The house next door

 We have been watching them build a house next door to us.  It is amazing how quickly they can get walls built and raised.  The guys walk across the top of narrow boards like they are walking across flat ground instead of up in the air.   There are usually only two or three guys on a crew getting whatever the next part of the job is done.  Each crew seems to have their own specialty.  We have been impressed at how well the owner/contractor has coordinated the work being done.  It is his first building project in Yuma.  He has built homes in California around San Diego before this project.  

He told us he probably wouldn't build another house in Yuma.  It has been difficult for him to get workers and the ones he has gotten have had to redo a lot of their work because it wasn't done correctly the first time.    I didn't mean to take a video of the house covered in sheeting with the shingle bundles on the roof waiting to be installed.  It's supposed to be just a picture so you can't click on it.  

We have been busy buying a house in Tucson so I have fallen behind on doing the blog.  I should have pics of the house to show soon.  I'm looking forward to showing more new things of interest around Tucson.  We have been coming to Yuma for so long that there isn't much new to put on this blog.  

More Pima Air Museum

 There are so many airplanes at this museum it's hard to pick out a few to show.  I thought the top picture of the WW11 plane was cool.  The bottom one was President Kennedy and Johnson's plane.  What is now known as Air Force One.  I thought the paint scheme was pretty.  It sure looks small compared to what the presidents fly in nowadays.

We went out to our gold prospecting site and yes the dirt is still too wet to run through our dry washer.  We brought a small bucket home and panned it out and didn't find a speck so we aren't in a hurry to get back out there.  We do need to go and look for a new spot but we need more incentive.  We will probably just go on a 4wheeling trip with the neighbors for something to do.  That way I will have some new pictures to share.

Pima Air Museum

 Our truck was in the shop so we took advantage of having a rental car and went to Tucson.  We wanted to visit friends and check out some homes for sale.  We looked at a couple of nice 55 plus communities that were surrounded by nature either BLM land or state park land.  Tucson is a little cooler than Yuma but still quite hot in the summer.   Lots of new home construction going on around Tucson and someday I think Tucson and Phoenix will merge.  

While we were in the area we visited the Pima Air Museum.  We have been there before but its been many years now.  The museum is dedicated to military aircraft.  There are 7 or eight buildings full of planes and also a huge area outdoors with more planes.  They all look like they could take off and fly but regulations require them to be non flyable.  The corsair in the top picture was a popular fighter plane in WW11.  The super guppy was a weird looking giant transport plane.  President Kennedy and Johnson's plane was there an old version of air force one.  There is an sr-71 the supersonic spy plane.  There seemed to be every kind of plane ever used by the military but I'm sure there were some missing.   This is a great place to see aeronautical history and  especially get a sense of what flying in WW11 was like.  

Cotton and Mining

 

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Arizona is known for the four c's, copper, cactus, copper and cotton.  I was surprised about the cattle and cotton but when it gets too hot in the summer they raise cotton instead of lettuce in the southern part of the state.  Here in Yuma there is a cotton gin.  The area around these mounds of cotton looks like it snowed with the ground covered  in white.   They gin the cotton and bale it and probably ship it to China. like everything else these days.  

The top picture is the entrance to a mine up by Quartzsite.  We aren't sure what kind of mine it was either copper, gold or silver.  There were warning sings not to enter the area.  There were all kinds of hazards listed but the scary one was hazardous gasses.  You don't want to get close to that because you would be dead before you realize there is a problem with the air.  

Quartzsite Sights

 We are in Quartzsite and we were digging for gold until the rain came.  It poured and even hailed but the hail was clear not the usual white stuff that looks like snow.   So the dirt is too wet to run through our drywasher.  We have been doing some metal detecting but no luck there unless lead is worth something.  

We have been doing some trail riding for something to do.  I thought the turtle in the picture was a big rock in the road and drove over it.  Luckily I didn't hurt it.  We decided to move it off the road so the next person didn't hit it.  Its tricky moving desert tortoises because they have a water bladder that they store water in and that's how they survive in the desert.  If they are threatened they will dump their water which they might not be able to replace fast enough so they could die.  I moved the turtle off the road holding it very close to the ground.  The turtle made it without losing its water.  We're not sure where it wanted to go but hopefully its on its way.  

We also stopped to look at this medicine wheel that a group had made out in the middle of the desert.  It's just rocks piled into the shape of a spoked wheel.  It was well done and had some pretty quartz rock in the middle.

 

Grand Canyon Railroad

When we were in Williams we stayed at the Grand Canyon Railway RV Park.  It's part of a big complex including a hotel and restaurant as well as the RV park.  The park is very nice with paved streets and long pull through, level, paved sites.  We were tired of our gravel, muddy clay site that we had for the summer.   If you stay here you get a discount to ride the train to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.  It is a very popular ride and seems to have lots of riders everyday not just weekends.  Some people had luggage being stowed on the train we figure they take the train and spend the night at a hotel at the Grand Canyon and then come back the next day.  You leave Williams around 9-9:30 and come back around 6pm so its a long day.  Everyone packs a backpack and we also saw coolers being loaded so they must have a picnic while there. 

Its fun to see the train unload and all the families with small children having to carry them back to the RV park.  The kids get pretty worn out from the long day .  Although the adults look pretty worn out as well.  We haven't taken the train but if we were asked to go with friends we probably would give it a try.  The pictures are of the old steam engine train.  They run a regular diesel locomotive and passenger cars nowadays but on holidays they do still have the steam engine going. 
 

Petrified Wood in Holbrook, Arizona

Wow it is nice to have good internet.  It was hit or miss at the campground this summer and even my phone hotspot didn't work well.  This made it hard to do the blog so I am very behind.   We left Clay Springs and spent our first night in Holbrook just ninety miles or so from our summer campground.  We like to make a short trip the first day.  We never know if we are going to have trouble getting the rig ready to tow after sitting all summer.  The campground has a lot of clay and our rig sunk a bit when the monsoons came.  So we weren't sure how much work it was going to be to get the truck hooked up to it.  Luckily we didn't have any trouble so we ended up getting to Holbrook before 10 in the morning.  They didn't mind the early check in and it was nice to relax the rest of the day after the challenge of getting on the road again.  

Holbrook is the closest town to the Petrified Forest National Park.  They have several petrified trees at the campground that are very beautiful.  It amazes me how much it looks like someone sawed them into pieces but they broke naturally that way.    We left the next day and went to Williams which is the closest town to the Grand Canyon.  The battery light came on denoting a problem with the charging system in the truck.  There was a mobile repair guy that came and put in a new alternator and at least the batteries are charging but there is still a problem because the battery light won't go out.  We called our diesel guy in Yuma and he said the truck was driveable and to bring it to him when we get back to Yuma.  We are looking forward to being able to sell the truck for something newer when there are more trucks on the market.  We are now in Kingman and will be in Quartzsite by the end of the month.