Road Trip: Imperial Sand Dunes

In CA, just outside of Yuma, AZ there is a large erg (field of sand dunes, duh!) called Imperial Sand Dunes. It's also called a few other things: I mostly called it Soul-Exterminatingly-Hot. Really. I have never felt that kind of heat in my life. It took my breath away. I couldn't get a good cell signal, so the closest guess of the temp was 108 or 109, which didn't seem accurate. We had just come from Dallas, where the temps were 108 or so and this felt much, much hotter. The heat in the air scorched your skin so that you felt sunburned even in the shade. It was amazing.


Here's entering CA, from Yuma.

I can't even imagine what it must be like to live there. Do people just not go outside ever?

Neat mountains.

Entering CA. I was questioned a bit roughly about my store-bought apples.

and, out of nowhere, the desert appears!

this is an irrigation canal, I'm assuming.

we had planned on lunching at this rest stop, right in the middle of it. Boy howdy. it was hot enough to put me off my feed.

The walk to the bathroom. William and I nearly dried up.

a passing truck, for perspective.

The toilets were really much too dirty to use, so William tried out the sink.

I told William to go stand by the big tree, because I wanted to take a picture of him. Apparently he thought I wanted him to stand by the tree to pee.

There was this fossilized carcass right by our picnic blanket.

Our picnic blanket was protected from oncoming traffic by this fence.

This was THE fastest ant I had ever seen. Not a lot of food dropped around there, I guess.

Startlingly beautiful landscape!! by the time we got to the next town, and billboard was displaying a 111 degree temp, and when I got out to use the bathroom, it was cooler than that rest area. So, I'm going to say it was 115, at least, there. Hot tamale!!