Border Wall Gaps

When we are home in the summer I still read the local news from Yuma and followed with interest the stories about filling the gaps in the border wall with shipping containers. We often ride our bikes along the border wall between Yuma and Algodones and have seen the big gaps many times. This is what we would see on our bike rides last year.

When we came back this winter we took a ride along the wall and saw all the gaps had been filled with shipping containers. Now I fully admit I don’t know a lot about the pros and cons of these containers but I thought they looked like they were doing the job of closing the gaps. For some reason I didn’t take any pictures but hubby’s sister took this one when we showed them the wall in November 2022.

It was shortly after the above picture was taken that I began to read that the containers where coming down, so last Sunday we took a ride to check it out. We started off on pavement and then hit a section of rough gravel road.

Before long you can start to see the first gap in the wall.

That gap really isn’t as bad as it looks because the Colorado River runs through the far section of fence between Arizona and Mexico and from what I read it is dangerous to cross there.

The front gap with the wooden bridge crossing is all in Arizona and allows farmers access to their fields. The second gap further along the fence is where the river runs through.

We continued on and that is when you can begin to see a much bigger gap at the Morales dam and it appears to be very easy to cross here and sure enough the containers are definitely gone.

It depends on what you read and who you talk to as to why they were removed but what everyone seems to agree on is the amount of money that was spent to both put them up and take them down … 95 million to put them up, 76 million to take them down!

Those figures seemed unbelievable to me based on what I was seeing, but what I didn’t realize until I was writing this blog is that these containers also ran for miles through a grassland valley in eastern Arizona’s Cochise County. I found the picture below on the internet and understand a little better why it cost so much … there were a lot of containers!

While we were riding and stopping to look we caught the interest of Border Patrol. There was an officer on the other side of the water canal at our first stop, he was driving past the gap in the wall and when we stopped our bikes he backed up to watch us. We continued on and before long he had made a loop and come up on the road behind us. He caught up with us when we stopped at the big gap but once he had slowed down and taken a look at us he carried on … I guess he realized we were just looky loo’s 😀

But to be on the safe side we decided to get back on our bikes and head home … and this time we rode on the lower road along the water canals which was much smoother.

Until next time …

Advertisement