Ok, I tried just to lay in the sun and read but it was hot, and no matter how much they misted me, it was still a little too hot to just sit there.
But I did have eggs benny outside, read my book for a bit, wondered what Margot would have thought about this place and made notes of the small things I observed. Things like the humidity caked the sugar into a big lump and made the salt a solid mass (but not the pepper.)
So, off I went to see the Salton Sea.
Learned something along the way. My car talks to me. Hey! Don’t look at me like that. She’s very sweet and eager to please. I tell her the radio station and she plays it, I tell her it’s too hot and she makes it cool. I think I love her.
I also stopped listening to the news. To be fair, I gave up a few days ago. It just pisses me off. So, instead, I have listened to an audio book. Tom Clancey’s Rainbow Six. Super fun to listen to a book while I drive mile after mile, even if the book has a cardboard villain and the heroes are often saved by some form of deus ex machina. Honestly, I don’t get how Clancey sells as well as he does, Slater is a far, far better writer.
Arrived at the Sea a little after noon. Pulled into a state park, looked at a nifty little cactus garden and saw a roadrunner!!! Meep. Meep. Only coyote I ever saw was, sadly, dead on the side of the road. But man, those little road runners can move.
Made my day.
Sat on the edge of the Salton Sea on a beach made up of small shells and a ton of dead fish. Freya and Vegas would have loved the dead fish but it made me wonder wtf had happened here?
Now I normally love being by the sea but I have to tell you, that sea was a bit too sea-smelly, even with only floating seaweed. That heat seemed to trap the worst of the smells and just lock them in.
Didn’t stay long.
Did find another cool location. A date tree farm with cows (of all freaking things) lounging in the shade. Some of the farms had greenery underneath the trees, others grew in bare sand, the date trees wrapped and hanging in what looked like canvas bags. Great place for an ambush. Especially if you put a few explosives in the trees…
I took a detour to drive around the Joshua Tree National Park and stopped at the General Patton Memorial. Why they would put a memorial and museum in the middle of another truckstop/gas-station/small town, I have no idea but they did have a great collection of, well, Patton tanks. So I kinda had to stop.
But I had an attack of cheap and didn’t pay to go into the museum itself.
By the time I drove away, it was cloudy again and I thought, you know what, nap time, dammit, nap time.
It’s a vacation.