San Diego to Deming NM

The crack of dawn happened at 9 this morning, almost a record but not quite.

Leaving San Diego after a month and a half was very difficult; Kathleen and Phillip are great hosts, San Diego really is the place to be, and we left our little delivery package behind.  I can't say the Joan's allergies disappeared by the time we reached the Interstate, and I'm not sure that sudden improvement is likely; we'll see.

The weather was great all day: from about 15ºC when we left, mid to high 20s in the mountains, and up to 33ºC when we reached the 'prairies' beyond the mountains.  The mountains are awesome, from sea level we rose to 4100', back down to about 2000' and back up to 4100' before finally dropping to about 200' below sea level.  I think we're at about 4500' here in Deming.

The plants along the way are all examples of drought resistant plants, and spring colours are starting. Everything that was not irrigated was bone dry, and dusty.  We saw dozens of 'dust devils' mini-twisters that picked dusty soil and twisted it up to a few hundred feet at times.  At times, the dust made driving vision quite limited. I can imagine that the road signs warning of the possibility of no vision could be quite accurate.  Fortunately, the blowing sand did not last long in spite of the fact they happened over a hundred mile stretch or so.  The sand clouds were  kind of spectacular in the rear view mirror where they had the sun behind them.  Sorry, no pictures; you'll just have to drive here yourself.

Heavy winds were also a factor along Interstate 8, in the valleys between mountains, and in the flat areas after the mountains.  We were both very pleased that we weren't haulage a trailer! The good part of heading east is that the gas prices have fallen from $3.89 to $3.29 here.  Here's looking forward to even lower prices.