This morning we decided to just hang out at the park. The weather was beautiful again; lots of sunshine, no wind and the mercury even reached 30C at one point. Rick climbed onto the roof of the motorhome to clean it, something he hasn't done since we first parked in Vancouver last September, while I cleaned up inside and did some laundry. By 1:00 PM, it was too hot to continue cleaning anything so after Rick showered; I tried my hand at giving him a haircut. Last year, I attempted to style Rick's hair to disastrous results so I was a little nervous however with Karley's help we purchased some clippers in Vancouver before we left there and they made a world of difference. He can still go out in public without a hat on and for now (give it a day or two) I can say that it looks quite good.

After lunch we reconsidered our decision to hang out here all day and drove south towards the Mexican border, then west through the little village (?) of Ocotillo towards the Coyote Mountain Wilderness. Along our drive one particular road invited us to follow it into the colourful mountains in the distance so we literally took the Honda Accord "off-roading" to explore it further. It wound through the desert over boulders and dried-up riverbeds, through nothing but sand, twisting and turning until we reached the edge of the mountains where we came to a public parking area and to our surprise, another Honda parked.

We hiked along a trail, which led us up along a ridge from where we had an amazing view and had we been more adventurous, we probably could have explored some of the canyons a little farther away. We were quite taken by the colourful flowers and again, the amount of greenery in the middle of this arid, desert land around us. We stood and watched dozens of butterflies as they flitted from one flowering bush to another and there was no shortage of either. We drove back to the campground along a different route and passed an enormous drywall plant at a town appropriately named "Plaster City" in the middle of nowhere. We also drove past the El Centro US Naval Air Facility, a very busy air base for basic and advanced training for pilots in training with squadrons from across the US and around the world. On our last day in the Imperial Valley, we seemed to have covered a lot of ground and learned a little bit more about the area.