The Slabs -- Sunday

When we were planning to go on this trip, Mark commented that he wanted to see "the slabs". We looked it up and it was not that far from Quartzsite.


The slabs is a large section of land near Niland, CA. During WWII, the Marines used the area for training, and it was apparently abandoned with many building slabs and a few structures such as bunkers. Over the years, people began to 'squat' there, and today, there are a lot of "permanently-looking" structures........... as ragged as they are!!

When we got to Yuma, the weather forecast called for sunny days on Friday and Saturday, and rain on Sunday. We chose to go to the Flea Markets on Friday, and Mexico on Saturday. That left the slabs for the rainy day, which made sense to us. While visiting with Greg and Sandy, the decided that they wanted to go, and since they had the van that would hold the six of us, they offered to drive.


It began raining on Saturday night, and continued to rain on us all day Sunday. The slabs are about 100 miles from Yuma, and while we were gone, Yuma got a record rainfall. The rain caused the unimproved roads at the slabs to be tough to navigate, so we did not explore as much as we might have if it was dry. We still got to see and get a feel of "Slab City"

One of the attractions was 'Salvation Mountain'. It was and is being built by a man that came there in 1983. For more information, go here:

http://www.eugenecarsey.com/camp/salvationmountain/salvationmountain.htm

As you can see in the following picture, the road to the "mountain" was washed out!

The following are a few of the structures that we saw:


After touring the area, we all agreed that this is where we will find Mark and Sue next year, after a year of full-timing, and running out of money!!!!

Greg drove back through El Centro, CA, and took us to a Costco store. Neither the Didelot's or us had been to one before. They are a lot like a Sam's Store.

When we got back, Mark and I went to a local Days Inn motel to sit in the parking lot and pickup WIFI to update our blogs....... previous postings through Saturday! The wives shopped at a nearby Target, Kohls and Ross stores.


When we finished, we called Mike and Linda and drove out to where they were parked for a visit. Mike and Kathy Nix were there, and Chuck and Loraine North showed up shortly afterwards. It was a good thing that we did, because Linda had picked up aerial pictures of our Quartzsite campsite, and we got a copy. We had completely forgot about the picture!!