Our Winter Home

We have a very nice space to be parked in for the winter. We have a nice Palo Verde tree in front of our patio. You can kind of see the mountains in the background. Jim was charging up the batteries in the boat otherwise the boat is parked behind another building not next to our rig. We had a beautiful warm day to celebrate Christmas. It was almost 70 degrees (most of the day) and bright sun so we and the rest of our workamper group had a big dinner outside.

We know a lot of people down here because of staying in the area last winter so we had lots of invites for Christmas dinner. We decided we would just eat at home with our own little group which was very nice. Working the visitor center over the holidays we see a lot of folks stopping in that are just passing through the Yuma area. We are used to most people staying for the winter. We forget that there are a lot of people still working and they can only take short

vacations.

We've been watching the weather in New Mexico and Texas where we spent our first two winters. Its so much colder there than Yuma. Those other places have their good points and we miss all the friends we've made but we prefer being warmer!

Wildlife

The mule deer came very close to our rig. It was in early November and all of us workampers hadn't been there very long. They seemed quite shocked to see us obviously they had been using a path by our rigs to get down to the water all summer without being disturbed. We have not seen them come by this way since this picture.

We visited friends at an Rv park south of us that is also on the Colorado River. The park has a large marina with lots of docking and a large boat launch. It has the usual pool, hot tub, exercise room and activity building but it also has its own golf course. This is the green grass in the bird picture. The only green grass in Yuma is in golf courses or you'll find it in the fields being raised as a crop.

We aren't sure what kind of bird this is. I think its an orange variant of a western tanager or its a vermillion flycatcher. Either way a very pretty bird. We also have 6 different varieties of hummingbirds that hang out around the refuge for the winter. I doubt if I will get any good pictures of them but I might give it a try.

Water views

There are some nice water views from overlooks in the refuge. You can see the backwaters of the Colorado River with the Chocolate Mountains in the background. The backwaters are usually filled with coot (mud hens). The coot are mostly the kind of duck that hang out here -- not good to eat so there isn't much duck hunting in the area. Cibola refuge just to the north of Imperial up by Blythe, Ca is where the waterfowl hang out that come south.

Martinez lake is a backwater of the Colorado. I took a picture of the lake homes along the lake. No matter where you live in the country people love having a lake home. Many of the people that have lake homes here live in San Diego. It is only a 4 hour drive to the "lake". The water temp has dropped down into the the 50's because of the cool nights but it is December. At least here it will not freeze over -- not even form ice around the edges!

Colorado River Jet Boat Tour

All of us volunteers and a few of the employees for the Imperial, Kofa and Cibola Refuges got to go on a jet boat tour up the river through the refuge boundaries. The jet boat held 30 people comfortably. The picture doesn't do it justice -- makes it look small. The driver stands in the back and steers and narates all along the way. The boat only needs about 4 inches of water so it has no problem on the river -- getting around sandbars and it can get in very tight places for its size.

We stopped along the way at an old miners cabin. We also stopped and saw petroglyghs and the site where an old town called Norton's Landing was located along the river. This is where paddlewheelers used to stop. Our last stop and as far north as we went was Draper's cabin (see picture). This cabin was on an old ranch site.

The river was beautiful -- it is still odd to see palm trees growing by a river but thats the southwest. The Yuma jet boat tours are really a neat thing to do if your ever in the area but be prepared- its on the spendy side. They say that the tourists subsidize all the school children class groups they take up the river.