We awoke around our usual time, but of course it was an hour later due to the start of Daylight Saving Time. I made instant coffee to go and we left in the Jeep around 7:30.

I had Clif Bars for breakfast on our way to photograph a desert agave or century plant that was blooming near Yaqui Pass. There was a slight breeze, so I used my tripod to steady the roughly 8 ft (2.4m) high flower spike while J and I shared her tripod to hold our cameras. After we finished photographing the desert agave (far left), we photographed some of the barrel cacti blooms in the area (near left).

We went to the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Visitor Center to photograph the flowers near there. J was particularly interested in photographing the phacelia.

We returned to the RV at 12:25. I stowed the solar-electric panels and hooked up the Jeep to tow. Instead of departing right away like we had planned, we turned on the hot water heater so J could shower before we dumped after going down the road a while. I had Clif Bars for lunch while downloading the images I took this morning. We got underway at 1:20 and headed east on County S22.

We went to the Arco Travel Center in Salton City at 1:47 and decided that we'd shower tonight. I filled up the Jeep with gas at $2.899/gal. Then I dumped our gray and black tanks at their 5-bay dump station — what a setup, and free! Then I filled up our fresh water tank. We left at 2:46 and headed south on CA-86.

We went around the southern end of the Salton Sea and then took CA-111 north to Niland. Then we took Main Street east.

We went by Salvation Mountain around 3:54. To put it kindly, it's a colorful art installation created by Leonard Knight that covers a whole hillside and is made of adobe, straw, and thousands of gallons of paint. It's covered with text and Biblical quotes to convey the message that "God is Love."

Just down the road, we entered Slab City around 3:56. Slab City, or The Slabs, gets its name from the concrete slabs that remain from a former World War II Marine base. It's a popular place for squatters to live and for RV owners to camp, and it was made popular in the book and then movie Into The Wild. The book was influential in J's desire to live full time in an RV.

We selected a spot to boondock near the periphery, and as I was putting out some Lynx Levelers, our neighbor, who looked like a full-time squatter, came out and asked us to move out of his extended driveway area. Noooo problem! So, we drove around some more and selected an area where there were some transient RVs. This time, our neighbor gave me a friendly wave when he saw me getting ready to tilt our solar-electric panels.

I worked up a blog entry, then posted it using our nice fast Verizon Wireless Broadband signal. Then I started to downselect the images I took this morning in Capture One (C1). An airplane took off from the road by our RV around 6:20! I thought I heard an airplane taxiing shortly before that, but I couldn't imagine it would really be an airplane. Good thing it didn't try to take off when we were driving down that same road to our camp site! I took a shower, then J took a shower.

We had dinner at 7:15 of leftovers: veggie burger for J, brats for me, potato salad for both of us, and J's Bean Salad for me. Yes, we're still eating the bean salad I made for the picnic in Joshua Tree on February 28th! I had made two batches like J suggested even though I thought one batch would be enough. When I had some two days ago, she said I was right that one batch probably would have been enough.

After dinner, I finished downselecting the images I took this morning in Capture One (C1), then I processed two images for the blog.