The Potholes

This is a view taken from an area called the Potholes.  It's on the California side of the Colorado River.  The Colorado River is the little bit of blue water in the distance.   Castle Dome is the mountain peak way in the distance.  The Potholes is an area of Bureau of Land Management land that is supposed to be good for finding gold.  You need a dry washer to find gold in the desert.  It works by blowing and vibrating the dirt down over some riffles (looks like an old fashioned wash board) and the gold because its heavy settles in the riffles.   We went to check out the area and we saw lots of evidence of digging and dry washing activity.

There are You Tube videos of guys digging dirt and running it through their various kinds of dry washers in this area.  One group of guys said that they ran 20 - five gallon buckets of dirt and found about a $100 worth of gold.  That's a lot of dirt moving but that's what it takes.

Fall Colors

There is a little fall color in the salt cedar trees -- the yellow/orange color in front of the mountain.   This is the only fall color you see in the desert.  Even our first winter in New Mexico -- the only fall colors we saw were the same kind of salt cedar trees.  The only other fall colors we saw this year was in Utah up at 8000 feet of elevation.  We have a lot of mesquite trees and ironwood trees like this one in the picture in the Yuma area.  They are always green or shed their leaves and never turn any colors. 

Many people in the park are decorating their yards, palm trees and RVs so its starting to look like Christmas.  It took a few years but now I can get in the Christmas spirit looking at decorated palm trees instead of snow covered houses with Christmas lights.   I especially like walking around in the evening looking at all the lights while still wearing shorts.  

Yuma is very nice in the winter but it does have a few downsides.  The water out of the tap is too salty to drink so we have to buy drinking water and water for coffee.  They have water stations all over town where you can fill gallon jugs with reverse osmosis filtered water.  The cost is cheap .50 cents for 5 gallons.  Our park like most parks in Yuma have a water station right in the park for convenience which is nice.   The traffic will continue to get worse through the peak time of January and February when everyone who can comes down.  The stores will also have a hard time keeping the shelves stocked as demand increases so much they just can't keep up.  Oh well - its worth it for the weather.

Winter in Yuma

Sorry I can't download/upload any pictures this week on this post.   We are settled in for the winter here in Yuma, Az.  The weather has been very nice.  Staying in the 70's with only the need to wear pants early in the morning.  It might rain a few drops this week but probably not although sometimes its nice to have the dust washed out of the air. 




The water in Yuma, like many places we travel, is very hard so we bought a small portable water softener.  You just add table salt to it and so far its been working great to soften the water.  Its supposed to save the plumbing in your rig by keeping the pipes from getting corroded and clogged with hard water deposits. 


We are expecting a big influx of winter snowbirds coming down this week.  Many people wait until after Thanksgiving to come south.  The traffic on the roads and in the stores has been steadily increasing and it gets a little scary around here with all the seniors driving that probably shouldn't be anymore. 

Cargo Muchacho Mountains

We went over to the California side of the Colorado River for a hike.  Yuma is right on the Arizona - California border with the Colorado River as the divide.  The mountain range closest to Yuma on the California is the Cargo Muchachos.  This mountain range had lots of gold, silver and kyanite mines in it.  There are still some active claims although much smaller than back in the days of large operations.  So there is plenty of federal land that is available for recreation.  We've heard of guys who go out here with their metal detectors and find lots of small pieces of gold.  We took our metal detector out there and did quite a bit of hiking around but didn't find anything worthwhile.

Its very nice to be able to go for a hike and its in the 70's.  When we got here in October it was in the high 90's and now its staying in the 70's.  I wish we would have had a longer stretch of 80 degrees but its still better than what most of the country is experiencing.  We've had two windy days so far which is a far cry from last winter in Texas where it was windy everyday. 

Our Winter Home

I can't seem to load pictures this time.  Not sure what the problem is.  We came to Yuma to work at a brand new park called Carefree Village.  They had us park for free at Las Quintas Oasis Rv Resort  another park that has the same owners.  While we were sitting here waiting to move over the managers here at Las Quintas were desperate for help so they asked us if we would be willing to stay and work here instead of moving to the new park.  We agreed because it didn't really matter to us which park we would be working. 


The new park is away from the freeway (less noise) and being brand new the maintenance wouldn't be fixing water leaks, taking care of weeds, etc.  The park we are working in is older but very nice  but there are water leaks and weeds to pull (all with thorns, stickers, pricklies) so Jim is very busy.  I'm working in the office which isn't very busy yet.   It is also next to the freeway like most of the parks in Yuma.  We do like it here and there's plenty of activities if you want to join in the fun.  The new park is going to have some growing pains so at least we will miss that and who knows maybe next year we will work there. 

North Star Mining Area

We joined the local rock club here in Yuma and went out in the KOFA wilderness on an outing with them.  This was the same area that Jim used to go out to when we volunteered at the wildlife refuge.   So most of what we saw Jim had already seen.  The top picture is of an arrastra.  This is where the rocks from the mine were ground by the two large stones you see inside the circle.   Mules were used to pull the stones around the circle so the rock could be crushed to help get the gold out.   

The second picture is of the Polaris mine.  It was called the Polaris mine because the point of rock at the top of the hill pointed to the North Star.   You can see the tailing pile from the mine in the middle of the picture where the pile of lighter colored rock sits.  The white building on the left is where the caretaker for the mine used to live.  Jim was out there with the maintenance supervisor from the refuge two years ago and they were looking at what it would take to redo the building to preserve it.  When we saw it this time it looked like nothing had been done to it yet.  I went into one mine shaft -- just stepped inside -- after many other people checked it out and it was full of core samples from the mine.  They would drill out pieces of rock and test them for gold content.  We assumed since there wasn't mining still going on that the test samples proved to be too poor. 

Enjoying Yuma

You can't beat the weather in Yuma.  Its been in the 90's but if you are in the shade its very nice and there hasn't been any wind.  Last year in Texas it was humid -- making it hotter- and always windy.  We spent some time with friends that we had met working at the refuge two winters ago.  We went for a ride with them out on some Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land in California just on the other side of the Colorado River.  We walked through a dry wash (gully) and we dug some dirt that we took back to process and look for gold.  The washes had lots of water running through them during the monsoon season this past August/September.  So its fun to walk them afterwards and see what's washed out of the mountains.

We found four specks of gold two of which you didn't need a magnifier to see out of three gallons worth of dirt.   Ooooooh.   In the picture Jim is checking the gold pan for a speck of gold while our friend watches him.  Our friends are renting an RV lot in Yuma for a lot less a month than it costs to stay in one of the RV parks.  Of course you don't have all of the park amenities like a pool and activities but there are lots of activities at the senior center in town to take advantage of if you want.  
Their lot had a beautiful flowering bush and a grapefruit tree.