Yuma

La Posa LTVA is in the desert. The nearest town, Quartzsite, is a small town. If you need to do major shopping you need to go the a city. The nearest, Yuma, Arizona, is about 90 miles south on Highway 95. So, once Lee and Mary Jane came to protect our class graduation site from potential intruders, we headed to Yuma.

More or less. First we visited a bit with Lee and Mary Jane, then Jeri & Terry showed up so we visited some more–long enough for me to sunburn my neck. I need to pay more attention to my time in the sun.

So it was after 1:00 p.m. by the time we pulled out of our campsite. Then we needed to wait at a desert road for an Allegro Bus to cross. I wished it was Steve & Carol in Bessy Bus but it wasn’t. Then we stopped at La Posa’s service center to dump and fill and get rid of trash.

By the time we got to Yuma I was HUNGRY since we didn’t eat lunch before we left. So we made In N Out Burger be our first stop. One of the ways this place lives up to its name is by limiting your choices. Do you want a hamburger, cheeseburger, or double? Onions? Fries? Soda pop or milk shake? What flavor? That’s it. If you want something else, go somewhere else. But, what they have is so good, people line up at all hours of the day to get some. At the drive through, they have someone outside taking orders to help move the line faster. They really do get you in and out quickly.

Then we tried several gas stations before we found one selling propane. For those of you headed this way, Barney’s at the Fortuna exit from I-8 sells propane.

Then we went to the Escapee’s Kofa Ko-op to camp and to check it out as a potential future place to stay. We were really looking forward to a couple of nights of full hookups to get everything fully charged without having to think all the time about what electricity we are using. Except their office closes at 3:30 on Sunday so all we could do there was boondock until they reopened on Monday. It looked like a nice park but I had my heart set on hookups so we moved on.

We went to the Cocopah Golf Resort instead. Much more expensive than Kofa but very nice. Except they have their roads labeled backwards so all the one ways go the wrong way for getting into and out of their sites. And their idea of close to the laundry didn’t match ours. But we could have all the electricity we wanted. So we plugged in my Segway to recharge it.

The next day we ran errands.  

We went to Arby’s for lunch and I ordered extra sandwiches to have leftovers. Dave says this is expensive grocery shopping but he sure eats those leftovers.  

Then we went to Plaza Coin Laundry where we did six loads of laundry in a couple of hours. They have no machines out of order there; instead they have machine labeled, “My day off.”  

Then we went to WalMart for groceries.

Then we went to Outback Steakhouse for our 42nd wedding anniversary dinner. Outback is not as good as Timberlodge but the steak itself was wonderful.  I missed my traditional wild rice soup, though.

Then we went looking for a place for me to get a haircut. We found a SharpCuts but it had closed for the day.

So we went back to Cocopah for the night.

I badly need a haircut. It’s hard to comb wet hair this length after my morning shower. It curls around my ears in weird ways then sticks out when it dries. Then I remembered we have shore power. I used my hair dryer! For the first time in the six months we’ve been traveling.  I only use it when my hair is too long to let it dry naturally and so far I’ve been getting it cut often enough to not need to dry it.

Then I went over to the park’s library to exchange books. There were two women in there. Each one was working her own jigsaw puzzle. They didn’t even look up. Apparently they are not friends.

Then we went back to the SuperCuts we found last night and I got a really good haircut. I like it when the stylists at the cheap places are good ones.

Then we went back to the coin laundry. We are missing a hand towel. They hadn’t found it, though.

Then we went to IHOP. Dave is a waffle freak and he likes theirs. Today they had a new offering: coffee cake pancakes. I tried the apple streusel and they were really good. This place only serves half the meat we are used to getting at IHOP, though.

Then we went to Target to buy a towel to replace the one we lost.  We don’t carry backups of things like that so losing something we use regularly means shopping for a new one.

Then we went to Best Buy so Dave could buy a new backup system for his computer. He’s been backing it up to his iPod but since he bought a new camera the iPod no longer has enough capacity for all his photos.

With all our big city shopping done, we headed back to Quartzsite. We’ll come back to Yuma sometime and do the tourist things here. We saw signs pointing to lots of the ones I have on my to-do list but we would need to stay more nights to do them all and we’d prefer to be camped someplace cheaper when we do that.

One the road we saw a silver pickup truck with a purple scorpion on the side. That menacing look was spoiled by the bumper sticker that said, “I heart my beagle.”

Around here they have worker buses. These are school buses that have been painted white. You can tell they are worker buses because they each pull a flatbed trailer with two port-a-pots on it. They take the workers to and from the fields.

I guess I’ve been south long enough for new behaviors to develop. When I saw bus #16, my mind said, “diez y seis”, which is Spanish for sixteen. I don’t understand most of the conversations going on around us but some of my high school Spanish is, apparently, coming back to me.

Robert says I don’t take enough pictures now and he’s right  So these are for Robert. The first is the “bridge to nowhere” and the second is the canons at the entrance to the Yuma Proving Grounds.

   

The turnoff to the Proving Grounds also says you can turn there and go 6 miles to the Imperial Dam Recreation Area. I wonder if that would be a better route than taking S24 was?

We passed a guy wearing just shorts and cap stopped by the side of the road. No one had yet stopped to check on him. Is this a case of “No shirt. No shoes. No service.”?

We saw a pickup truck pulling a double load. He had a trailer of off road toys behind his fifth wheel. I wonder if his truck is rated to pull, or more importantly stop, that heavy a load? And if he understands the implications of turning that complicated a setup? But, we got safely past him so now he’s only a potential danger to himself and others.

And now we are back at the La Posa LTVA where IYQ arrived while we are gone. So we all sat outside and talked until the sun went down and it got suddenly cold.  It’s nice to have warm shelters to go into when that happens.

TTYL,

Linda