So, as we left Catalina State Park, we decided to go to Biosphere 2 nearby.

Very cool. Inside were living quarters, gardens (fruit trees, vegetables and animals), an ocean, a desert, and a rain forest.

Rainforest

700,000 gallon "ocean"

Desert

In the early '90s, eight people lived inside this completely sealed environment for 2 years, growing their own food, getting oxygen from plants, and maintaining all of the equipment. Their only outside contact was through television, phones and the internet. It is now owned by the University of Arizona, which does all kinds of scientific research in conjunction with scientists all over the world.



Some of the current projects are assessing effectiveness of different types of solar panels, assessing the effect of different amounts of rainfall on the rain forest, and changing CO2 levels in the ocean to see the effects (the coral reef has already died).







After leaving the biosphere we had to return to Larry's to pick up our hiking pack with our water bottles in it. This set us back about 1 1/2 hours so we only made it to Gila Bend where the only option was a KOA. At least it had a laundry, so we got caught up on that. It's not all glamour living on the road!

Our next stop was the Painted Rock Petroglyph Site. Not a very big site but interesting. Some of the petroglyphs were done BC!

They were prolific!

The grid was supposedly done BC.

We headed on toward Yuma, which is a big city when the snowbirds are in town. We stayed in a 55+ RV resort. When checking in the desk clerk told me that the town population grows by 80,000 in the winter! We noticed that most of the license plates were from Canada and, of course, the northern US. Nice place for a night, but way too many people for us. However, the bar and restaurant on site were nice. 😃

We finally crossed into California today! But first, we saw where all of our fresh food comes from. The fields along I-8 are enormous. We saw seas of cabbage, followed by kale and lettuce. Any fresh vegetable that you find in the store was being grown there. It was amazing! We were moving too fast to take pictures, though.

We are now in a San Diego county park that is just a few miles from Tecate, Mexico. We can see Mexico from our site. 😁 We saw miles and miles of border wall between Yuma and our park.





The park is nearly deserted except for a few other campers and the hawks and vultures!

Temperatures have been fabulous the last couple of days, and last night was the first night we didn't need heat, followed by today being our first day in shorts. Woo-hoo!

We did not exceed our limit! 😜