On the Road

We left Wellton by 9 AM this morning (early for us!) and headed for California. It's quite interesting to watch the scenery change from the cacti and creasote bushs to sand and sand dunes. As we climbed into the mountains south of San Diego, it began to look like someone had dumped out huge bags of boulders.

We cut off of Interstate 8 at the Japatul Exit, turned left at the stop sign; drove 5 1/2 miles on Lyons Valley Road; turned left and drove 7 1/2 miles on Skyline Truck Trail; turned right and drove 4.7 miles to Lawson Valley Road; went 2/10 of a mile and turned hard left back on to Lyons Valley Road; drove 9/10 of a mile to the sign for Diamond Jack's RV Ranch. The direct route down Lyons Valley Road has too many switchbacks to navigate with a 37 foot rig (plus the toad), so they sent us around the back way.

It is so quiet here! After the continuous sounds of trains every thirty minutes plus the noise of the switching as well as the sound of the freeway and of sirens, it's quite a change. This is the closest place we could find to the Dulzura MDS Project Site. We'll stay here this week and commute back and forth.

There is a family of acorn woodpeckers (a new life bird for Forry!) living in the trees here. There are six palm trees in the center area that they are busily rapping away at to find insects. I also watched one retrieve an acorn from a hole in the trunk of a palm.

Yuma Territorial Prison

We decided this morning to stay in Wellton another night and make a day trip to Yuma to sight-see. We had visited the Yuma Territorial Prison almost forty years ago before it became a State Historic Park, but thought it would be interesting to see it again. I had only vague memories of most of it, but did remember the Dark Cell and the cells cut into the caliche. Most of the plaster and the roofs are gone, but you can still see the granite and caliche structures with their interior steel strap cages. The prison was abandoned back in the early nineteen hundreds and had a great deal of vandalism until it was resurrected as a park.

This is a picture of our guide (a volunteer from Washington State) as he was using Forry as a stand-in for the warden in a story he was telling us. His tale was of an attempted prison break where the warden was held at knife point by a group of prisoners. The prisoner with the knife in the warden's back was shot by another convict (a convicted murderer) who had grabbed a revolver dropped by one of the would-be escapees. That convict was later pardoned and was quoted as saying that "he was the only person ever sent to prison for murder and then pardoned for committing another murder."

After the tour, we hiked down the hill to the prison cemetery where 104 convicts who died while incarcerated were buried. Some were murdered by fellow prisoners, but a great many died of tuberculosis or consumption. There was one wooden marker in the museum that has survived -- all of the rest have been destroyed or stolen. The close-up of a grave shows yellow linanthus growing between the rocks piled on the cairn.

The City of Yuma has a Cactus Garden on the hillside above the cemetery. I found out there that the odd prickly pear cactus I had a picture of yesterday's blog is aptly named "Beaver Tail Cactus." My flower book says that barrel cacti do not bloom until late summer -- this little one must not have gotten the memo. The columnar cactus is one of over fifty varieties of this genera. It is fascinating to see all of the different kinds. We did see some ocotillo with red flowers on their tips as we came over the pass to Yuma. None of the rest we saw at lower elevations were in bloom and there was nowhere to pull over to get a picture on the pass.

After we left the museum we tried to find the Quechan Tribal Museum on the Fort Yuma grounds. The Quechan Tribe (one of the Colorado River Tribes) now owns the Fort property. They are using a few buildings for their headquarters but the majority of them are in too decrepit a state to be used. The tribe is trying to find grants to restore the Fort -- and their museum. A lady we asked about the museum did tell us that there was a rummage sale going on at the Methodist Mission Church also featuring fry bread. The Catholic Mission was closed except for scheduled masses, but we found the Methodist one. It celebrated its one hundredth birthday five years ago. There were only three Quechen ladies at the rummage sale -- one went to the kitchen and made us fry bread, rolling out her balls of dough while I watched. We ate the bread with honey and powdered sugar (since we had hotdogs at the prison, we opted not to have the bean ones). This lady had the touch! They were the crispist, lightest fry bread I've ever eaten -- and I try them every chance I get!

As we talked with the ladies, we discovered that one of them was going to be 97 years old this year! She had her own teeth, no glasses and walked around quite well. She was a bit hard of hearing and spoke English (the other lady told me that many of the elders did not). She told me she remembers being baptized in this mission church building when she was about 5 years old.

Birds seen today: Yellow Rumped Warbler, Gila Woodpecker, Say's Phoebe

Wellton, Arizona

We took off this afternoon to explore the town of Wellton and the area, looking for any museums or sites of interest. There's really not much around here other than the railroads. There's a small grocery store and a Dollar store in town. Right now, it is heavily populated with wintering RVers. We counted 8 RV Parks in this little town, if you look at it from Google Earth it looks like a sea of flat roofs. Many of the parks are actually lots for sale as sites for motorhomes or park models. Some of them have nice brick fences built in the whole development around each lot. We only saw a couple of fairly nice houses in town, most of the rest looked like they were built in the fifties -- and weren't kept up too well.

On the other side of the freeway, there is a new develpment with an 18 hole golf course that has two fairly large lakes. There are several VERY nice houses built along the golf course with more under construction. There's a brand new strip mall with a grocery, pizza place, realtor, a couple of restaurants, etc. We bought a few groceries there. They had very little fruit -- no berries -- but I bought a nice whole chicken I stuffed and roasted for dinner.

The picture above is a cholla cactus in their little park. The one below shows the nasty little barbed pieces that fall off for the unwary person or animal to step on!

The next picture is of a cactus related to the prickly pear -- but with different shaped leaves. I've not seen this variety anywhere else.

We saw this beautiful gully full flowers outside of one of the RV parks. I think they be creopsis, but I have misplaced my SW flower book...

We saw this little guy along the road. I got a picture with my camera, but he's just a speck in the picture. This one is from Forry's camera -- he didn't have his big lens, but he got a pretty good shot of the road runner anyway.

Tomorrow we'll pack up and move on -- one more stop before we get to Dulzura!

Crossing Arizona's Desert Country

This morning we got everything put away ready to travel, said good-bye to Patty, the mastiff, and headed west. Instead of going directly to I10 and then to I8, we took Highway 287 then Highway 84 and drove the two lane road through farming country until it met up with Interstate 8. Since the rains of the last week, the farmers are out tilling ground. The fields are very flat and are rill irrigated. We could see remnants of last year's cotton fields and recognise pecan trees, but other than that have no idea what is being grown.

After we were out of the farming area and past the Sonoran Desert area, we began to run into large dairies and HUGE feedlots full of Holsteins. There were literally acres of them. This picture is a long ways off, but you can get a bit of an idea of how far they stretch.

We are at the M&M RV Village in Wellton, Arizona where we will stay for two nights then head on towards California.

This is another one of those sort of funky places, not very pricey, but right close to the railroad tracks. There appears to be two rail lines that meet up here. There's lots of switching with trains setting over to the side while others pass the other way. It seems like there is a train every 30 minutes or so!

A Bit of This n That

This beautiful plant is growing up the side of the motor home across the road from us. I don't know what it is, but it sure is pretty.

I spent most of today installing stuff on the new computer and redoing all my contacts and such. It's a good thing I have all of my contacts and my calendar on my iPhone. I was able to sync them back onto the new computer. That would really have been a mess if I'd have lost them too! I've been working on getting our taxes ready. I downloaded and printed all of the 1099s from my retirement account as well as the stock account. Fortunately I had printed off the summary of 2008 on Quicken before the computer crashed.

Also did several loads of laundry. Poor Forry had to empty the gray water tank again tonight so that we can shower in the morning (he'd just done it yesterday). It had rained hard again during the night last night. You can see all of the puddles behind Auntie Violet.

Forry started putting away the barbecue and the outside tables and chairs so that we can get an early relatively early start tomorrow morning. I took this picture at the same time as I took the sunset one above -- you can see the sunset reflected in Auntie Violet's slideout.

At Indian Skies RV Park

These are pictures of Patti, the mastiff who lives across the street from us at the RV Park. She is two years old and weighs about 130 pounds. Her owner doesn't think she'll get much bigger. I took these pictures for my sister Sherry's mastiff Deacon (who out-weighed her before he was even a year old)!

We had to go to the office to extend our stay until Wednesday. We had only planned to stay -- and paid for -- two nights which we got at the Passport America rate. We're only allowed the two nights at that rate, so paid the rest at the Good Sam rate which is $29.14 a night compared to Passport's $18.19.

We got a few things done today -- I mainly worked on the new computer getting everything reinstalled. I have been unable to locate my pictures that I thought had been backed up from the hard disk on the old computer...

Forry worked at putting all of the Pressure Pro units on the tires of both Auntie Violet and the toad. One unit screws onto the stem of each tire. He used his compressor to make sure each tire was at the pressure he wanted it, then screwed on the units. Then we "set" each tire up on the unit that goes on the dashboard. I hadn't realized that you could take the monitor along in the toad as well when we are traveling away from Auntie Violet.

We did make a quick run into town late this afternoon as I was out of yogurt. Went to both Walgreen and Walmart and picked up odds and ends.

A New Computer

Well, we did it! Took the computer back to Costco. The fellow from the Returns Desk had the computer sales guy come up and talk to me. After I told him my tale of woe and of all the hours spent with Microsoft and Dell technical service, he looked at me and agreed I had a lemon! He immediately slapped a "NOT FOR RESALE" sticker on the computer! Then went with us to see what they had in stock. I finally ended up with another HP computer (which is what I had before the "new" Dell).

There's too much installing of stuff to do, so this is just going to be a short note.

Wish me luck!

A Serendipitous Day!

We had a busy morning -- Forry installed the two new fire alarms we had gotten yesterday and I put up the new sun screens. The screens are attached with pins into suction cups. All of them had to be shortened after I got them hung. The mesh doesn't ravel, so it was just a matter of cutting them off to the right length. It was a warm morning and it was very dramatic to feel the difference after the shades were hung.

After lunch we went to see the Casa Grande Ruins. They are just on the outskirts of Coolidge. But when we drove up to the entrance, we were told that the visitor parking was closed as they were having an American Indian Music

Fest. We were told to drive back to the Safeway parking lot and take the shuttle bus in. We debated about whether we wanted to do that, but decided we would -- and am I ever glad! We walked around the ruins which are actually the first National Monument site. A roof has been built over the large building (Casa Grande) which was over four stories tall, made out of caliche mud plastered walls.

As we walked around the ruins, we could hear flute music coming from where they had set up stages on the edge of the ruins. There was a main stage for the featured performers and another where they had an "open mike" and anyone could play. This picture is of a flute player named Travis Terry. He's a Pima/Navajo who is an incredible musician. I got to use a set of bells as accompaniment to his flute! (He handed out a gourd shaker and bells.) There was a couple of lines of booths selling jewelry, CDs and gorgeous flutes. Forry has been eyeing the flutes at pow wows, so I broke down and bought him one for Valentine's Day. (He's been playing with it since we got home and he sounds pretty good!) In the picnic area they were selling Indian tacos. We watched them make the fry bread and then heap it up with hamburger, beans, lettuce, onions and tomatoes. They were really scrumptious!

The main performances started a little before six (the schedule said 5:30, but it's Indian country...) and it was neat to sit and listen while we watched the sunset over the mountains in the distance. We hadn't planned to be there after dark, so hadn't brought heavy coats (I had on my sandals!), just our light jackets. In the desert it gets COLD when the sun goes down! We held out until about 7:30, but by then were just too cold to stay any longer. The heater in the shuttle sure felt good as we headed back to the car.

HAPPY VALENTINE"S DAY TO ALL!

Moving Day

Today was a day to move. We said good-bye to Tom and Juni as they are heading to the Tucson area to visit Tom's sister who has been quite ill.

We paid a visit to Mac the Fire Guy before we left and ordered a fire extinquisher for the engine compartment (90% of motor home fires start there) along with one more small foam extinquisher for the toad. We also bought two smoke alarms as the only one that came with the coach is only an ionization detector. The ones we bought are dual sensors that have photoeclectric sensors as well as the ionization ones. This way we will have one in the bedroom as while as in the front of the coach.

We only travled eleven miles down the road to Indian Skies RV Resort in Coolidge. The Casa Grande Ruins are just outside the town and we do want to visit there while we are in the area. It looks like a pretty nice place. Just across the "street" from us is a couple from New Mexico who have a 2 year old mastiff named Patti. I, of course, headed over there with my picture of Deacon to get acquantied with her. She's pretty much full grown but only weighs 130 pounds -- he siad her daddy was over 230! I'll get a pictue of her tomorrow to share with Deacon.

We went into town to Safeway to restock our rather depleted larder. Stopped at a Mexican-American cafe for dinner. The fellow who started it many years ago was a Mexican according to the menu. He is long departed, but it said they were still using his grandmother's recipes. Well, I suppose we should have figured when the name said it was Mexican-American...

Seminars

Today was a day for more seminars and a last chance to chat with, and buy from vendors. The picture is from the entrance to the fairgrounds. This morning we both went to a seminar on Digital Cameras, but didn't learn much. The lady mostly showed and talked about the camera equipment she had and why she bought it. I had been hoping she would do a basic review of what all the little symbols on the camera mean -- guess I'm going to have to break down and read the manual again!

While Forrest went to a session on Insurance, I went to one on Tech Tips for Women Only. The guy who taught it was most adament about NOT letting any males in the session -- not even to listen in! He spent most of the time explaining things that women had questions about, but had been unable to get an explanation (at least one they understood!) from their husbands. The guy runs an RV Repair business and spent quite some time explaining to one lady just what exactly he had done to her coach yesterday. I did learn a few things, though mostly about things I hadn't already quizzed Forry about.

We had leftover pizza for lunch (each of us who helped last night were given one to take home) and then Forry went to a session on Diesel Engine Performance. I, again, didn't see anything I wanted to go to, so stayed home and got started on another ruffle for the baby outfit.

This afternoon's final session was done by Mac, the Fire Guy. Mac is a retired fireman who does incredible classes that have to do with fire safety and teaching people how to use fire extinquishers (foam) effectively. We had gone to one of his classes a couple of years ago at Life on Wheels where he had done a pretty darn good job of scaring us to death. This time he still did a good job of scaring us. After the first time we heard him we ended up getting more fire extinquishers for the rig and replacing the one that had come with it. We do want to get one that mounts in the engine compartment, but he was all sold out by today (he had a class yesterday) so we'll have to order one and have it sent to us in Dulzura.

We went out to dinner tonight with Tom and Juni. We were very good ordering shrimp and salads, but then blew it with fabulous desserts -- Bananas Foster and Triple Chocolate Brownies (though we did share them...!).