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Here's a map for the first leg, San Diego to Tempe. We'll pass through Alpine, Jacumba, Seeley, Brawley, Glamis, Blythe, Quartzite, Hope, Salome, Aquila, Wickenberg, and Phoenix along the way. We'll actually wind up in Scottsdale to flop with Steve's parents. I am anticipating this taking about eight days. I forecast stops in Alpine, Jacumba, Brawley, Palo Verde, Quartzite, Aguila, and Surprise. We'll take a rest day at Tempe/Scottsdale.

The night my father graduated from high school, he fled the small Missouri town he was raised near. He rode the rails throughout the South and the west. He stopped in Brawley for a time, working in the ice house. The ice was used to preserve fresh vegetables from the Imperial Valley for shipping by rail to markets in the East. The ice house, as I understood the story, was several stories high, essentially a big warehouse for ice. The ice house caught fire, destroying the structure and allowing the building to collapse into a giant ice cube with building debris scattered throughout. My father claimed that the giant ice cube took years to finally melt! I'm dying to get to Brawley and find out if that was true!