San Diego and a Nap!

This morning we dropped our cooks of the last two weeks, Hap and Deb, off at the airport for their flight home to Pennsylvania, then went on to church with two of the other longtermers from Oregon. The top picture is of the building where the Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren hold joint services. The Friends group meets at the same time on the other side of the complex. The picture below of the round building is the one they are building as a Peace Center. Last week they took us on a tour of the inside of this building which is made out of rice straw bales. I didn't get inside this week to take a picture of the bales.

After church we came back to camp for a much needed nap! When I woke up I wrote some postcards to the grandkids and friends, but didn't get much more accomplished. Our new group of short term volunteers arrived by two shuttles buses about 5:30. We let them get settled, then had orientation at 7. This is the first group we've had that has females! That should be a nice change.

Here are some more pictures from yesterday's expedition:

This is the farming with the border fence. They were setting sprinkler pipe in the ditches between the raised beds. I'd sure like to know what they have planted there...

These are some of the whimsical "boulder creatures" at one of the stops we made. The succulent below was blooming nearby.

Ocotillos are in Bloom!

This morning Forry and I left camp and headed east towards the desert. When we had come through Arizona last month, we had seen some ocotillos in bloom in the mountains, but there was no place we could stop to take a close look or get a picture.

We took Highway 94 down towards Protero, then on over to the town of Ocotillo. The red flower shoots on the ends of the plants were all over that area! So I FINALLY got my pictures! But it's funny, we only saw them in the one area.

We came back via Old Highway 80. You almost have to see them to believe the incredible boulders in this area. Highway 80 takes you through the little town of Jacumba which is right along the Mexican border. At times we were less than 500 feet from the fence.
While we were gone from camp, a trucker came by and wanted to use one of our compressors to air up one of his duals. When he drove into camp, he hooked the power line with his trailer, disconnecting it. Ken, who had remained at camp, ended up having to get the electric company out to disconnect the power, but then they do not do anything from the transformer on in. So he had to get regular electricians in to repair the mast on the main building and reconnect the wire, then get the electric company back out to reconnect us! It turned out to be a VERY expensive day!

This evening we took all of the long termers (including our old cooks who are flying back to Pennsylvania in the morning and the new cooks who drove in today from Manitoba) out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in La Mesa. We had to wait almost an hour and 1/2 to be seated -- the food was really good, but it was a
l-o-n-g wait.

Dulzura; the Border Patrol

These are pictures from the Mennonite Disaster Service's Dulzura Project site:

Theses are some of the RVs being used for housing by the long-termers. We will probably move out and store the one that is second from the right and put Auntie Violet in its place (we're only permitted for six living units on site).

This is the office trailer.

From left to right: the bunk trailer, the shower trailer, the kitchen trailer (the short one) and the dining hall.

We had lunch today with Project Director Kerry Eidse and the two representatives from the Salvation Army and the Long Range Planning Committee, Robin and Dawn. It was a good session. I have a much better handle on what we'll be needing to do over the next two months. We're going to have an interesting weekend as some of our long-term workers will arrive before this session's people leave on Saturday morning...

On the way back to Diamond Jack this evening we once again passed through the Border Patrol checkpoint: The first pictures are of the lot that is FULL of green and white Border Patrol vehicles.

The next pictures are the "line-up" as you approach the checkpoint.

I think they are getting used to us -- or maybe the MDS magnetic signs on the toad -- today they just looked and waved us through without any questions about our citizenship.

At one of the houses MDS is building, you can see the town of Tecate which is partly in Mexico and you also have a good view of the fence that is being built between our two countries.