Sea level

On April 7 we left Yuma and headed toward San Diego.  We plan to spend about 2 weeks in San Diego.  Our time there will of course include a Padres baseball game.  As we were driving west across the desert, we saw a sign that said "Sea Level".  Then we headed down a bit more before beginning to climb.  In about 45 minutes we saw a sign that said "4,100 FT".  The landscape had changed from flat and rolling terrain with sparse vegetation to rounded boulders piled high and very little vegetation.  It had become very stark.

Then we drove for about 30 minutes at around 4,000 feet with ups and downs and lots of turns.  Finally, we began our decent.  A 6% grade for 13 miles!  As we came down the vegetation returned and became more lush with taller trees and shrubs and even some grassy areas.  As I write this we are parked just east of San Diego and my altimeter show us at 403 feet.  We'll be at sea level at a different park next week.

The RV worked hard going up  and coming back down with the engine running at high RPMs.  There was a sign to turn off your air conditioning to reduce strain in the engine.  So we did.  But an advantage to being in an RV is the we started the generator and were able to run the house AC keeping the entire place cool with no additional stress on the motor.  This was very nice since it was 92 degrees outside.