energy by heating tanks of molten salt.  Click on the link.  They have much better pictures than mine, and it's really cool technology.  Abengoa is currently building an even larger facility in the Mojave desert.

We're over nighting at the Fortuna del Oro Golf and RV Resort.  Coming up to the RV park we completely missed seeing the office building on the left, and the fact that one is supposed to pull off the road on the right, and then walk across the frontage road to register.  We drove into the park and asked some people where the office was.  As it turned out,  it didn't matter because the office was closed.  We were to pick any slot and then tell them in the morning.  They've planted orange trees at the front of almost all the sites.  Our door was blocked by the tree on the first site we backed into.  After some walking about we found a treeless site which was better.
In 2007 we left Seattle and moved to North Carolina.  The plan had been to domicile mid coast and visit the large cities of the east.  Somehow we ended up buying a travel trailer instead.  Friends of ours had talked to people from the Yuma cycling club on their travels; it sounded good, so with no research we came here. We lasted 21 days before fleeing to Tucson.  We hated it here so much it's a wonder we didn't sell the travel trailer and head east.  We don't like it any better this time.
Tomorrow we will be in San Diego.  It should be better there.