We spent our Thanksgiving day on the road. But since it was almost all New Road, it was still a very good day! (And we did get to talk to our kids and we have a turkey ready to roast tomorrow, so there will still be leftovers!). We were only going about 200 miles from the Coachella Valley down the east coast of the Salton Sea, south to El Centro and then west along the bottom of the state (almost into Mexico) and then a little north to swing around to Jamul (there are mountains in the way of actually getting there more directly). Here is what it looks like on a map –

Here’s what it looked like as we drove it –
Down past the Salton Sea

The north end of the Salton Sea is in the Imperial Valley – a real fruit (and vegetable) basket area of California. This field was ready for something!

Although the Salton Sea is increasing in it’s salinity each year (along with becoming more poluted), it is still home to about 30% of the the remaining American White Pelicans.

(If you’d like to know more about this lake (the largest in CA) there is some info Here on Wikipedia.)
We soon left the lake behind us and continued through the desert – but we knew that mountains were in our future!


Oh, yeah, mountains ahead. We were going from about 300 ft. below sea level to over 4000 ft. above sea level. Not the highest pass we’ve traveled by any means, but believe me, it was one long climb!



And what goes up, must come down –

and down –

and down.
We passed some majestic windmills along the way –

and pretty much continued to wind up and down and over and through mountain after mountain.

We eventually made it to the outskirts of The Big City – but I bet you can all picture Thanksgiving traffic. It wasn’t very photo worthy.
We finally settled down in parking lot near a Kohls in El Cajon. We figured if they asked us to move we would just say we were waiting for it to open at 4AM. Fortunately, no one bothered us so we didn’t have to actually get up and do it! (But I must say, many others did! And without the comfort of having their bed in the parking lot!).

Today we moved into our December project – Indian Hills Camp. We haven’t seen too much of the camp just yet, but I can share with you my new picture window view –

I don’t think we’re done being thankful just yet!