Just like the rest of the planet, February and March didn’t play out like we expected. It all started innocently enough. We arrived in Yuma in late January and had a month of great weather while basking in the ignorance of the on-coming pandemic.
Unfortunately, by the early-March the world changed and we had to cancel nearly all of our spring schedule. We did manage to spent a short week in California tasting wine in Paso Robles and then met up with the Bakers for a few days of hiking and touring in Bodega Bay. However, the cities, national parks, and just about everything else closed down in mid-March. When the Bakers headed home, we closed up shop and headed back to the east be nearer to our kids and help out with childcare challenges.
Despite the gathering storm of COVID-19 in February, we managed to have fun and see some interesting things. The most notable event was a visit to Channel Islands National Park. It took about 90 minutes to get there by boat but well worth it. The scenery was spectacular, but the highlight of the trip was returning to the mainland through a pod of more than 1000 dolphins. The video below shows a short glimpse of them.
One of the quirkier things we visited was the Salton Sea in southern California. This was a large lake formed at the turn of the 20th century when a levy on the Colorado River broke and filled in a 35 by 10 mile below-sea-level basin that had previously been desert. It was called the “miracle in the desert” and resorts and vacation housing developments started popping up. It was a major destination for the Southern California sophisticate to vacation at in the 50’s and 60’s. Then the lake started to dry up and the saline and farm runoff levels sky rocketed. Fish died. Docks ended up hundreds of feet from the water. The water became to salty to swim or boat in. The area was largely abandoned over the last 30 years and only a peculiar mix of farmers, artists, eccentrics, and homeless live there now. I found it morbidly fascinating. Suzanne lost a day she’ll never get back.
The rest of our story is told in the pictures below and covers our trip from northern CA to to the east coast, stay in the Washington DC area, and return to the 1000 Islands.
