Week ending Feb 28, 2019 Yuma

On Thursday  Joan found a recipe for cooking yucca root we had bought.  It tasted okay, but it had to be boiled, then cut into strips and fried.  We concluded it was more work than it was worth.

Friday we walked from the visitor center through 'old' Yuma historic district Brinkley. The houses were not as picturesque as we expected. 

old Yuma City Hall

Church

A passerby told us he worked at Lutes Casino on main street, and we had to see all the stuff inside.  He worked there for 2 years and hasn't seen it all yet.  Main street was closed to traffic to set up an event for the weekend.  One of the businesses whose headquarters is in Yuma is Gowan.  It was started by an entomologist over 50 years ago. It grew into a global agriculture product business which is still family-owned.

Hotel San Carlos

In Gateway Park, there is the remains of the Blaisdell Slow Sand Washing Machine, which was used to filter water through sand while stirring it to produce drinking water. 

Sand washing machine

From main street we headed across the Ocean-to-Ocean bridge constructed in 1915, the first bridge across the Colorado between Arizona and California,

Ocean-to-Ocean Highway and RR bridges

then up to the St. Thomas Mission and Church. 

St. Thomas Mission and Church

While there, the replacement camera battery died after only a few pictures, so we had to switch to the phone for pictures.  There was a sign pointing to the Quechan Indian Museum, but no evidence that it is still operational.

Saturday we picked up a new camera battery so we would still have two.  

Sunday was spent watching Scotties finals and Nascar.

On Monday we drove about 20 miles north on US95 to Castle Dome Mines Museum.  The admission is $15 each to walk around the mine village, with building brought in from several mines in the area, and around an adjacent area with many shafts, and several more old buildings.    For $75 each, we could get a mine tour, but we like to go at our own pace, and they had lots of descriptions of the history.  Worth doing the washboarded 6 mile road into the mine, across the Yuma Proving Grounds and into the south edge of the KOFA Wildlife Refuge.  

Mining in the Castle Dome region was started around 1858.  It grew to around 300 shafts, and a town larger than Yuma at the time.   It was mostly silver and lead mining, and continued through both World Wars with the demand for lead. 

Castle Dome

Castle Dome Mines Museum

One of several saloons

Pipes for church organ

Doctor's office upstairs

Tuesday we went shopping for stuff to prepare to boon-dock for a few weeks.

On Wednesday morning, while Joan did laundry, John watched Franco's RV Wash crew wash the trailer since the doves have been all over the top for the last month.   Franco also recommended some Carnuba-B protector to help cure some of the decal fading and crazing.  We'll see if that helps revive them. In the afternoon, John got some gasoline for the generator.  He found out there was seepage from the gas container, since it has been expanding and contracting over the years due to the cool mornings and hot afternoons in the desert.  Fortunately the split was fairly high on the container, so it was slow, and the bulk of the gas was transferred to a new container.

Thursday morning we got everything packed up, paid for our electric use for the month, and pulled out.   We had a low pressure warning for the front right tire.  It looked okay, and the warning went off as we drove north from the park.   It came back on a few miles toward town, so we headed to Discount Tire to get it checked out.  It was going to be a while before they could check the tire for leaks, so we checked the pressure on both front tires.  Since they both looked okay, we headed into California.  Our plan was to park near the Tumco Mine site we had visited our first week in Yuma.  However, we figured the cell signal wasn't as strong here as we had seen on America Girl Mine Road, about 4 miles south.   We headed there, and found a spot with a decent Verizon signal.  When we set up the solar panels, the new controller had an 'alarm' that the battery voltage was too low.  The old panel showed it was charging at 14 volts, so there must be a loose connection in the circuit for the new controller.  To be investigated at leisure tomorrow.  
We figure that with the cost of maintenance on our trailer, maybe we should look at something creative like this sporty RV. 

Toy Hauler

Week ending Feb 21, 2019 Yuma

On Friday we did a walk around the park since Vic had said he might be able to come out Friday afternoon to install our fridge. 

Vic arrived about 8:30 AM on Saturday to install our new fridge.  It took him a bit over half an hour to get it all done.  Then we had to let it cool off before we could put our food in it.


Sunday was spent watching curling and the Daytona 500.  We also talked to folks from Nanaimo who we met on a walk around the park.

On Monday, we returned to the American Girl Mine area.  In the meantime, we had downloaded a California topo map which marked the roads in the area, and points of interest, which included the location of the American Girl Mine.   We followed the route out to the mine.  Along the way, we investigated a little tunnel into the side of a hill. 

small tunnel dig on way to American Girl Mine

Then we came to the east end of a huge .4 mile long tailings pile. 

Soon after we passed the west end, we were able to get to the rim of the large mine pit.  We could see that there were ATV tracks from the far end toward the pool of water at the east end of the pit.  

American Girl Mine pond from north

American Girl Mine pond from east

We walked down about 150 feet from the top of the mine down to the pool, where we had lunch.   While we were there, we waved to a couple looking down from the top of the mine.   

cattail on edge of pond

On the way back we got good views of the Imperial Dunes to the west.

view of dunes from American Girl Mine

Tuesday we drove to Telegraph Pass to do the hike there. We had picked up a sheet describing it at the visitor center with instructions on how to get to the trailhead off  I-8 at  Foothills Blvd to the north frontage road along the interstate.  There are several different paths that lead about a mile  to the entrance gate that the road that climbs up to the communications towers at the top of the hill.  We, of course, started out on a road with lots of footprints which led up to a power pole.  While not quite a dead end, the trails from there looked a bit challenging, so we returned to the parking, and chose the power line access road around the south side of the hill, beside the freeway.  

heading to Telegraph Pass

This worked out much better.  About half a mile out, we had a choice between continuing on the powerline road, or taking a more direct trail across to the entrance gate.   We reached the entrance gate in another mile.   At that point, we started climbing up the concrete access roads towards the towers at the top, at 700 foot elevation, only about 900 feet more to the top of the hill.  This was a busy hike, with a few people heading up, and more on their way down.  We continued almost 300 more feet of elevation up the hill before we stopped to eat our lunch.   Then we decided it was going to be too difficult to make it to the top.    On the return trip, we followed the access road back toward the interstate, then the powerline road back to the trailhead.  We noticed another couple choose the wrong route on this section, and have to return from a deadend at a power pole site.   When we got back to the point where we had headed off the powerline on the way out, we took the path around the north side of the first hill.  We had asked a couple of girls why they hadn't gone back that way.  They said it was 'creepy'.  We took that route, and didn't see anything that justified the 'creepy' description.

On Wednesday  morning we finally remembered to phone Dometic Customer service because the on-line registration form did not recognize the model number / serial number combo.   They acknowledged that there was a problem with serial numbers starting with letters, so they did the registration.  After stopping for a slow breakfast at IHOP, we headed to Picacho California State Recreation Area 24 miles north of Yuma on the west side of the Colorado River.   The first 6 miles of the road are paved, and the last 18 mile are rough washboard gravel, with a few smooth breaks.  

It took us about an hour to do that 18 miles.  

 views along Picacho Road

Along the way we came to a work site.  We didn't see any signage indicating what it was for, but they sure didn't want anyone going in.

secured work site

A couple who had driven their small RV in said it took them 2 hours, so they decided to stay in the campground for the night.  The scenery on the drive is quite good once you get into the hills.  There are lots of different colors in the hills.  There is a self-pay kiosk at the entrance to the SRA which is $10/veh but $9 seniors, if you can find the exact cash.  They had a few brochures, including a hiking map and the interpretive guide for the 2 mile Stamp Mill Trail.  It goes up and down along the edge of Rojo Grande (Big Red), where there was a mine in the late 1800's that had up to 700 workers with a townsite of 2500 people.   The town was supplied by steamboats, and was swamped later when the Imperial Dam was built downstream.  

Colorado River

across the foot of Rojo Grande

Close to the stamp trails, we crossed a wash.

There are remains of 2 stamp mills at the end of the trail, one on the side of the hill and the other near the river.

upper stamp mill

lower stamp mill

On the way back, we checked out the jail with bars across some of the opening.

Jail

We saw a heron fly into one of the pools below us, and noticed an egret there as well.

Egret

Heron

On Thursday, we went to the Heritage Library in Yuma to download some windows 10 updates, since neither our Verizon wifi or the campground wifi is fast enough to do a significant update.   However, Joan's computer still gets an error message trying to apply an update, and the update for John's computer got into a loop.  After downloading the latest update, then starting to install it, it would start downloading it again.  Over 7GB later, he gave up.  

We then drove south about 22 miles from Yuma to the border town of San Luis.  We were surprised to find a Wal-Mart at the edge of town, so we stopped in to stock up on some boxes of wine and pick up a couple of small thermoses that we can put a cold drink in to enjoy when we get back to the truck from a hike.  We took a picture of the Catholic church.

St. Jude Thaddeus RC Church / Mission

One more week left in our month in Yuma.

Week ending Feb 14, 2019 Yuma

Friday we went to the Arizona Marketplace, sort of a big flea market with a bunch of small vendors.  Joan picked up a sundress.  She looked for a replacement for her card wallet which got run over east of Tucson, but not of the leather goods vendors had anything suitable. 

Saturday we ran into town for a few groceries and diesel at Fry's.  We noticed that they had downloadable discount coupons available for one of the products we wanted, so got an on-line account setup for our discount card, and downloaded a coupon.  Although it wasn't the advertised one, at least we still saved something doing it.  Then we drove back past the Cocopah Casino to check out the location for Sunday.

Sunday we went to the Cocopah Casino for their breakfast brunch (available every day).  For $11 each, they have a nice selection.  After breakfast we spent $20 on the slots, and were losing quickly until Joan won $15 on a play.  We figured that was the time to cash out.  On the way out John noticed that his sunglasses were missing and realized they were in his coat.  He backtracked, and found his coat hanging on the chair of the first slot machine he had used.  Then we headed north to the visitor center to park while we walked west along the canal south of the river to the Yuma West Wetlands Park.  There were a lot of people there, and someone on the PA system.  It turned out there was a geocaching event in progress, so quite a few people wandering around following their clues.  However, there weren't too many for us to enjoy a walk along the Colorado for about a mile until we reached an RV Park that marked the west boundary of the wetlands.  They are trying to grow a new grove of trees in the west end of Wetlands park, with extensive irrigation.

 Puff ball flowers

Flower with insect

 

Little Egret

Apparently there is a resident bobcat, beaver and burrowing owls in the park, but all we saw was the interpretive sign about them.  We spent over an hour and half there, and there are still areas we left for another visit. We had done the river walk east of the visitor center when we were here in January 2015 since our hotel was just south of the visitor center, and the historic points of interest were on the east side along the river.   See our blog the week ending Jan 29, 2015 from that week.
After our walk, we stopped for treats at Dairy Queen.  This time we found one that was open.

Monday we went back to the wetlands park and walked a different route.   We walked by the Hummingbird Garden, but didn't see any hummingbirds.  The east end of the park is also a work in progress but far behind the work in the west end, so nothing to see here.  Back at the main pond, we saw a couple of remote-controlled sailboats.

  We came back along the canal instead of through the park.  Along the way there were several simulations of petroglyphs.

  We came back into the Wetlands park at the west end, and went over to the  demonstration solar garden.  We thought it was ironic that the sign describing it was faded out by the sun.

Faded sign

  We did like the decorations around the fence.  Here are just two of them.

 
In the evening we discovered that our fridge and freezer weren't working.

On Tuesday morning Joan baked a whole package of frozen bread we had purchased recently.  Later she cooked all of the defrosted meat.   We arranged for an RV tech to look at the fridge issue.  He only took checks or cash, so we headed into town to get some cash.  The tech arrived around noon.  He discovered that the cooling unit was leaking ammonia.  He pointed out the residue around the bottom of the unit.   To replacing the unit would cost around US1500, while a new fridge would cost US2500, both installed.  90 day warranty on the cooling unit, but 2 years on the fridge.  We decided to go with the new fridge option.   We will have to go to the bank for a few days to withdraw cash since we can only take out $500 each per day.   Time to get ice to keep the fridge closed until the new one arrives.
Getting to be an expensive winter with RV repairs and the issue with the truck.


Wednesday, we went back to the Tumco area, but this time we went into the main boondocking area along American Girl Mine Road.   We started out by walking up a little hill with the remains of a an ore chute on it. 

Hill with Ore Chute

Ore chute

The access road wound around the hill to a shoulder, where we could look down on the plain we had come across.

Boondockers

   Once we came down, we went toward a work site further into the hills.   As expected based on what we had seen from the top of the hill, there was a sign on a gate into the site forbidding access to anyone who wasn't authorized.  It didn't have anything to identify the company or what they were doing.   We figured this might have been the American Girl Mine site, as there was a large pit next to it.   There was a few processors and storage tanks labelled AlMix.  When we got back to the trailer we found this was equipment for making asphalt, and the company had a contract to repave I-8, which runs east-west a few miles to the south. 

Excavation in front of plant

Asphalt Plant

We continued a few hundred yards along their fence, then headed along an ATV trail heading toward a mine we could see from there. 

Mine entrance

Barrier

We stopped on the way home to pick up some more cash and some ice for the fridge.

On Thursday, it was overcast, drizzly and windy, so we decided to go shopping for a few clothes, to pick up the last batch of cash to pay for the fridge, and another bag of ice.  Later in the afternoon, we confirmed with the RV tech that he will have the fridge this evening or tomorrow.   He will come to install it either Friday afternoon or first thing Saturday.