Leaving Yuma

It dawned nice and sunny this morning in the Sun Vista RV Park...  But then if you name your park Sun Vista (View) it had better be sunny right?

But in Yuma, I would bet there are very few cloudy days...  We had a lot of work to do, so there was no sitting around and watching the sun shine...

After some quick corn chex, I took Biscuit to the dog park...  This park makes no sense... The dog park is in the Very Back End of the park.. And yet the dog friendly sites are up in the front of the park...  And its about a mile or more between them...

And there are signs reminding you that you can't walk your pet on the streets that lead to the dog park..  So the only way to get there is to take the car...  Someone is a rocket scientist for sure..

And the park is quite empty...  For Sale signs litter the landscape on every other park model...  And a lady at the dog park told me that she had recently sold two park models and had taken a proverbial bath on their prices...  Most folks that I saw were in their mid 70s in age...  and older...

Are the young folks not RVing like they did...?  Perhaps it is the gas prices...  Diesel in California was almost $5..

It was after noon when we finally got everything cleaned up and loaded for quick disembarking at home...  Loyce puts a bunch of it in her car since that will be in the garage and much easier to move into the house...

I was washing out the tanks....  We don't use them on the last day so they will remain clean for storage...  Reminds us of traveling in the car.  How easily we get used to the convenience of the motorhome...

We had almost 4 hours of this, windshield time, but at least the desert is becoming very green.... And spring is just beginning...

We stopped for a quick burger in Maricopa at the McDonalds...  and I was immediately reminded how much better Wendy's meat is than Micky D's...  Must be fillers that taste so bland...

So as the sun was setting tonight, we had the food and personal belongings back in the house and the coach over in the storage lot...

I never want to come off of the road... but reality seems to come back and haunt me...  Loyce on the other hand is much more comfortable in the sticks and bricks...  So we have to strike a balance...

Retired Rod

Boats in the Harbor while Biscuit looks on from the car window..  Sunny and 80 in San Diego

Algodones for this year.....

So why would we want to stop in Yuma??  There is nothing here that isn't in Mesa.....  Well other than one thing..........   Algodones, Mexico...

Seems like every year we end up going over the boarder to get our fix...  A few junk trinkets and more prescriptions...  Oh, and some more vanilla..  for our DIL Melissa...  She uses it somewhat rapidly...

And we like hanging around Yuma when it gets cool up in the Phoenix area...  as it is usually about 7 or 8 degrees warmer here....

So today we got ourselves cleaned up and organized to go over the boarder....  all except Biscuit who was relegated to staying home in the air conditioned motor home...

We had gone to the dog park and she had played with a new friend and his lady master that ran around with the dogs....  As usual I just watched in amazement....

But back to Mexico, we arrived in the parking lot on the Quechan Indian reservation side of the boarder about 11 AM...  Our thinking is that the folks that went really early to avoid the crowds are just coming back about then...

And that works fairly well as we got a spot in the second row of parking, which is really the first row because the first row is all handicap blue placard spots...

We walked straight over the line, as there is never any problem getting into Mexico...  It's more like where have you been?  We've missed you....

Enclosed sidewalks with vendors...

This lady was quite talented...  Look at those empty cans of paint, no wonder she has a respirator...

And of course we went right to my favorite Pharmacy, strangely named Lake Tahoe...  But they seem to know exactly what you want and have usually found most of it...  Its across the street from the big Purple store that most folks seem to go to...

And of course we were bombarded with the usual offers for dentists and eyeglasses...  Like carnival barkers, there is a guy on every corner handing out cards....  But Nada Mass.....  Nothing more...

And for some reason we decided to walk around the big block where all the sidewalks are full of trinket sales booths...  We needed our head examined...

Loyce bought a basket and a plate... And she liked one of those painted tin Astec sun decorations... So I got to bartering...  The vendor said thirty five.....  I shook my head no...  Thirty two......  In Spanish I said Veinte.... (20)...

He kept at me as I walked away,  Thirty.....  Veinte.... I would reply...  Eventually he offered Veinte cinco.. in Spanish...(25)   I said Veinte....

Back and forth we went and I never budged from 20... Loyce thought we were nuts by then....  He finally bagged the thing up and I gave him the 20 bucks.  Still he wanted some more asking if we had any change in our pockets...  Loyce gave him another dollar and I think a quarter she had too....

And of course around the corner, a fellow thought we had paid too much and would have sold it to us cheaper...  
So after going back to get the vanilla that we didn't want to carry all around town, we got in the longest line we have ever seen, to go home....

The line goes so far back you can't see the end...

And once you reach the gate it goes a long way to the passport windows... again..

 

Today it was moving right along and only took about 45 minutes to get thru the passport windows....  What did you buy was the question...  I answered the usual!!!   Vanilla and prescriptions.....  She said "Have a nice day..."

We haven't even brought our purchases into the motorhome tonight...  Makes me wonder if it isn't more about the experience of going over and bartering, rather than actually purchasing stuff...

But we did get some really good deals on medications that will save tons of money in the long run, now that we are on Medicare and the poor coverage Rx plans that go along with it...

Retired Rod

Nice day in Yuma

We had a slow day today...  We are back in Arizona and our clocks show that the day is progressing faster than we were used to last week...  It amazes me how easy it is to shift forward when the day isn't progressing as fast as it feels like.... But!

When you go back East, and the day is older than it seems like...  That is really tough, for me anyway...   So we just hung back and didn't do a thing today....

Really, it was a big deal that I went to the dog park in the back of this RV park and sat on the chairs in the shade...  Biscuit ran with the other dogs for a while, until they all went home...  So once she let me catch her we left too...

She just won't come to any of us when she is totally free...  That's a problem that we work on continually....

Anyway, we did go out and find a Wendy's late in the afternoon as it had been several days since I had a burger....  But that was it for all day... But the pace here in this RV park is like that laid back and easy going....

Maybe tomorrow...

Retired Rod

Leaving San Diego

I'm sitting here rereading the post from yesterday and remembering my time aboard the Midway....  You never really leave the Navy.....  You may get out of active duty.... but you are always a sailor...  And in my case a SeaBee construction sailor..

I stood there watching folks scurrying all around the various spaces that were open for the tour..... wondering if they appreciated all of the history that this particular ship was present during....   It was built for the invasion of Japan, and many of the visitors today are Japanese..  Would their parents and grand parents have been killed had that invasion been necessary??  I probably shouldn't think like that, but my father was in the Pacific theater aboard ship in WWII so I can't help it...

Back to today's events....  We left San Diego...  Packed it all up and drove out of town...  But not without incident...  As I was bringing up the Jacks, one of them didn't latch correctly...  It just went on running...  I went out and looked and it was completely up...  So I turned it off manually...

And of course when I shifted into gear, all the alarms and bells went off on the dash that the jacks weren't up...  No amount of pushing button corrected this error...  As I have done before when encountering jack issues, I had to take the controller board out of the dash and disconnect its wires..

We drove back over here to Yuma without any problems, but I was scared to put down the jacks here because we may not get them back up...  Our jacks are electric, and directly geared to the worm screws in the legs...  The fact that the motor just runs on means that the gearing is broken or a shear key is severed..

We landed at the Sun Vista RV Resort out by the Wal Mart...  This is a full service park with lots of Park Models and paved roads...  It is a bunch nicer than where we stayed overnight on our way out...

You can always tell, when they issue a name tag to you, that they intend for you to stay a while and involve yourself in the activities..

We backed in and made ourselves as level as we could get without the jacks...  Hope the wind doesn't decide to blow.........  We'll only be here for a few days...

Retired Rod