Wednesday
Determined to have a quiet day we took a short ride to look at the local desert. This is the largest expanse of Sand Dunes in North America, known as the North American Sahara. We only got to the South East corner of this 30 mile stretch of sand dunes, but it was enough to see how amazing the landscape is. We sat for a bit, I went for a walk up a dune to see the view, with the temperature now over 100 degs F in the shade (oh! there is none) it was not a long walk. Then as we sat a guy came up and offered us a ride on his Dune Buggy, well that was a great idea (of course he wanted payment for it) so, Sally went first, donning the crash helmet and thoroughly enjoying herself, she went speeding off over the dunes with Dennis the Dune Buggy Driver. Only to return sometime later still with a big grin, having enjoyed it all the way. Now it was my turn and after putting on the helmet we sped off into the desert, like a modern day Lawrence of Arabia, nothing around us but sand, sand and more sand. Riding up impossible slopes, looking at the sky beneath us as we drove over crests, then hurtling down (what seemed) vertical cliff faces al made for a very enjoyable ride. At one point we stopped in the midst of …. Nowhere! Dennis pointed to a dune and told me that was the spot where they filmed scenes from Return of the Jedhi. There was actually a small gravel patch which had been imported for some reason for the film (to create a stable platform for filming from?). We then rolled over the dunes some more before returning to Sally, the van and safety. We both agreed that this was real serendipity – unexpected good things. We both really enjoyed our trip in the desert. Following this we drove back to Yuma and had our lunch at the small Gateway Park, which is a public beach next to the Colorado River and Yuma State Prison (now closed), right next to the place where trains first entered California in 18 something.
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