Happy New Year!
Friday, we did the East Wetlands sections on the North side of the Colorado on the Quechan reserve. It is called Anya Nitz Pak, which means Sunrise Point.
On the pond at the parking area, there was a family group of egrets,
and a heron in the mix.
There is an Elder Village in park with replicas of traditional homes.
Saturday, we drove to the visitor center, walked along the canal around the Conference Center, then back towards the West Wetlands. We saw quite a few birds, including a vermilion flycatcher
and what looked like a bald eagle.
Sunday, we went to the East Canal by the High School again. We walked north for about a mile and a half, then noticed that there was a bike path on the other side of canal. We back tracked, and got on the bike path. It followed the other side for a while, then turned into the neighbourhood. We stayed on it going west until we got to Ave B, a main north south route. About half a mile south, we stopped at a Taco Bell for coffee and a couple of cinnabon balls (like Timbits). From their we went south along a side street, past the Yuma Library, and then back east to the truck around a spinach field, with both green and red spinach.
Late Monday morning, the propane to the heater ran out. We have used the 30 lb for 18 days, so that works out to about $14 for heating in that time. Not bad!
Tuesday was shopping day in preparation for leaving. Across the road from Fruit Growers Supplier, there was a large flock of egrets huddled along a canal. We usually only see a few egrets in one location. We don't know what attracted so many to this section of canal.
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On Wednesday, we got up around 7:00 AM and went to Denny's for breakfast. Then we packed up, paid for our electricity for the month (US67), and headed 30 miles north to Imperial Dam LTVA, to an area called Coyote Ridge, which we had checked out while in Yuma. It is on the southwest corner of the LTVA, so not as crowded as the area closer to the facilities. When John was aligning the satellite, a nice fellow from BC pointed at his dish on the roof so John knew what direction to point. As we only moved a bit north, the vertical angle was the same, so got a good signal very quickly. After a bit of lunch, left over from breakfast, we decided to see if we could walk to the office to check in. After about 1.5 miles, we decided it was too far for us after all the work to move, so returned to the trailer. We were pleased to find a drinking water kiosk only a half mile from the trailer, so don't need to drive back into Yuma for that.
Thursday morning, after an early breakfast we went for a walk. We had seen many ATVs and jeeps heading southwest from us, so decided to investigate in that direction. We went past several other RVs in that direction before coming to a BLM road heading north west toward the hills. We carried on to the edge of the LTVA in that direction, and continued beyond. Near the hills, there is a 3 foot edge that runs around a wide area. At this edge, we came to a little firepit with stone seats around it, and a stone wall running out from the rim behind it.
From there, we followed a trail up the little rim. There we followed a burro trail along the edge of the hills. We could see a long strip of RVs in the LTVA from there.
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| trailers in the LTVA |
We could see a faint ATV trail ahead,
which we followed until it came to a deep wash coming out of the hills. We followed another burro trail into the hills along the wash.
Shortly, we saw a group of 4 burros up the hill on the other side of the wash. They watched us come toward them. When one started to bray, we turned back so we wouldn't disturb them any further.
On the way down, we went along a road beside the wash. This road took us into the Coyote Ridge area of the LTVA, back to the trailer. On the way, we saw a layer of quartz in the wash.
Someone had made a good-sized pile of quartz stones. In the same area, there were 2 stone piles with crosses on them.
Close to the RVs at the uphill end of Coyote Ridge,
we saw at least 4 golf flags in the wash.
As we got into the RV area, we saw 3 people, from Alberta, coming out of the wash with golf irons. They told us that they golf every morning at 9 o'clock (MST) and invited us to join them some day. When we told them we didn't bring our clubs with us, they said they had lots of spare ones.
When we got close to our trailer, another Alberta couple were parking their motorhome, so we chatted with them for a while.
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