Day 5 - Prescott, AZ to San Diego, CA

Today was supposed to be a long, boring day of driving.  We slept in a little bit this morning and left Prescott, AZ around 10am.  We headed on 89 South, which turned out to be another great drive through the mountains, just a milder version of yesterday’s drive through Jerome.   And then things got interesting.  We were heading west on Arizona 60, which was very straight and boring.  Jason then noticed in his rear view mirror, a car traveling west (like us) in the east bound lane.  The problem was there was a pickup truck going east bound, heading straight towards each other.  Jason watched as the pickup truck swerved to miss the car, which never budged.  The car then flew passed us, going approximately 90 mph.  We watched in shock, as he approached another pickup truck and a RV.  Thankfully, both the truck and RV swerved to miss the car, which appeared to be playing a game of chicken.  We immediately called 911 to report him as he quickly disappeared from our view.  We continued down the road, expecting to see an accident or him pulled over at any time.  Thirty minutes later, as we were approaching I-10, we saw the car crashed into brush on the side of the road.  We then noticed a county sheriff with his gun drawn, looking for the driver in the vehicle.  The driver was nowhere to be found, and we continued on our way.  Things calmed down from there and we proceeded into California.  Gas was $3.69 in Arizona and quickly rose to a whopping $4.43 (one mile over state lines).  We headed south on California 78 for another long boring drive.  Little did we know we ended up driving through what looked like Egypt.  It turned out to be the Imperial Sand Dunes.  For 5-10 miles, we were surrounded by massive sand dunes.  It was beautiful.  We arrived in El Centro at 4:30, which was supposed to be our final destination for the day.  However, we decided to continue on to San Diego, just an hour and a half away.  The biggest challenge of the drive was the wind, which was unbelievable.  It was a constant 25-35 MPH through Arizona and California, with significant higher gusts!  It certainly made things interesting at times!

Note: We didn’t realize how much of an elevation change we would experience today.  We reached 6500 ft on Arizona 89 and dropped to -76 ft in El Centro.

Miles: 379