Traveling to Tucson

Wednesday, January 09, 2013
Tucson, Arizona, United States
Yuma has this delightful place call the Pivot Point where the railroad from the East hit the Colorado river 150 years ago, and the engines were forced to turn around. All roads across the southern continent used to converge on this point.  The mighty Colorado narrowed at Yuma. Ferries had been in place since pre colonial times, and it was an important stop for boats going up the river. Then the bridges came -- the railroad in 1877, the road thirty years later. Then the dams, starting with Laguna in 1905, and pretty soon the Colorado River was not longer an obstacle. Nowadays, the river is no longer even a feature -- obscured completely by freeway and railroad bridges that push you into the lower part of the town and the desert before you realize what is happening. I went looking for the river and found a small water course, maybe 50 yards across, which I knew was not a canal because it meandered back and forth between clumps of cottonwood trees.  

Yuma is half way from San Diego to Tucson . There I took formal possession of my cycle, had lunch, and trundled on into the desert. This town is credited with receiving more sun than any other place in the planet (take that Sahara Desert !) and they are making good use of it.  

The desert is not a desert. Thanks to the Colorado and other rivers, huge fields of green and brown produce vegetables, cereals, fruit, cotton and a high quality durum wheat beloved by pasta makers. Cattle fattening farms make use of the hay and other byproducts. And East towards Gila Bend one crosses a huge aluminium farm with rows of shiny concave reflecting surfaces 12 feet tall stretching North as far as the eye can see. Turns out to be the Solana solar generating plant. Still under construction, it will use solar power to heat water and drive turbines to produce electricity. It is all based on the reflector oven principle we all learned to be wary of when trying to cook bread on a camping trip. I still can't believe it will produce 230 megawatts of power.

Gila Bend is also the site of the well known Space Age Motel which I had to get a picture of. Surprisingly homely and charming, it made me feel like an alien for the second time during the day. The first time was at a Border Guard check point on the Interstate, looking for non-citizens (aliens in Immigration Service speak). Officers were courteous when they found out I was from Uruguay -- but the incident made it clear I was in no country for old men.  


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