--- In
BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "adamnvillani" <avillani@u...>
wrote:
> Well, my trip to the southeast corner of California and the
vicinity
> is complete and was more or less successful. I won't know for sure
> until I develop the photos, at which point I'll scan them in for
you
> guys. Here's what I learned:
>
> 1. It is far better to cross into the United States from Mexico in
a
> little town than a big town or a city. I crossed from the USA into
> Mexico in Tecate and Algodones, and in both places there was no
> waiting or almost no waiting in the opposite direction.
> Unfortunately I decided to cross back into the USA from Mexicali
> (main crossing) and San Luis Rio Colorado, and it both places the
> traffic jam lasted about an hour.
>
> 2. In Algodones, you can find the northeast corner of the paved
> network of streets in the town; it is just east of the little
> canal/stream that passes through the middle of town and right up
> against the border, which is easily recognizable as a 10 foot high
> metal fence. You can park in a little dirt lot there if you pay a
> dollar. Then you can walk over to the river to your east. There's
an
> undeveloped strip of land between the parking lot and the tripoint
> about 50 meters wide or so. It's sand and dirt wish some bushes and
> some junk. There's a monument (#206) a little ways in marking the
> Mexican side of the border.
this monument
like all direct or true border markers
actually marks the border itself
& thus not just the mexican side of the border
the monument may seem like it is on the mexican side of the border
because it is on the mexican side of the wall
& indeed it is partly on the mexican side of the border
but the wall is entirely american & entirely in the usa
so it is the monument line rather than the wall line that actually
marks the border
however close the 2 may be
only a few meters apart here at most
this should however slightly affect your estimation of where the
geodesic line crosses the river
if you got as close to the actual target point as you appear to be
indicating here
Once you start getting close, the bushes
> start to get pretty thick, but there are person-sized pathways
> cleared through these things, if you hunch over. About 20 feet from
> the Colorado River, the border fence actually ends! So you could
> actually just walk across to the USA if you wanted, but on the USA
> side there's a dirt road cleared for Border Patrol trucks; I
imagine
> they keep an eye on things. I stayed on the Mexico side and made my
> way toward the river. About the last 10 feet before the embankment
> drops off are completely overgrown with 8 foot high reeds. You can
> push these reeds out of the way, but you'll get sticky reed stuff
> (sap?) all over you. That's what I did. I got to the edge of the
> embankment and had a view of the river, but I couldn't clear all of
> the reeds out of my way or else I would have fallen in. Looking
> around, I didn't see anything obviously pointing out where the
> border was, even I was within about 2 meters of it.
valiant try tho
i am not surprised you couldnt see the wall or monument line from in
there
but i am a little surprised you didnt see the hoped for cowflops at
such close range
& can only imagine they must have become obscured by the veggies too
sounds like you may well have broken thru in reality here tho
for a first class c visit in history
So I took two
> pictures of the river from where I stood, with it partially
obscured
> by a few of the sticky reeds. The tripoint will be located
somewhere
> in the middle of the river in the photos. Not rock solid, but I
know
> that the tripoint was somewhere in the vicinity of what I was
> looking at.
>
> 2. The azbcson tripoint kinda snuck up on me. All of a sudden there
> was a bridge, and then there was a sign telling me I was crossing
> the municipio boundary, and I looked to my left and saw the usmx
> border fence disappearing into the river. So the tripoint was in
> there.
yes
another case of it being either on the living thalweg
& therefore within the narrow stream you actually saw
as i believe it was
or else in the middle of the broad bed
as has also been maintained & is also conceivable
& again it is upon the monument line rather than the fence line
but in any case you surely have at least another class d there
taking pictures is nice but incidental
so it appears
between us
we did actually visit a triad of mxus tripoints for the first time in
bp history in a single concerted try
But traffic was moving and up ahead was another tollbooth. So
> I didn't feel like pulling over, and I didn't take a picture.
> Crossing the usmx border a little while later, they asked what I
was
> doing and I actually told them. The fact that I had crossed the
> border in Calexico the day before had set off some kind of a red
> flag in their computer, but when I told them what I was up to, I
> guess it sounded too bizarre to be a false story, so they made a
> quick search of the back seat and the trunk and set me on my way.
> The closest thing I had to contraband was a couple of empty
> returnable Mexican Coca-Cola bottles (they make it with sugar in
> Mexico instead of corn syrup, so it tastes better), so they didn't
> have any legitimate reason to harass me anyway.
yes good point
for of course it is a whole nother story
when they do get around to actually playing with you
button button whos got the button
if you should happen to have a bag of peyote or something on board
My friend had his
> passport, and I had my driver's license and my borth certificate.
>
> 3. Later we drove up into Imperial County CA and found the exact
33N
> 115W degree confluence with our GPS receivers, a few miles east of
> the Imperial Sand Dunes. Parking was easy off of CA-78, and the
hike
> was about a mile due south over easy, flat, gravelly desert. I took
> photos at the confluence point and will be submitting them to
> confluence.org. This one was a lot easier to actually get to than
> the tripoints. You'd need a boat and some sort of immunity from
> border patrol guards to actually float over the azbcca and azbcson
> tripoints.
>
> Adam