Tomorrow morning we will set the alarm for very early, and we will leave our beloved southwest desert and return home to Whidbey Island. The trip home is a slog, although we are looking forward to the journey. We are ready for it.
After leaving Leisure World, in Mesa, AZ, we spent two days and three nights at our favorite place in the southwest---the Mojave Desert Preserve.
Here, we hiked two days high upon a mesa (coincidence?) next to our camper. We had two lovely, and fairly difficult hikes.
Us, on our final hike of Road Trip 7, on the mesa in the Mojave National Preserve:
One of the fun parts of being here this year was that it was my birthday. My 70th, gulp:
Here I am with my gifts from my Vicky. I got happy birthday calls from the people who I hold most dear.
My "desert birthday cake:"
and my birthday balloon from the Mojave Desert Preserve. It says "Happy Birthday!!!:
(we find and put into the trash dozens of these balloons every year that people release and don't consider where they go. We retrieved about 10 of them on our two hikes these two days. The funny thing was that the first one was a Happy Birthday balloon, JUST FOR ME!!!!)
On one of our hikes up on the mesa behind our camper Vicky spotted a structure far out into the desert. We have learned, as did the people in the film Prometheus, that there are no straight lines in nature. Here is what she saw---it is hard to see in the photo just as it was hard to see when we were on the mesa, so I drew an arrow to it for you:
After we scrambled down from the mesa we searched in the desert for it, and found it;
Our theory: It is one of the few remnants of a Desert Training Center that was in the area---the Clipper Mountains/Essex Training Center. These were created by General Patton in WWII to train soldiers to fight the Germans in the North Africa Deserts. We have been to several of them in the past few years.
There was one in this area, although according to everything we have read, there are no structures remaining. This one looked like one, though.
In addition, on our way back to our camper, we found this;
There are no straight lines in nature. :)
In the Desert Training Centers we have gone to there are large numbers of walk ways and roads that are outlined by rocks. The fact that these were so close to the structure led us to believe that this area was part of that Desert Training Center. It was pretty exciting making this discovery.
Here are a few more photos of our hikes in the area.
Tomorrow we head home. We are so excited. It has been 21 weeks since we left.
My 69th birthday.
Why it is here: We forgot to add it when we got the scrapbook published. So we decided, what the heck, just put it in here, so that's what we did:
Vicky always makes the kind of cake I request. This year I asked for carrot cake.
We went for a veeerrrry cold bike ride:
For my dinner we had our enchilada casserole.
I got new shirts!
And notes from Soren and Sebastian:
And gifts from them:
A few days later, Jules, Jessica, Ian, and Adam came out and I got another party!
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