Our Park, and the Yuma area

December 2 (Saturday)

We are settling in at Blue Sky RV Park. We are here for two months so we may as well get the trailer organized the way we want it.

Not a lot of shade......but its a 'dry heat'! Even though the temperature is 80 F /30 C, it really doesn't feel that hot. I don't like high humidity and this desert air certainly doesn't have much if that. Humidity levels are less than 20%. The biggest downside to our site is the proximity to Interstate 8. The constant drone of traffic day and night will take some getting used to. Hopefully we won't need the windows open at night and we will be away most days, so it is what it is.

The Yuma Marine Base close by, and there are helicopters and fight jets overhead. Some really low like this guy.

There is such a variety of birds, flowers, cactus and trees here that it will take me a while to figure out what each is. Nothing like them in Red Deer! :-)

Beside our site. I'm sure it is a Yellow Oleander.

A few yellow flowers are left

Some of the fruit is dark.....

.....and others are green.

Lots of these lovely bushes and full of blooms.

Our street

Here are a few pictures of our site. We were pretty spoiled from our experiences further north in Arizona, but certainly warmer and drier here. Oh the sacrifices we make!

....and of course another marvelous sunset over Yuma........Our View From Here......

Turned around and there was the full moon rising over the Gila Mountains.

December 3 (Sunday)

We took a drive into downtown Yuma to try to get our bearings. First impressions were not great. It is a busy city even on a Sunday. Of course with so many snowbirds and nobody knows where they are going (including us) you really need to be watching traffic!

The Old Downtown was decorated nicely.

We found the Visitor Center. They were very helpful and we now have an armload of brochures and books to sift through to help plan our days. 

We drove across the border to California and up to Imperial Dam area. We saw fields of cabbage, lettuce and other crops under irrigation. We have learned that the Yuma area supplies most of the lettuce, in the winter months, for the US and Canada. We were pretty tempted to stop on the road and pick us up a salad for supper!

Crossing the Colorado River into California.

Acres of cabbage.

Acres and acres of lettuce in various sizes and colors.

Rows of new lettuce.

Freshly planted and irrigated with a fine shower.

The other important crop here is dates. Another first for us was seeing the date palms. Acres of them. We stopped to buy some of the Madjool dates. They are so sweet and tasty. We'll definitely be having these for breakfast.....and maybe lunch and supper too!

Nice cactus outside the date store.....

Prickly Pear cactus

We took the road north toward Imperial Dam. We'll come back to this area to explore some more. The highway crosses the Colorado and back into Arizona. From a distance we saw this and I thought, wow, they take their traffic enforcement seriously here!

Speeders beware!

As we got closer it started to click that we were close to the Army Yuma Proving Grounds. We'll be back this way for a closer look at the displays.

We headed back to our site to cook ribs. Only .97/pound at Fry's Food Store just down the road from us. They needed a bit of trimming but at that price even if only half was usable it was still a good deal. They turned out great. The Weber Q was packed full. The whole slab was only $6.50. Lots left for lunch tomorrow. Ribs and Madjool dates. What a feast! All washed down with a couple of beers. $18.99 for 30 cans. That would be over $40 at home.

While the ribs cooked.......this was Our View From Here.....