Anza Borrego - day 4
This post is part 4 of the "socal-2008" series:
- Anza Borrego - day 1
- Anza Borrego - day 2
- Anza Borrego - day 3
- Anza Borrego - day 4
- san diego - day 5
- home - day 6
We broke camp and drove back up to Mountain Palm Springs to hike the trail to the palm grove oasis. This trail loosely follows the creek (more of a brown-ish colored trickle) out to a series of California Fan palm groves. Much of the trail was on semi-uneven terrain with some minor rock scrambling. None of it was hard, and it was kinda fun to search out the best route. There were three distinct palm groves. All of them appeared to have suffered some kind of fire damage somewhat recently. David was fairly impressed with a relative plethora of large barrel cactus along the trail too.
While we planned to spend the next two nights in a motel in San Diego (mostly to wash off 3+ days of desert dust & grime, and sleep on a real bed), it was barely past 9AM when we finished the trail. Since the drive to San Diego was less than 2 hours distant, we had a large chunk of the day free. We decided to drive further east to circle the Salton Sea. During the drive southward on S2 to I8, we came upon the first of three US Border Patrol checkpoints that we'd encounter on this day. Now perhaps, I'm just woefully ignorant of how border protection works, but it seems to me that setting up fixed checkpoints *dozens* of miles north of the US/Mexico border is an exercise in futility. Only the absolute dumbest of border hoppers are going to casually travel along roads that have known, fixed border checkpoints. Anyway, the first checkpoint was only stopping traffic heading northbound, with the border patrol agents standing under a large white tent (which was bolted to the blacktop), with a series of traffic cones running along the double yellow line on the center of the road to magically prevent someone from making a quick, desperate u-turn back to the south. Nevertheless, I slowed to about 25MPH to watch the idle spectacle, the agents waved casually to us, we waved back, and then I sped up as I headed southward to the I8 intersection in the town of Ocotillo.
Just outside of Salton City, as we drove north on CA86, we were ensnared on the second of the 3 border patrol checkpoints. I'm guessing that we were at least 50 miles north of the international border, on a 4 lane highway. This checkpoint was rather impressive. Not only did they have a significantly larger tent (that might have doubled as an airplane hanger), but they had a permanent border patrol facility, and numerous cars. As we were traveling north, we were forced to stop, and get subjected to the thorough interegation. The agent asked me where we were coming from, and where we were going, and then we were waved onward to our destination. In all fairness, I can't fathom how anyone traveling illegally would be casually sitting in a passenger car with a family, so perhaps we were treated as low risk. The car in front of us had a single male driver, and the agent did request to see his ID, so perhaps the interrogation level varies depending on some kind of profiling or (*GASP*)stereotyping of the vehicle's occupants.
Anyway, most of the west side of the Salton Sea is nearly a mile from the highway, so there wasn't much to see. Once we got around the northern edge of the sea, and started heading south on CA111, we were alot closer to the eastern edge of the sea. We pulled into the Salton Sea State Park campground which ran along the sea's edge, and looked around for a few minutes. The view was kind of nice, although it smelled a bit like a chemical bath. The remainder of the drive southward back to I8 was fairly dull & uneventful.
Roughly half way to San Diego on I8 west, we came upon the last, and largest border control checkpoint. Ignoring how inefficient it is to stop traffic on an interstate highway, this checkpoint not only had the huge tent, traffic cones, large building and assorted vehicles & staff, but also several propaganda signs which attempted to justify the existence of the checkpoint. The first sign was just some silly blurb with their mission statement. The second sign was a list of statistics of what the border patrol had accomplished in just 2008 at this checkpoint. They claim to have captured 52 illegals, plus a bunch of other less relevant stats (DUI arrests, etc - yay, border patrol is arresting drunk drivers!). Since we're just 6 weeks into the year, I guess that's something like about 2 people every day. Now that might be impressive until you consider how many they aren't catching. The reality is that if their actual patrols, fences, cameras, aircraft and who knows what else along the border were remotely effective they wouldn't need these checkpoints dozens of miles inland. And if the inland checkpoints were actually effective (rather than just finding 2 people/day out of what are likely dozens if not hundreds successfully getting by on a daily basis), we wouldn't have immigration policy as a major political issue in this country. I guess the point that I'm attempting to make here is that all these silly checkpoints are nothing more than security theater (much like the insulting, degrading and humiliating measures taken at airports by the TSA goons). They do it just so that it looks like they're doing *something* rather than being ineffective for the most part. For the record, at this checkpoint, I never even stopped the car fully, but crawled along at around 5MPH as the agent looked at us menacingly, and then waved me onward.
The remainder of our drive to San Diego was uneventful.
This post is part 4 of the "socal-2008" series: