"But I swear//I'd like//to drink the fuel straight from your lighter" -Mike Doughty "Rising Sign"

Ah, what a day.

I left early from San Deigo. It's a beautiful drive just a couple hours east on the 8 to Jacumba, my first destination.

Jacumba (ha-coom-ba) is a tiny town off the highway, Elevation 2,829ft, Population 561, with one store, one restaurant, and a trailer park called Wagon Wheel. In the 30's it had a population of 5,000 and a "world class" hotel that catered to visitors who wanted to make use of the hot springs there. Check out the wiki, it's actually a fascinating place.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacumba,_California)

I pulled up to the store and asked the first person I saw how to get to Valley of the Moon. His eyes told me he'd been on the moon for a long, long time. He took a long time answering, pausing between sentences to purse his lips and ponder. I was pretty close, so I turned my car to head that way.

"So…are you from...San Diego?" He asked as I pulled away.

Not anymore, brother.

The road to the Moon is rough and my car couldn't hang, so I set out on foot. Amazing view from up there. 

Then, when I hit around 5,000ft of elevation, I saw something so shocking that I had to stage a photo to properly encapsulate its absurdity.

Behold my creation! Snowballcactus. Winter in the desert.

After scrambling down, I traced the border to Calexico. A town split from its sister Mexicali by our big wall. I wandered around a swap meet taking photos until a guy told me I had to stop. He was relatively polite, but clearly peeved. It hadn't occurred to me that many of the vendors were illegal, and don't appreciate being photographed. I quickly split and kept driving.

 Fucking good price on AWESOME, though...

I passed a desert with palm trees, where fires burned on the horizon. I passed a church on a hill and a stairway to heaven. I passed a road called Grey Wells, the All-American Canal, and a town called Ogilby. 

Oh, and I met these f-awesome sheep.

Finally I pulled into Yuma, ate a taco, booked a shitty room and wrote this for you. Time to sleep it off.