We hung out with Lisa for a while in the morning before heading out to California! We ran into Quartzite, a small town along I-10, and there were a ton of people there! A lot of RVs and trailers from all over the country were all over the streets, along with really vague signs for "2011 parking" and "World Famous Main Event;" we guessed it was some kind of RV convention or rock and gem convention since there were gem stands everywhere too. Later we found out that it was called the Sports, Vacation, and RV show and it is one of the largest gathering of RVs and RVers in the world with attendance of over 150,000 people!
From Quartzite we continued along I-10 and made it to California!
We headed to Mecca, driving inside a canyon until we got to the east side of the Salton Sea down to Bombay Beach, passing huge citrus and date farms, to find our host for the night. Gordon owns a small organic farm that mainly grows dates and olives. We were expecting a large operation but there were actually less than ten date trees, and he gave us some of his dates to eat.
Gordon gave us a tour of the land and also showed us a large tub that was fed by natural hot springs. He said that the water comes out at 125F!! Gordon started filling up the tub and said that in a few hours it would be cool enough to go in.
There were also three WWOOFers working on his farm and they arrived back from their hike shortly after we showed up. There was a couple from a small school in Connecticut and a boy from Germany who is taking a year off to travel before he begins university. Unfortunately there is not a lot of work for them to do at the farm so Gordon has them weeding and sewing. Josh and I made our dinner and we all watched the original "Planet of the Apes" until Josh decided that the hot springs were probably cool enough, so we headed down and checked the temperature. It was 110F!
We wasted some time taking long exposure photos with flashlights and trying to get photos of the stars.
Finally the water had cooled down to a toasty 106F and we hopped in, even bringing one of our left over craft beers from Houston that we had been saving! Josh and I got to spend time by ourselves for a while, and it was wonderful being in that hot spring under the stars! After a while Gordon and the WWOOFers joined us and we had some great conversation, but Josh and I were exhausted by about 10 PM - I'm assuming since we lost another hour coming into the California!
Josh and I shared the same high for today: sitting in the hot tub under the stars with our beer! It was really a treat. My low was getting the feeling that the WWOOFers, especially the couple, didn't really want to be there... Gordon had mentioned that a lot of people come out there expecting an enormous farm and are really disappointed when they see his small set-up, but it is my low because he seemed like such a nice guy! Josh's low was realizing how expensive gas is in California; we managed to find $2.99/gallon on the border, but as soon we entered into the state it shot up to at least $3.30/gallon. My "ho" was discovering the gathering in Quartzite... we just kept driving around saying, "What is going ON here??!!!" but stupidly never asked any of the people walking around. Josh's "ho" was accidentally lying to an officer at the agriculture checkpoint and inadvertently smuggling Florida oranges into California! Oops!
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