Fields & flowers

It is very pretty around here with flowers blooming. The fields around Wellton and Yuma are always green with some sort of lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, alfalfa and even wheat growing. All this green is thanks to the irrigation canals flowing with water diverted from the Colorado River.

I took a picture of the ditch that was filled with beautiful yellow and orange flowers blooming. They have been blooming for over two months. I also took a picture of the yellow flowers on this Brittlebush.

We are leaving this week and will travel about 250 miles a day -- slowly working our way to Washington. We will miss the weather here in Yuma. We will also miss the very nice internet connection we have at this park. We will be be back to using WiFi systems at the parks we stay at along the way. I'm not sure what kind of internet access we will have in Washington. The park we will be at doesn't have WiFi. I will keep up our blog but may have to start using a library for internet so I would be updating the blog during the week instead of Sundays.

Pioneer Rv Park

Our stay at Pioneer RV Park is coming to an end. It's a very nice park with an outdoor swimming pool and hottub that I have been able to enjoy most of the winter. There have been lots of activities -- food, music, card games, crafts, etc. etc. Most people that come here come back every winter and we can see why. The weather is great, the people friendly and its nice to be in a small town with a big town close by for shopping.

I took pictures around the park to kind of show the mountains around us. It is a fairly big park with over 350 spaces but there are parks in Yuma that are three times bigger --no thanks. Our rig is up against the back wall and on the other side of the wall is the freeway - kind of noisy. The picture from the main gate with the pretty green alfalfa field shows a train at the back of the field. Train noise -- kind of noisy. Even with all the noise and occasional "cow" smell from the feedlot a few miles away it's still been a nice place to stay.

We will be leaving here around March 23rd. We are heading to Coulee City, Washington for the summer. We promised to be at the town campground by April 1st. We will be camphosting there with one other couple from April through part of October. We can't wait to get out walleye fishing again. We will be fishing Banks Lake -- formed by the Grand Coulee Dam -- part of the Columbia River system. It should be good!

Bakers Tank & Picnics

Our hiking club had a picnic to celebrate our last hike. We went out to Baker's Tank. Tanks out here in the desert are just places where water can collect from rain, runoff and maybe small springs -- usually in washes that have a deep spot in them. Baker's Tank area is on the military range and has a picinic shelter where you can have a fire if you want. We all brought food, tables, chairs and sat out in the desert and had a good time.

Our rock club had a picnic as our last hurrah -- two days after our hiking club picnic. It was out in the desert on the California side. Again everyone brought food, tables, chairs, etc and ate and had a good time. This time we didn't have a picinic shelter -- just set up down in a wash out of the wind and proceeded to grill burgers and eat. Jim went out looking for rocks towards the base of some mountains while we were out there. He came across a white lizard about a foot long and his first encounter with a rattle snake. We have now have heard of several other encounters with snakes so we are glad to be done hiking and rockhounding in the desert.

We also saw this weird circle of rock and pile of white quartz out in the middle of nowhere -- no signs to explain what it was.

It's been very warm here the last several days -- in the 80's and we've had to breakdown and turn the air conditioning on - -- as I write this it's dark out -- 7:30 at night and still 75 degrees outside WOW. I don't think we have had it as warm and sunny during the past few summers as we've enjoyed this past winter in Yuma.

History in Granite

We went to this outdoor museum called History in Granite. It is a few miles into Calfornia from Yuma -- out in the middle of nowhere. It is an amazing place with rows of granite walls. Each wall has a different part of world history on it. The history starts at the beginning of time and eventually will go through all of the ages of man. History of different countries is in the original language with english on the bottom.

The detail etched in the granite is incredible. There is also a chapel you can see on the hill and a small pyramid (not shown). If you pay the extra $3 you can go in the pyramid and then get a certificate saying you have been to the center of the world. I also took a picture of the "Arm of God" that is used as a sundial and points at the time. They don't have many of the walls done yet but it will be impressive when its all done. There are better pictures of the place on line -- just type in history in granite

Spook Canyon

Our hike this past week took us to Spook Canyon. It is in the Gila Mountains and in order to get there you have to travel inside the Barry Goldwater military range -- by permit only-- which is nice becasue there are never many people out there.

The canyon gets it's name from the spooky lights you can see there on a moonless night. They think that the rocks give off something that causes the "lights". It's like seeing the aurora in the northern night sky.

It was a beautiful canyon with steep walls and you could see where big boulders have come down. There were also saguaro cactus growing right out of the rock in the steep walls.

We were thinking that the name of spook canyon is because the canyon is narrow and if there were an earthquake it would be dangerous (spooky) to be there. Of course on Sunday we did get to feel our first earthquake. -- just a slight sway to the trailer -- like a big gust of wind hit it.

American Girl Mine & Picacho Area

We were over on the California side of the Colorado for our latest adventures. We went jeeping with a friend from our park. We first went to an area where he had found a gold nugget stuck to some quartz. No such luck for us. We then went to see the American Girl mine area. They mined cyanite here which is tiny clear crystals that are needed in the processing of iron ore.

We hiked over in this same area in the Picacho Recreation area. We hiked up No Name Wash and saw these huge birds nests. They have to be for some kind of large hawk or something else equally large. We also took a detour after our hike and went to "Graffitti Hills" Out in the middle of the desert there are hundreds of names spelled out in rock. People have raked the area clean and then spelled out their names, etc with the raked up rocks. We drove at least a mile and there were names covering the desert on both sides of the road. It is amazing -- someone said they had seen one that was there since the 50's. I don't know when it really started.

Betty Lee Mine - and summer plans!

We went out on the Barry Goldwater range and got to see the Betty Lee mine and some smaller ones around it. Jim is coming out of one -- he just went in the entrance. It's dangerous and illegal to go in any abandoned mines. It is amazing to see the work they had to go through to mine out here in the middle of the desert.

The mine with the train track coming out had a huge vein of beautiful rock at the top of the entrance -- you can see some of the color. It took us over an hour just to get out to these mines by jeep. I can't imagine how hard it was to get equipment and everything you needed to live out here with no real roads just dry washes to try and navigate.

We also went on an hour and a half jeep ride out to an area on the California side of the Colorado river where we collected rock -- pastelite. It's pretty multicolored rock with quartz and jasper in it. This hill with the person on top was one giant peice of this stuff. It was great fun and everyone got bags and bucketfuls of the rock.

Our big news for the week is that we have accepted a job up in Washington for the summer. We will be working at the campground owned by the town of Coulee City, Washington. It is 30 miles south of the Grand Coulee Dam. We are very excited because the walleye fishing is excellent there. We start on April 7th -- we are leaving here by the first of April and making a beeline up there.