February 26, 2013:
We had to hustle a bit on Sunday morning to get our trash to the waste dump at 7:30, then get ready for takeoff at 9, then to the dump station to dump tanks, followed by the ARCO station to get our RV weighed by Howard and Linda. We discarded new friends Jesse and Meaghan's two RV doors that they removed to help their over weight situation. Good news, our RV is 1,000 lbs. under its gross vehicle weight rating, our only issue is the "Tow Max" tires that are rated very poorly, prone to blowouts. I will be watching them very closely and plan to replace them this year.
After saying goodbye to RV Dreams visionaries Howard and Linda Payne it was happy trails time and we pulled out of Quartzsite taking Rt 95 south for about 90 miles to Yuma, Arizona. It was a very windy day, but luckily it was mostly a tailwind, our fuel mileage was 11.5 MPG on the run. There were places where the dust was blowing reminiscent of 1920's "dust bowl days", mostly where the desert was plowed and transformed into farmland. All the stuff that wasn't green was blowing away ! We found our way to the Escapees Kofa KO-OP Retreat without incident at 12:30 PM. We had just joined "Escapees" to give us more RV park discount options. We are now really into being "Cheap", so we opted for a $5.00 per day dry camping spot. We quickly set up camp and then went for a ride out to the nearby Sidewinder and Ogilby Road 14 day free BLM areas to search for potential boondocking spots. We found lots of wide open sites there and we plan to move there on Tuesday. In the meantime we are using all the escapee retreat amenities that we can. We did skip the Sunday evening ice cream social, we sort of overdosed on social activities during the past two weeks.
Monday 8 AM, it was down to 39 degrees last night, had the heat set at 50 degrees last night to conserve batteries (we are hard core). The generator is now running, the heat is cranked up, all the electronics are charging, the sun is shinning brightly and Twinkles is singing "All my Ex's live in Texas", (it got stuck in her brain back in Quartzsite at Silly Al's Pizza listening to the Highway 95 band), all is good !
We checked out historic downtown Yuma on Monday and found it very interesting with tons of history, amazing history ! Like most old downtowns, all the shopping has moved to the mega-malls, but there are some fun restaurants, bars, antique shops, museums, professional offices, craft shops and other artistic stuff. We also went down to the once mighty Colorado River and learned the sad story of the Quechan Indian tribe who once controlled this entire area, learned of the old ferry to get across the river to California, saw the bridge to no where, the coming of the Southern Pacific Railroad, the gold mining frenzy. The taming of the west is a very sad story, more will be revealed latter.
Next stop is the BLM free 14 day area off Ogilby road within sight of the Imperial Sand Dunes recreation area.
Stay tuned for more,
Hey Paul and Sue! We stayed at the same ESKP camp ground in Yuma. I think we were there for 4 days. We were in FHU though, the site straight back on the entrance road. Mexico is real close there and easy to cross the border.
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