Week ending Dec 26, 2019 Yuma

Hard to believe the second decade of the 21st century is coming to a close.

Friday, we had decided that the 9,000 btu heater deisigned for about 225 sq ft, doesn't heat up the trailer fast enough, so we traded up to the 18,000 btu heater (450 sq ft).  This one has 3 settings instead of 2, so we have a choice of lower btu's when we don't need the 18000.  

After picking up the new heater, we went to the West Yuma Wetlands, and did the walk through the park.  Even though we had walked here a couple of times last spring, we managed to find a new route through the park.  A highlight was a memorial to the Morman Battalion. We have seen smaller memorials to the battalion in several places, since it traveled from Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas to San Diego, Ca during the war with Mexico from 1846 to 1848.  On their trip, they built a wagon trail from New Mexico to southern California, including digging deep wells for future travelers to use.  It was heavily used during the California Gold Rush. 

After our walk, we checked Food City, which was recommended as the most economical by the lady we chatted with last week.  We didn't think there was a significant difference, and the bigger chains have more variety.

Then we went to Brewers Restaurant and Sports Bar for lunch and a pint.  The amber beer was good.  Joan had the potato skins, which she said were the best she had, crispier than most.  John had a good Western Burger (cheese, bacon, an onion ring, and the usual veggies).  They have 1/3 and 1/2 lb options.  The 1/3 was plenty.   The service was slowed down a bit by a group  from a local business who were having their Christmas lunch.  Fortunately, they came in after us, so only the bill was slow in coming.

Saturday, we heated the trailer up much faster with the larger heater, so will be worth the extra cost.  Then we went to the Somerton Tamale Festival.  Somerton is a small town about 12 miles south and 2 west of Yuma.  This is the 13th annual festival.  They publish a paper which has a list of 43 booths that sell tamales, identifying the main ingredients (eg. beef, pork, cheese, pineapple, etc) and beverages sold at each.  Tickets are required at $2 per tamale.  We headed to a booth that had vegeterian tamales, and got a beef one as well. Joan added the optional hot sauce to hers after trying a bite, but the beef had enough flavour without sauce.  We have never had tamales or churros before, so it was a good experience.  Tamales are various ingredients cooked in a wrap of corn husks in this area or banana leaves, further south in Central America. 

row of tamale vendors

Beef tamale

Churros are fried dough rolled in cinnamon and sugar.  The vendor we got them from also fills them with strawberry, condensed milk, cream cheese or caramel.  Since it was our first time, we opted to go with the basic churros.  We also picked up a big bag of kettle corn for later.  The streets crossing the center of town in each direction are closed (even though one is the highway going from Yuma south to Mexico. There was a stage where bands play from 11:30am until the end of the main entertainer, who starts his act at 10pm.   Funds are raised for scholarships (over $300,000 to date) for incoming Arizona State University students from Yuma County.  It was estimated that over 30,000 people come to the festival each year.
 
On our way back to the trailer we stopped at the U-pick Grapefruit again.  This time we picked about 3/4 of a bucket, since we have decided to go to start our boondocking at the  Imperial Dam LTVA.   If we go to Hot Springs LTVA further into Calfornia, we would go through the California agriculture inspection station, and they might confiscate any citrus. 

The weather wasn't great for the next few days, so we did a bit of shopping for Christmas dinner, walked around the RV park a few times, and had a couple of rain episodes, one of which was quite heavy for a short time.

Christmas Day, we went back to the East Wetlands, and this time did the trail along the canal,

instead of in the wetland area.  A portion of the water from the Yuma water plant is fed into these wetlands to create 22 acres of habitat.  We came back along the far side of the canal, which gave us a view from about 10 feet higher than the concrete path beside the canal. 

tree line with a tinge of color

From there, we got views of the communication towers on a little hill close to downtown Yuma.

There is an area in Riverside park,  below the the territorial prison, near the beginning of the canal, that has a small railway system laid out.  We couldn't find any information on it anywhere.  It looks like it is still under construction, so may not be advertised yet.

About noon we had a group video chat with Karen and Dominique, Trever, Sue, Taylor and Jame using Google Duo on our cell phones.  We did this last year as well, but since we were on a new phone, it took us a few minutes to get it all working. 

Week ending Dec 19, 2019 Yuma

We ran our Mr. Heater to warm up the trailer in the mornings this week.  We were testing to see whether the heater would be adequate in cooler temperatures under 50F.

Friday, we saw one of the resident hummingbirds on our walk around the park.

Saturday,  as we headed out for a walk, we saw the cotton harvesters at work.

We parked at the visitor center and walked along the West Canal.  This canal goes along the back of a residential area. 

We saw a tree with really tiny fruit.  It turned out to be limes.

This canal doesn't go out nearly as far as the East Canal, until it is in the fields but was still about 4.5 miles.  We checked out a couple of RV parks backing onto the canal, chatting with one lady bringing her little dog out for a walk.

Sunday, we returned to the visitor center, this time to do the east wetlands.  We started by going under the Ocean to Ocean Highway Bridge.

At one of the interpretive signs, we talked to a guy who said he organized the first Earth Day in Yuma.   The trail along the Colorado is part of the Juan Bautista de Anza Trail, which started south of Tucson at Tubac.

Joan saw what she thinks is a wolf scooting across the path ahead of us.  There are mexican wolfs in the area.  The south section of the trail was a muddy path, so we had to find solid spots to keep from slipping.  

Monday, we bought our LTVA permit, which is good until April 15.  Then we went to a U-Pick a few miles from us to pick up 6 grapefruit for $2.   The first small one was a bit tart, but the bigger ones were quite good.  They had a resident peacock in the orchard.

 Peacock

Wednesday, we drove out to Imperial Dam LTVA to check out the feasibility of boondocking there.
On the way out we went by Laguna Dam, a small dam below the larger Imperial Dam.

At the LTVA we had a good chat with the volunteers in the office.  We found a few areas that weren't too crowded. 

Tiny House in LTVA

Week ending Dec 12, 2019 Yuma

Friday, we went to James Smucker Park, which was one of the destination distances listed on the East Canal.  However, there was a high school between the park and the canal.  We did the walk around the park, but couldn't see a way to get to the canal, and asked someone walking there whether they knew a way, but they didn't.  Then we noticed a security guard at the entrance into the high school parking lot.  He explained that we could get there by going back up to the road back around on 32nd Ave.  We walked around there.  By the time we got to the canal, we had gone about 2 miles, and our turnaround from last Tuesday was over 2 more miles.  We checked and there were spots to park near the canal, so we decided we would come back another day to do the walk.  When we got back to the truck, we saw a fellow with a Buc-ee's shirt, which was our favourite gas station in Texas.   We got chatting, and he noticed my Savannah sweater.  He had also lived in Georgia for a while.

Saturday, we went back to the James Smucker area, and parked at the canal. From there we walked north 2.5 miles to the turnaround point from our previous walk on the canal.  We saw a few more interesting ducks.  One looked like an albino mallard, and was with a group of common pattern mallards. 

white mallard

 

Ring-necked duck

We could see a residential area on the west side of the canal.  We were surprised that only a small (maybe 10-20) percent of the houses had solar panels on their roofs.  We would have thought they would be more beneficial here. 

From the canal we could see the hills to the northwest.

Shortly after we got back to the truck, we got a bit of drizzle on the windshield.  Good timing.  It was overcast and drizzly for the rest of the afternoon.

Monday, we headed back to the East Canal across the street from our last walk.  On the way there, we stopped to see if we could see some Mr Heater indoor propane heaters for boondocking.  They don't have any in stock, and we would like to see one before we order it.  At the canal, we headed south. The first mile was past a very nice residential area perched well above the canal, and then by a golf course.  The golf course had a fence along the edge to keep us from getting hit by golf balls.  People still manage to get balls from the tee over the top of the fence.  One fellow had found his ball on our pathway, and asked us to hand it to him through the fence.  A few feet later we found another ball.  These were both on the edge of the pathway near the fence, not on the canal side.  We couldn't figure out how they could get them over the fence and not have them land in the canal.  The second mile of pathway went along the edge of an old? date farm.  There were people working the area, including a guy on a bulldozer.  It looked like they were clearing a lot of the date trees.   There was a row of palms in what looked like square pots.  It turns out that this is the shape they cut the roots into when they dig up a tree.

palms dug out of the ground

On our way back, we noticed a bunch of large fish, we figure about 12-18 inches long.

fish in canal

We must have not noticed them when we were going south because of the sun on the water ahead of us. Then we went to Home Depot, and they too don't carry any propane heaters in store either.  By then it was time for lunch, so we asked our GPS for nearby restaurants.  The one we chose was Hawaiian BBQ.  Joan had a vegetable rice bowl, and John the Hawaiian BBQ ribs, both quite good.  For a drink, we had a Brisk Raspberry Iced Tea, which we had never seen before.  It had a nice flavour.

Tuesday, Joan started her Christmas baking, with mince and butter tarts and rum balls.  Meanwhile, John called a mobile RV repair advertised in our Southern Mesa brochure.  When we explained we needed a black water sewer valve replaced, they forwarded us to Royal Flush RV Tank Cleaning, as they specialize in this type of repair.  It became clear why when they started by power flushing the black tank with a unit in the back of their van.  They explained that they insist on doing this first to avoid working in dirty conditions.  If the tank is clean, they don't charge for the flush.  Ours wasn't bad, but they still managed to flush a lot of stuff, including some calcium build-up.  They were an interesting crew, grandfather, father and son.  Grandfather hasn't retired yet, even though he and his wife, who talked to us to book the appointment, will have been married 60 years next year.   Nice to finally have the sewer valve replaced.

Thursday, we picked up a Mr. Heater propane heater at Lowe's for boondocking, which should allow us to warm up in the mornings starting January 1.  We'll test it out here, as we run our furnace in the mornings, instead of electric heaters, since propane heating is cheaper than electric.  Lowe's actually had some in stock.   We stopped for a bit of lunch at Weinerschnitzel, a fast food chain we haven't tried before.  Joan was able to get a thick milkshake there, cheaper than the McDonalds ones we like, and more variety as well.  John had their kraut hot dog, which is one with saurkraut.  It's okay but not special.

Week ending Dec 5, 2019 Laughlin to Yuma

Friday a motorcoach came in.  Shortly after, two great danes took their owner up to the dog park.   The owner could pat the dogs on the back without bending over.  Hard to imagine having two dogs that large in an RV.

Saturday morning, there was frost on the truck window.

Sunday, we packed up, and headed south through Needles, California. We couldn't believe that the price of diesel there was 4.99/gal.  We have been paying about 2.82/gal across the river in Ft. Mohave.  Fortunately, we didn't need to fill up on our way through California.  The roads were pretty busy until Quartzite with Thanksgiving weekend traffic. We pulled into Southern Mesa RV Park in Yuma, where we stayed for a month last spring. The website said their office hours were from 1 to 5pm on Sundays, but when we got there, no one was in the office.  We called the cell of the manager, who lives in the park.  He came over and told us he did have one site available for at least a month, as someone left yesterday.  They had been coming here for years, and she swam in the pool every day.  This year, the pool is not open, so they moved somewhere else.  The people in our site, moved over to the vacated site which is shady, and he is recovering from melanoma. 

Monday we did a scouting expedition to Hot Spring LTVA about 40 miles east of Yuma about 7 miles west of Holtville, California.  We had a good chat with the volunteer host about heating options. He  let us drive through to check out the 'sites'.  Then we checked out a store in Holtville, and the Walmart in Calexico for grocery options in the area.

Tuesday, we decided it was time for a decent walk, so we drove to the visitor center in Yuma, and walked along a section of the East Canal pathway, a little over 5 miles return.  One section of the pavement had broken up, and then been removed.  We saw quite a few mallards. 

Further down the canal, there were few mallards, maybe, that had a different pattern, white breasts and dark backs, but the usual dark green heads with yellow beaks.  We couldn't find that pattern in the Field Guide.  

 There was a group of buzzards in some trees across the canal. 

 The water in the canal was close to the bridges crossing it, probably due to the storm that had come through about a week ago.

high water in canal

On the road south to the RV park, there are a couple of fields of cotton, between fields of citrus trees on this route.  This time of year, there is lots of cotton on the plants

Week ending Nov 28, 2019 Laughlin

Friday morning at 9:30 PST, we caught the London Bridge Jet Boat.  We took the smaller of their two boats, as the water levels are too low (17 inches in places) for the larger boat.

Shallow River

There were 24 people on the trip, of the 36 person capacity.  We were warned that there were no washrooms on the boat, so were prepared for that. 

It is a 2 hour trip the 68 miles down the Colorado River to Lake Havasu City.  Along the way we saw many birds, ducks, egrets, herons, snow geese, and even a flock of canoers.   We didn't know why the pilot used the horn until we got close to them, as our seat was close to the back of the boat on the other side.   Once in a while, the pilot would bank the boat to stay in the deepest water. 

  Travelling at 40 mph, it wasn't always easy to get a steady shot.

At Topock, we went under the first bridge over the Colorado, the arched span ahead, which was built as part of Route 66.  It is no longer used  for vehicles, but now carries pipelines over the river which transport natural gas from Texas to California.

Stagecoach statue at Topock

Past this point we could see the Needles.

South of where I40 crosses the river, we entered the Topock Gorge, where the hills come right down to the river.  This area is only visible from boats and planes.  

the occasional palm tree

There is a small natural arch.  

Natural Arch

The Devil's Elbow is two fairly sharp turns that made it difficult for steamboats to navigate the river.
South of the gorge, there are sand dunes, first one by itself, then an area that is mostly dunes.

Sandbar

The last 3 miles of the trip is on Lake Havasu.

Entering the Lake Havasu Marina

When we arrived at Lake Havasu City, we docked beside London Bridge. 

London Bridge Jet Boat

We had a 2 hour lay-over.  We had lunch at Barley Brothers Brewery, one of 5 or so restaurants next to the boat dock (many others within easy walking distance). 

After lunch we did a short walk.  We were planning on walking down the peninsula, but soon decided there wasn't much to see in that direction, so we walked back towards town, across London Bridge, over Highway 95 to the next lights, then back to boat.

On the way back, we stopped to take a look at some petroglyphs at the lake end of the gorge.

The pilot turned the boat, so both sides could see them.   A bit later one of the people on the side of the boat opposite to us saw a bighorn sheep on the crest of the hill.  The pilot turned the boat again.

Near Laughlin, we took pictures of the hotel that was abandoned after most of the concrete work was done.

The boat is quite noisy, as it travels at 40mph, except for several 'no wake' areas, where we coasted more quietly.  At these times, the pilot gave us some information on the river, the power dams (the pilot needs to know the plans for power from Davis Dam each day, as it affects the water levels).   


Sunday we paid for another week here.  We will leave next Sunday unless the weather takes a turn for the worse.

Then we tried to drive to the spot marked as Fort Mojave on the other side of the river about 9 miles south on the east side of the river (as marked on the Arizona Topo map).  It turns out that it is on the Mojave Indian Reservation, and that you can't drive to it.  We got as close to as we could, and were stopped by closed gates with no trespassing signs.  Then we went to the Rotary Park in Bullhead, and walked the mile along the river in the park and back.

At the south end, there was a canoe tour group getting ready to head out.

Monday, we drove back to Cal-Nev-Ari for another mine hike.  The target today was the Roman Mine.  We would then have done both the Roman and Empire Mines down the same road.  From the junction we parked at to do the Empire Mine, we headed south for about a mile before we looked for a spot we could turn the truck around.  We did have to park on the road, but there was plenty of room for vehicles to pass. That turned out to not be an issue, as we didn't see anyone else the whole time we were there. Not even a rabbit, and very few birds.  About another mile down the road, we came to another junction, where we could have parked. 

From here, we headed east downhill toward the mine.  This mine had quite a large area cleared, but there were no structures left,  only a small opening into the hill.  We are not sure whether they found anything worth clearing the amount of rock that was pushed out.

Back up the hill a bit, we found what looks like a couple of water tanks covered by a sun shield.  We had our lunch near there.  This hike was 5.8 miles in 3 hours, so much easier than the day we did Empire Mine.  We climbed to 150 feet to the junction, then down about 300 feet , and up 85 feet to the mine.

Thursday morning, we got quite a bit of rain again.  We walked north along the river, and quite a few areas had silt run across the pavement.   We didn't take the camera with us, which was unfortunate as we saw a couple of ruby hummingbirds sipping the nectar from a bush.  We also saw another, or maybe the same resident roadrunner.