Day 4 Ocotillo Wells Vehicular Recreation Area Borrego Springs, California
Our plan this morning was to take the road across the desert to the Gas Domes. First though, we had to run to the hardware store for mouse catching supplies…hopefully it is just a mouse…hopefully it’s not a pack rat. We also decided to move our site…hoping that maybe he wouldn’t follow us…or move his friends and family in. It’s all part of what we signed up for! The bonus is that in our new site, we have a cell signal and WIFI to post the blog!
When we were finally on our way, it was very windy and dusty.
This gas dome is fairly new. It just started gurgling with water in 2002. This is evidence of geothermal activity deep inside the earth. The water is being pushed up through a crack in the desert floor.
This is a mud volcano. A mixture of mud, water, gases, and minerals continuously oozes from below the surface.
Today was Sunday and there were a lot of motorists out enjoying this expansive playground.
We passed the Artesian Well. This was a site where prospectors had hoped to find oil…they found only very hot water instead. There is work being done to figure out how to use this geothermal energy as a clean and sustainable energy source.
From the Gas Domes we decided to continue traveling across the desert to an area called the Tectonic Gorge. We had our lunch here.
We weren’t done with today’s adventure. We crossed the highway and found ourselves in the Palm Wash. This ride proved to be a challenging one…but fun! After getting down the hill we rode in the canyon for several miles before we could find our way out…grateful that we didn’t have to try to get up that hill…we weren’t sure that we could make it!
It is interesting how diverse the different trails are and how much we have been able to see!
The wind was blowing at about 20 miles an hour up on this hill. It was too windy to try and cook on the grill so we just heated up leftovers. We had to pull one of the slides in to keep the wind from doing damage to our slide-out cover.