23.-29.10.2006: Rancho Bernado - Live Oak Springs - Yuma We had planned to drive off to San Diego today, but Kirsten had a migraine last night and she still had it this morning. So we stayed for another day. Helen spent nearly 4 hours writing on the computer and we replied to our emails. We went out to get a chinese take-away for the evening and Lesley and Rod ate in shifts because little Zach didn't want his evening milk. We said our fond farewells on Tuesday and joked about the contents of the next email - twins??? We drove into San Diego and fetched our post. Then we went to the DMV to pay for Winnie's new sticker. We could have taken the written test to extend our drivers licences but Kirsten wasn't feeling up to it. We were told there was a DMV in Winterhaven where we were headed. But this turned out to be wrong! We got an oil change for Winnie and did some shopping. We somehow missed the campground we were looking for and ended up at a Casino for the night. We ended up staying at the casino for 3 nights because the wind picked up to gale force and it meant we would be driving into it. So we thought we could sit it out. But the wind didn't die down at all and Winnie was getting battered and sleep was impossible. Finally on Friday, we knew we could be waiting a very long time for the wind to die down and decided to head into it. We got some more petrol before we left knowing that our petrol consumption would rocket as Winnie struggled into it. We headed east and stopped at some BLM sand dunes. There were thousands of RVs here - there must be some kind of dune buggy weekend going on. It was so dusty and noisy that we only stopped for 10 minutes and then decided to find somewhere else for the night. So we ended up driving into Yuma in Arizona, where the petrol is a lot cheaper and found a casino to stop for the night. On Saturday we went to a library to use the internet and found out that there wasn't a DMV un Winterhaven so we would have to drive all the way back to El Centro - a round trip of nearly 90 miles - to do our driving test. We weren't happy! Unfortunately, our drivers licenses will expire whilst we are in Mexico, so we have to renew them before we leave the US. We drove to Wal-mart to do a big shopping of stuff we will need for Mexico and we also bought a new back battery. Our old one wasn't lasting very long and we decided to buy a bigger one. The guys at Wal-mart were really good and attached it for us. But we kept getting some kind of warning noise from our fuse box. It was a "plink-plonk" then 5 seconds silence followed by another "plink-plonk". We had no idea what it was. We thought that maybe the battery was too big and so they got a smaller one and attached that. But we still had the same problem. Then Helen asked them to fetch our old battery and we saw what the problem was immediately. They'd attached it the wrong way!! So, finally we got the bigger battery back in and drove off! We filled up with petrol and filled up our extra petrol tank, and then went back to the casino for the night. On Sunday, we drove back into California and went to a Passport America campground where we stayed for 5 nights. The first thing on the list was a hair cut for Helen which she desperatly needed! The next thing was a much needed shower. We sat outside Winnie because it was much cooler than inside. Later that evening, a young guy knocked on our door to ask where the nearest petrol station was. Well, it was at least 20 miles away and they didn't think they would make it. So we sold them our extra tank of 5 gallons. We got the tank off and then helped them fill it into their tank with the funnel. We were all nice and clean and then got really dirty again in the process - no good deed goes unpunished! We were also hoping that the petrol prices didn't go up again as we needed to refill our tank.