Day 9: "Home Coming"

This last day of a 3200mile journey would get us our destination, for which we have only one big feeling: "Home Coming".

It is 7 years ago that we last arrived here and yet we had the feeling of coming home.  While getting closer and closer, I was imagining that we would meet old friends and that we would find our old spot empty and waiting for us.

And that's just the way it went down today. 5 hours of driving first on the I-10, later on the I-8 got us to the Holtville Hot Springs LTVA where we met a new-to-us host couple from Minnesota.

And then we discovered that some friends were indeed there to greet us. And another couple arrived the same afternoon. There was so much to talk about, so much mutual pleasure to see eachother again.

The ride over from Benson had been uneventful, though we had to get through the Tucson traffic chaos. It looks like every city in the south is growing so much and that infrastructure projects cannot keep up with developing population increase.

We also marveled over two mega big industrial developments along the I-8. 

The first was the 7000 acre huge "Paloma Dairy Company" and "Sunset Farms", owned by the Van Hofwegen family, Gila Bend.

The other company is theThe Agua Caliente Solar Project which occupies an earlier distributed agricultural land on the White Wing Ranch. The site was selected thanks to the availability of a lot of sunshine as well as the minimal transmission infrastructure. The Agua Caliente Solar Project was completed in 2014 and has a generation capacity of 290 MW.

The entire facility cost $1.8 billion to put up.

Tucson Skyline

Picacho Peak

An old Saguaro Cactus

Approaching Yuma

Like so many rivers this one is dry as well

I-8 east of Yuma

The Imperial Sand Dunes with the "All-American Canal" for irrigation

"Home" and set up for the next couple of months

Good night friends!