Jacumba Springs, CA to Benson, Arizona

We got up at 6am to go for a desert walk before it got too hot. By 8am it was too hot, so we called it quits, but still got 2 hours walk in.

We went back to our trailer and I had my favourite chore to do before we left.

Mike has an infected cyst on the back of his neck. In England he saw 3 doctors about it and is now on his third lot of antibiotics.

<Gross part starts here>

Last Friday the cyst burst, and since then it’s been oozing pus. So guess whose job it is to clean it twice a day?

The doctor showed me how to gently squeeze it to help clear the pus out. It’s been a pretty gross experience so far but nothing compared to what I encountered this morning.

The pus had hardened to a consistency of cheese. It was kinda like squeezing putty out of a tube. I had to do my best not to throw up!

Each time I squeezed, I wiped it with a bit of gauze and showed it to Mike, not wanting to experience it alone.

<Gross part ends here>

So sorry for the gross post, but a problem shared and all that.

The rest of the day was spent driving across the Arizona desert which was kinda cool.

A low flying jet buzzed us, but something about it didn’t look right. As it got closer we realised it was tiny.

It looked like a model jet, as it whizzed past at high speed. I couldn’t imagine someone coming all the way out into the desert in 43 degree heat to fly one personally, so we figured it must be some sort of spy plane.

We’ll have to see if we captured it on our dash cam, but the military have probably remotely deleted it already.

The afternoon cruised by in a flurry of weather. Whirlwinds of sand swirled around us, and I feared getting caught in a sand storm, knowing this area was prone to it.

Apparently they can reduce your visibility to 0, and last a couple of hours.

Then the skies got dark and the temperature dropped to 28 degrees. A big brown storm loomed to our right. Sand… storm…

Just then my phone started whooping and vibrating next to me with urgency. What the ???

I grabbed it and there on the screen were the words I feared hearing.

SEVERE THREAT: Dust Storm Warning until 5.45om. Pull over to stay alive.

Eeek,

Then signs appeared on the motorway warning about heavy rain ahead. That should keep down the dust surely!

Then my phone started whooping again.

SEVERE THREAT: Flash Flood Warning until 6.00om. Avoid flood areas.

All I could think was, thank goodness we weren’t travelling through Kansas, we might have ended up in Oz.

Anyway, by the time we got to the part where it was been raining heavily, the roads were already dry and the temperature was back up to 40 degrees. And the dust storm stayed where it was.

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