A Unique Place - Quartzsite, AZ

Good times -- good people

This week in the Congress, AZ, area has proven again that wherever we travel in this lifestyle there are good people that result in good times. A few days ago we decided to change our location about 120 miles northeast to the Escapees Park in Congress, AZ. We expected to park in the campground and, hopefully, see some friends for a few days. Well that just wouldn't do for Jerry and Dee Thomas who offered us space on their lot and have been the most generous of hosts for several days now. We've had gatherings in their "party house", played some nostalgic music, shared travel stories, laughed a lot, made a day trip to Prescott and cheered their Ohio State team on. (Sorry about that Buckeyes.) There just isn't enough we can say about their hospitality.

Today was another example of nice folks providing good times. We were invited by Jack and Danielle Mayer and Jerry and Sherry Adcock to make a 4wheeling run near Black Canyon City, about 50 miles east. The six of us were anxious to try out this trail that Jerry and Sherry would be leading at a rally in a couple of weeks. After all, it was a 4 rating on the 5 scale and we know these 4wheelers love a good trail. As we met about 9:00 a.m. to start our day's experience, something kind of ironic and laughable happened. All three of us gals had on the same t-shirt, a Jeeping Moab shirt that we had each chosen separately during visits to one or our favorite places. What are the odds?? Just good taste, I guess.

The ride over on the highways to Black Canyon through the Tonto National Forest was definitely outstanding on it's own, but we were all ready to get started on the trail. Well, to our great surprise, when we arrived at the entrance to the trail there was a gate across it. What's this about?! Perhaps there's a good reason, but some access to these areas is being denied by government agencies without any misuse or other problems. 4wheelers are fighting to keep the trails open everywhere. We tried taking the trail backwards but found no entrance there either. While searching around we enjoyed lots of nice scenery, thick forests of saguaro cacti, layers of mountains and rolling dessert landscapes. It was a great day.

Here are we girls, Nancy, Danielle and Sherry, at the dissappointing entrance to the trail -- showing off our basic good taste in shirts. Too bad the gate was securely shut.

Oh well, why not explore a little anyway while in this gorgeous location. I've posted a shot of the yellow cliffs near Bartlett Lake where we paused to take in the views. We did find one rocky place while exploring and Jack and Danielle's new Rubicon was actually balanced about four feet in the air on three wheels just right before this photo was taken. I hated to miss that shot. Thanks for the fun you guys!!!

Happy New Year

May you all have a very happy and healthy 2008!
We had a great celebration on New Year's Eve with the Boomers at Mittry Lake. These generous and friendly rvers opened up their homes and hearts for an evening of visiting and then we all joined together at the campfire at midnight to ring in 2008.
It's been nice spending the last part of 2007 in our spot next to the canal at Mittry Lake. For anyone who isn't familiar with the Mittry Lake Wildlife Area, it is about 18 miles northeast of Yuma, Arizona, on the east side of the Colorado River between Laguna and Imperial Dams. There are nice views of the lake and mountains. On any day you might see many types of waterfowl, such as Coots, blue heron, egrets. And for a couple of days we watched from our rig as three pelicans dipped their long beeks for food in the shallow water that had been drained from the canal. They tell us the fishing is plentiful as well. If you'd like to look at some info on this location go to:
http://www.azgfd.gov/outdoor_recreation/wildlife_area_mittry_lake.shtml

Mittry Lake - Yuma - Christmas

Our celebration began with tamales and tequila on Christmas Eve. They tell us it's a tradition in Mexico. Here's Jerry and Santa Jim getting ready to toast the holiday.


We woke up on Christmas Day to wind roaring up to about 40 mph gusts. Not to be deterred from having our feast, we circled a few of the rigs for shelter and enjoyed our turkey, ham, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie in our outdoor setting.


It calmed somewhat and old Sol cooperated, so we all filled our bellies and shared stories for the afternoon.


From our parking location here at Mittry Lake we can look up the foothills and see a billboard-like structure that has various theories behind its purpose. And just because it's there, Jerry's been taking folks to the top to view the valley and mountains. You can see for miles at the summit and, besides, it's an adventure getting there. This first photo is a shot from our parking spot showing the "billboard" at the top (small black square).


Then I've posted views of Ole Yeller at the top and some of the beautiful panoramas.

In one photo there is a view of the trail through the hills to the top.




There's also a look at our group of RVers parked near the lake.


Thanks to our friend Barry who snapped these shots while taking his turn at the top.

Merry Christmas

We changed locations yesterday, just about 20 miles east, on the other side of Yuma. There are about a dozen or so rigs parked here at Mittry Lake next to the canal on a plateau with a very nice view. It's a pleasant spot for the holidays with some good people. Hope everyone reading this is enjoying a Merry Christmas.

Staying Put For A While

It's undecided how long we will be staying here at our spot on Sidewinder Road, near Yuma. The surroundings and the friends are great, so why not just enjoy it for a while. Elaine and Mary and Bob and Nancy have been such great companions for the past week. Here's a shot of the group at one of our fires on a night when we had the most spectacular color show in the skies-360 degrees of bright blues and flourescent oranges.
Each morning we all take off for a walk, some of us go 4 or 5 miles and the others maybe 2 or 3 miles. That gives us some excuses to enjoy the fabulous food we've all been sampling, for instance, Elaine and Mary's turkey and crustless pumpkin pie, Nancy's homemade cranberry bread and cornbread and Jerry's special vegetable "stoup".

The other day Jerry and I made a trip to the town of Algodones in Mexico, about 20 miles away. All of us snowbirds go there for the great buys on optical and dental services, medicine, liquor, and to see what kind of treasures we can find in this marketplace designed especially for us Americans. We were after a few of our medications and some fantastic, really smooth, tequila that we had tasted -- and for only $16 a liter. The limits are one liter each of liquor and 90 days of drugs. When we were in line with all the other daily American inhabitants of this little town to get back over the border we encountered a couple of Americans that were turned back by the border guards. They told us that they had four pair of sunglasses and only two pair were allowed so they were going back to return two pair. This was a real surprise to all of us in line. I guess they were planning to start a sunglass distributorship, huh?!

More Arizona Trails and Friends

We are parked at one of our favorite spots out in the desert – Sidewinder Road, just over the California border, close to Yuma. We’ve come across three couples of Escapee “Boomer” friends so we have company for happy hours and morning walks and whatever anybody decides they want to do. The other evening we had a desert rainstorm while we were all gathered in Mary and Elaine's rig to swap the latest rving tales and do a little wine tasting. We were surprised the deluge just kept on and kept on. But the longer we waited for it to stop the more clever and interesting became our stories. And we were able to give more thought to our opinions on the best bottle of Two Buck Chuck or Two Dollar Wally or Trader Joe's Valdegay. Well we finally decided we all needed to go home to our own rigs even if we got soaked. After all, it wasn't far to go. So wee headed out into the pitch black to try to find our rvs, splashing through the streams that had developed along our desert walkways. We got back to discover that the drivers side window was wide open. Oh well, Ferd's dash is nice and clean now.

But wait, what about last week's 4wheeling?!.....Our week at the Family Motor Coach Assn. 4wheelers rally in Yuma was a blast. There were five days of great trails and a plentiful Thanksgiving feast with 60 plus friendly people from various places in the U. S. and Canada. Living in motorhomes parked in the county fairgrounds didn't detract at all from the culinary delights that were prepared for our Thanksgiving feast. After sampling all the traditional and some new creations -- the many styles of sweet potatoes and lucious desserts, along with violating our diet rules with our friend Jane's wonderful cheesy potatoes-- we ventured out for two more days of wheelin. On Friday a group of us conquered the trail called HarRon Pass and Saturday we took on one called Tuff’s Trail, the one that may turn out to be our favorite of this rally.

There were several challenging "water falls" to climb and steep inclines to give you thrills. Here's a view going up and coming back down one of those. It appears you'll drop off as you reach the top.






The play areas were abundant on both of our last two trails and we had only one breakdown out of nine rigs on Friday and 16 rigs on Saturday.


These guys are really prepared for abusing your machine. They had the knowledge and the tools to make a temporary fix of the universal joint to get them off the trail.


There were lots of challenging rocks to climb, steep hills to maneuver, beautiful views and interesting folks to watch and discuss the day’s escapade with.


You see here a few of the photos from the week's trails. If you would like to see other shots from the rally, come back a little later to the link in the right column marked "4wheeling Nov 2007" The internet upload speed is slow right now so it will take a little while to get them up there. Enjoy!!

4Wheeling in Yuma

On Tuesday we joined 60 other rvers at the Yuma County Fairgrounds for a 4wheeling rally. We had just survived some transmission repairs without as much monetary damage as we were afraid we might have so it was especially nice to be joining the 4wheeling group for a few days of fun.It was really good to get back to climbing rocks and enjoying the southwest scenery. This is sure a nice way to take in the mountains and valleys.

Today's trail had many challengng spots and everyone enjoyed inching, tipping, squeeking through and climbing them all. The trail we were on today is called HarRon Pass, named after the two guys in this club that actually laid out the path up these big rocks and over the pass. It is rated a 4.0 out of 5.0. There were several places that took some real maneuvering. In fact we got our first trail injury in terms of a few scratches on the right rear corner of the Jeep. One of those nasty rocks actually jumped up and got us! But we survived for another day of wheelin.

Here are a few of the scenes from today's escapade.

Tracks Around Tucson

Last stop -- Three sunny days in Tucson area at the Casino Del Sol -- We enjoyed our spot in the casino's ampitheater parking area, shared with three or four other rvers. It was a nice place to hang out a little while to see some sites. One of our stops was the mission in the desert -- San Xavier Mission-- an awesome place to see. Built in the late 1700s by Franciscan priests out in the middle of the desert, it is still a functioning church and school for the Indians living on the reservation. As we walked through the courtyard we noticed the animals were very comfortable visiting with St. Francis of Assisi (patron saint of animals). In the first photo above you see a snoozing mutt all comfy with him and here is a friendly roadrunner -- Both at home and at ease with us.


The ornate stonework and artwork inside the church is very unusual and striking. A major, eight-year restoration just brought many of these works back to life.

On another day we took off to find the Desert Museum, just a few miles outside Tucson. This huge privately funded facility is home to many animals, all housed in their own specific habitat. It was larger than we imagined and we 'll have to come back to see more another time. Some of our favorite parts were the Life Underground exhibit where you walked through a tunnel with views under the earth of the animals in their homes, the raptor presentation of a family of Harris hawks and the mountain life exhibit with the black bears and mountain lion. The Pima mountain lion lives in the higher elevations of the southwest. This sneeky creature was difficult to spot at first but then I spied him peeking at me from his little home.

Can you find him in the photo above???

Then some of us came around the bend to find him staring at us through his picture window.

Isn't he beautiful?!!

Another Great Find

As we were meandering across west Texas, traveling the state highways through the communities as we like to do, we chose to stop in the little town of Andrews. What a hospitable place. Behind the Chamber of Commerce there are six parking places for RVs, complete with electric, water and sewer, all of them level and FREE. We noticed as we drove in some kind of display of flags and memorials. Of course curiousity pulled us to see what there was to see. We've happened across many veterans memorials in other small towns and admired them all. But this one was absolutely outstanding. The entire exhibit is done with so much class and reverance. It's a salute to courage and a thought-provoking history lesson. There is a marker for each conflict beginning with the Revolutionary War to Operation Enduring Freedom. Each has a quote from the President during that era and a collage photo depiction. On the back of the stone marker is a short historical outline of that war. In the circle around the flagpoles are memorials to all the veterans of the county. Here are a few photos. Thank you to any veteran who may be reading this message for defending this country. And also to all those who came before who we appreciate on November 11 and every day we live in a free country.