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.