Time to leave Palm Springs and California and head east, young man... And woman.
We wake up to rain. For the first time on this trip it is actually raining when we start our drive. A cold front has come down from Oregon and the rain is forecast to continue for the next couple of days, including into Arizona. Oh well, it is what it is.
First, we need to swing by Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City and pay our respect to Sonny Bono and Francis Albert Sinatra who are buried here. Respect!
The trip east to Phoenix / Scottsdale along I10 is long and uneventful. Some 450 km of pretty much the same terrain. Flat and sand and cacti with black mountains in the distance.
About an hour east of Palm Springs we stop for a break at a coffee shop nearly all by itself in the desert at Chriaco Summit. The only other things here - a petrol station and a museum to General Patton. What? We had our drinks and learned that the museum was established here because his desert training base was here. We moved on. More flat, sandy landscape.
We pass a place called Quartzsite, where, no kidding, there are thousands and thousands of RVs parked on both sides of I10. There is some kind of market on, but many of the RVs are clearly set up for camping some distance away. We have yet to investigate why but of course we speculated because we were bored... Star gazers? Free camping? A UFO sighting expected?
Eventually, we reach Phoenix outskirts and the junction of the 101 loop where we go north towards Scottsdale and to Vineet's place off exit 92.
Vineet Anand, an old Uni buddy of Hans from Sydney, lives here in a very nice, big house in a gated community. We spend the rest of the day and evening chatting and drinking wine and playing with Hunter, Vineet's very lovely and almost human dog, a German Pointer.
A much pleasant evening finished with a stroll around the neighborhood before we go to bed around 10.30pm quite exhausted.
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