El Centro

Great sleep, breakfast was a sad affair, cornflakes, toast & very weak coffee. I guess you get what you pay for!

Around 9.30am, we hopped straight back on to Interstate 8, heading east for Phoenix, Arizona. It was pure desert either side. After 30 odd miles, the infamous wall (or more actually metal fence) appeared on the horizon to our right & gradually got to within around 400 metres of us. After a couple of miles the ‘Wall’ started to drift away again reminiscent of the Loch Ness Monster as it curved up & down in the sand dunes.

Our next point of interest was ‘The Official Center of the Universe’ in Felicity, California . Some nut job, Jacques-Andre Intel bought thousands of acres of wasteland & applied for it to be a town, which he named after his wife, Felicity. He automatically became Mayor.

The site also is a museum of granite, but a sign at the entrance asked for $3 entrance fee so I took photos from the road. On the site, we could see a 21ft high pyramid made of pink granite & a spiral staircase from the Eiffel Tower. The reason for the pyramid becoming ‘The Official Center of the Universe’ is that he had written a fairy tale about a dragon living in a pyramid at the Center of the Universe. Allegedly no-one can argue with a fairytale!

Next stop was Yuma, just inside the Arizona State Border & a visit to the Yuma Territorial Prison Historical State Park. It was an old Wild West Prison, with some notable inmates such as Burt Alvord, deputy sheriff turned train robber; Buckskin Frank Leslie, conman & gunfighter, who shot a man & married his widow 8 days later; Pete Spence, who fought at the OK Corral; an infamous Mexican Revolutionary, Ricardo Flores Magon; a Mormon polygamist, William Flake & Pearl Hart, who committed one of the last ever stagecoach robberies. After being a Prison, the buildings became a school.

Whilst in Yuma we also visited ‘Weird Muffler Man Statue’. He deserves a better description than that, but he is only advertising an RV park. Yuma felt quite poor, but it assisted us by being able to fill up with cheap fuel.

On we went & got to Gila Bend for a cheeky McD burger to supplement breakfast. From here we headed north on Highway 85 towards Phoenix. The outside temperature was now 98 degrees & with the car windows open it felt like having a hairdryer 6” from your face. We passed Lewis Prison in Buckeye, Arizona, which has the capacity to hold 5,000 inmates. It obtained notoriety in 2004 for the longest standoff between inmates & law enforcement officers in USA history of 15 days.

Our 1st intended stop in Phoenix was the Phoenix Police Museum, but we arrived about 10 minutes too late to gain entry. Next was Alice Cooper’s town Bar & Sports Grill, that turned out to have been closed for sometime. This was going well! Hot & bothered we cruised the city centre, no-one was out on the streets, presumably because of the heat.

We drove to the Heard Museum & I took photos of sculptures in the grounds, whilst Jackie sat under a shady tree. We stopped at the Phoenix Art Museum to do the same. We then made our mind up to find accommodation out of town.

We chose Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix & found the very nice Baymont by Wyndham in Downtown Mesa. After a swim in the pool (bath) to cool down (warm up) we popped along the road to Pete’s Fish and Chips that has been established for 60 years. We ate our dinner with refreshing dry ice swirling around our heads.

Tomorrow we are heading for Tucson where have booked an Airbnb place & plan to rest & relax for a whole week.

Song of the Day - Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2 by Pink Floyd.

Bonus Song of the Day :-

Over The Wall by Echo & the BunnymenRead more