The Old Plank Road.

A few years ago  we saw a reference to the Old Plank Road that  was built to across the sand dunes to to shorten the route from San Diego to Phoenix,

 We knew roughly where there were preserved remains of the road and on Sunday we  set out to find them.   Grays Well rest area is in California roughly 16 miles east of Yuma  on highway 8, at this time of year there are lots of atvs, dune buggies  etc on the sand dunes  surrounding the rest area.

The Imperial Sand  Dunes are quite high  and we saw these brave souls on the top of  one across from the rest area.

They look like little ants 

Until I zoomed in

Looks like a lot of fun.



 We  drove down the dunes access road from the rest area and at the end of the road we found the
fenced off area that contains about 1500 feet of the plank road.

This is what  a section of road looked like in 1916

 A hundred years later

The road was built in sections  and set in place by cranes. The sections were built in town of Ogilby

.

Not much left of some sections

There is an interesting article in Desert Usa   about the building and the demise of the old road, basically it was  just too difficult to maintain and despite a rebuilding by the government it was only
used until about 1926.

We also saw  George and Suzie  this week, they are staying at Pilot Knob RV Parks just a few miles down the road from us. We had a good visit sitting in the sun catching up on all the news. We will see them again  in January  after the big show in Quartzsite.

Suzie and George

We are getting ready to leave Ogible Rd, either Sat or Sunday, We are heading to Joshua Tree BLM for awhile, it will be colder than here but everywhere seems to be cold this winter.

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Did you know that the Guinness Book of World Records says that Yuma is the sunniest city in the world, not the hottest, just the sunniest.

Jean