These are juice oranges – the white inside skin on them is bitter, but they give a lot of sweet juice.
They grow a lot of produce in that area, but one of the main crops seems to be date palms. These trees get very tall, and it is common to have one section planted with mature trees and the next section planted with younger trees. I learned that when a palm tree is younger, it is shorter but not much smaller. That is, the top of the tree looks about the same – it’s just how far it is off the ground that gives an indication of its age.
This morning Randy drove us from Oasis Palm to the Sweetwater Park in Bonito, in the San Diego area. The whole trip was less than 120 miles, but they were some of the hardest miles we’ve covered yet. We went south on 86 and turned west onto S22, which crosses into the Ana-Borrego Desert State Park, rising gradually in elevation. Around the town of Borrego Springs we picked up S3 south. That was a truly horrible road, in every sense of the word. I don’t know what the grade of descent was, but it was much too steep. It would never be allowed on a highway, but here for some reason, it was considered OK. And to make the road drop elevation even faster, the road was nothing but a continuous series of hairpin turns and blind-corners on the edge of the mountain, with no shoulder and no barriers to keep you from going over the side. There wasn’t a single stretch of road as much as 10 feet long that was straight and clear. It would have been trying in a car, but Randy was driving a 38’ motor coach and pulling a Jeep Commander! Every second he was on that road, he was making a turn in one direction or another, with no way to see what was up ahead or if there was a car coming towards us. My side of the road was right against the mountain – many places I could not have put my hand out the window without scraping rocks or trees. On Randy’s side the other lane ran right on the edge of the mountainside, so there was absolutely no room for vehicles to maneuver. Not only was there no shoulder on the road, but in a lot of places the edge of the road itself had eroded and collapsed. We hoped for better things after we got off the mountain, but as soon as we were in a level spot, we started seeing road warning signs such as “Rock Slide Area Ahead”. And “Sharp Turns Ahead”. And “Flash Flood Area”. And “Horse Crossing”. And “Cow crossing”. As Randy said, that road had a warning sign for everything except fire and brimstone! The road then proceeded to go up another mountain, with more blind corners and hairpin curves, shoulder-less and right on the edge of the mountain, only now my side was on the outside! I couldn’t see any of the road when I looked out my window, so I quit looking. When we finally turned onto highway 78 we thought it would get better, but that road was EXACTLY THE SAME!! Maybe just a tiny bit less elevation, but it was still impossible to see where the road was going more than 10 feet ahead. Then we pinned our hopes on 79 south, but no, that was just déjà vu all over again! At this point I have to say that Randy is a wonderful driver. We would not have tried that road if we’d know what it was like, but he did an amazing job and got us through without a scratch.
We did make it to San Diego area in one piece and visited with Randy’s brother Butch and his wife Lina. Their daughter Penny and her fiancé were there, and they offered to take us all out for dinner. So we all went to Applebee’s and over-ate.
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