Big Weather to San Diego

Trip Odometer 3384

January 28:From Portal it was just a hop, skip, and bump to Bisbee AZ to meet some Sitka friends who were on their own traveling adventure. We made had time for a nice bite and a walkabout through the town. This was once a big copper mining community, with the scars to prove it. The mine crashed in the 50’s and in the 60’s the town was repopulated by “Hippies and the the counter-culture.”

What we found was a funky town with a strong artist and visitor community but without too much pretense. The people were friendly and the prices were fair. The former mining town felt like a drier version of Juneau, AK: Wooden houses stacked against steep hills and winding streets that turn into steps. The hotel where our friends were staying, The Inn At Castle Rock, was like a a little maze of rooms and cozy meeting spaces. The reception desk is right next to a deep rock well!

For those keeping score, our route from Portal was Rodeo, Apache, Douglas, Bisbee, Tombstone, St. David, Benson, and with a concession to interstates, I10 into Tucson.

And before we knew it we were tucked away in Tucson with our Sitka friends Judy and Stef in their sweet little desert getaway! We enjoyed some Alaskan fish for dinner and a dip in the community hot tub before a great (and warm!) sleep.

Jan 29: With a delicious breakfast we said our goodbyes and pointed westward. Our plan was to find camp on the east side of the San Diego, which would make it an easy evening, and an easy drive to San Diego the next day. We had as a potential camp the fabled Slab City, but there were many other options for boondocking in the AZ desert.

We did a bit more interstate, just to remind us of why were vowed never to drive interstate, through Marana, Piccacho, and to the big dairy cowtown of Stanfield, where we had a parking lot lunch. A fellow pulled up in his truck and asked us what we had for sale. Our askance looks had him quickly explain that this lot is kind of an informal flea market, and folks park there all the time to convert their trash to some lucky buyer’s treasure.

GIla Bend, Dateland, Yuma (appears to be nothing but miles of parking-lot-in-a-dessert RV parks), and then off the interstate and onto barely-there roads and increasingly sandy desert. By the time we get to Glamis, we are looking at hard-blowing sand dunes all the way to the horizon.

With the hard winds we decided that any spot in the desert wasn’t going to be any fun, so we steered away from Slab City etc and headed toward Bradley to look for a more sheltered site. That’s when we got the Severe Weather Warning that the San Diego Mountains were going to expect heavy winds and snow at high elevations that evening, and could be impassible for two days!

With that news we hot footed it back to I8 and drove over the mountains to San Diego and Sitka friends Grace and Charley for a surprise early visit. The drive starts, appropriately, at Devil’s Canyon. It was bleak, curvy, dark, torrentially rainy, and absolutely no fun. And it didn’t get any better from there. When we at last got to the other side of the mountains, suddenly we were in busy California city and a whole different vein of multi-lane driving terror! But cool heads and white knuckles got us to our destination safe and sound and just in time for dinner.

Jan 30: That bad storm led to solid rain the next day, which was perfect. We spent a day lounging on couches and doing very little. We are enjoying our days in (now) sunny Dan Diego and will write up a full report next!