Mittry Lake - Yuma - Christmas

Our celebration began with tamales and tequila on Christmas Eve. They tell us it's a tradition in Mexico. Here's Jerry and Santa Jim getting ready to toast the holiday.


We woke up on Christmas Day to wind roaring up to about 40 mph gusts. Not to be deterred from having our feast, we circled a few of the rigs for shelter and enjoyed our turkey, ham, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie in our outdoor setting.


It calmed somewhat and old Sol cooperated, so we all filled our bellies and shared stories for the afternoon.


From our parking location here at Mittry Lake we can look up the foothills and see a billboard-like structure that has various theories behind its purpose. And just because it's there, Jerry's been taking folks to the top to view the valley and mountains. You can see for miles at the summit and, besides, it's an adventure getting there. This first photo is a shot from our parking spot showing the "billboard" at the top (small black square).


Then I've posted views of Ole Yeller at the top and some of the beautiful panoramas.

In one photo there is a view of the trail through the hills to the top.




There's also a look at our group of RVers parked near the lake.


Thanks to our friend Barry who snapped these shots while taking his turn at the top.

Merry Christmas

We changed locations yesterday, just about 20 miles east, on the other side of Yuma. There are about a dozen or so rigs parked here at Mittry Lake next to the canal on a plateau with a very nice view. It's a pleasant spot for the holidays with some good people. Hope everyone reading this is enjoying a Merry Christmas.

Staying Put For A While

It's undecided how long we will be staying here at our spot on Sidewinder Road, near Yuma. The surroundings and the friends are great, so why not just enjoy it for a while. Elaine and Mary and Bob and Nancy have been such great companions for the past week. Here's a shot of the group at one of our fires on a night when we had the most spectacular color show in the skies-360 degrees of bright blues and flourescent oranges.
Each morning we all take off for a walk, some of us go 4 or 5 miles and the others maybe 2 or 3 miles. That gives us some excuses to enjoy the fabulous food we've all been sampling, for instance, Elaine and Mary's turkey and crustless pumpkin pie, Nancy's homemade cranberry bread and cornbread and Jerry's special vegetable "stoup".

The other day Jerry and I made a trip to the town of Algodones in Mexico, about 20 miles away. All of us snowbirds go there for the great buys on optical and dental services, medicine, liquor, and to see what kind of treasures we can find in this marketplace designed especially for us Americans. We were after a few of our medications and some fantastic, really smooth, tequila that we had tasted -- and for only $16 a liter. The limits are one liter each of liquor and 90 days of drugs. When we were in line with all the other daily American inhabitants of this little town to get back over the border we encountered a couple of Americans that were turned back by the border guards. They told us that they had four pair of sunglasses and only two pair were allowed so they were going back to return two pair. This was a real surprise to all of us in line. I guess they were planning to start a sunglass distributorship, huh?!

More Arizona Trails and Friends

We are parked at one of our favorite spots out in the desert – Sidewinder Road, just over the California border, close to Yuma. We’ve come across three couples of Escapee “Boomer” friends so we have company for happy hours and morning walks and whatever anybody decides they want to do. The other evening we had a desert rainstorm while we were all gathered in Mary and Elaine's rig to swap the latest rving tales and do a little wine tasting. We were surprised the deluge just kept on and kept on. But the longer we waited for it to stop the more clever and interesting became our stories. And we were able to give more thought to our opinions on the best bottle of Two Buck Chuck or Two Dollar Wally or Trader Joe's Valdegay. Well we finally decided we all needed to go home to our own rigs even if we got soaked. After all, it wasn't far to go. So wee headed out into the pitch black to try to find our rvs, splashing through the streams that had developed along our desert walkways. We got back to discover that the drivers side window was wide open. Oh well, Ferd's dash is nice and clean now.

But wait, what about last week's 4wheeling?!.....Our week at the Family Motor Coach Assn. 4wheelers rally in Yuma was a blast. There were five days of great trails and a plentiful Thanksgiving feast with 60 plus friendly people from various places in the U. S. and Canada. Living in motorhomes parked in the county fairgrounds didn't detract at all from the culinary delights that were prepared for our Thanksgiving feast. After sampling all the traditional and some new creations -- the many styles of sweet potatoes and lucious desserts, along with violating our diet rules with our friend Jane's wonderful cheesy potatoes-- we ventured out for two more days of wheelin. On Friday a group of us conquered the trail called HarRon Pass and Saturday we took on one called Tuff’s Trail, the one that may turn out to be our favorite of this rally.

There were several challenging "water falls" to climb and steep inclines to give you thrills. Here's a view going up and coming back down one of those. It appears you'll drop off as you reach the top.






The play areas were abundant on both of our last two trails and we had only one breakdown out of nine rigs on Friday and 16 rigs on Saturday.


These guys are really prepared for abusing your machine. They had the knowledge and the tools to make a temporary fix of the universal joint to get them off the trail.


There were lots of challenging rocks to climb, steep hills to maneuver, beautiful views and interesting folks to watch and discuss the day’s escapade with.


You see here a few of the photos from the week's trails. If you would like to see other shots from the rally, come back a little later to the link in the right column marked "4wheeling Nov 2007" The internet upload speed is slow right now so it will take a little while to get them up there. Enjoy!!