Welcome to Yuma, Arizona

We finally arrived in Yuma, AZ shortly after New Years Day.  We are very thankful for a first year of fulltime RV travelling, that proved to be very safe and relatively trouble free for us.  We have been fulltime RV living for about 22 months now, but our first 10 months we were sitting in Virginia finishing up our career tours at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.

Our first year of traveling worked out pretty much as we had envisioned, the high points at least, which were:  We went directly south to Florida right after we retired to escape the cold Virgina winter, obtained our Concealed Carry Permits from Florida just in case, visited our pals Beth & Chris in Texas, visited Junction City, Kansas for the first year warranty work on our new trailer, rode to South Dakota and changed our residence to that great state, visited with my high school pals John & Terri in Montana, finally visited Idaho after dreaming about that for 10+ years, visited Gari's dad Jerry and sister and brother-in-law Sandi & Sam in Yakima, Washington, saw Yosemite National Park and the giant Redwood forests, visited with Uncle Bob & Aunt Joan in Coarsegold, California, hit the jackpot during our visit to Las Vegas ;-) and spent the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year Holidays with Gari's mom Shilo in Sun City West, Arizona.  Phew what a first year of riding around!  We pulled the trailer over 5,000 miles this, our first year.  I predict that our mileage per year will dimish going forward.  I hope we try to do a few less countrywide projects and sit and explore more thoroughly each place that we visit this year.  Also I hope we take a bit more time on the path from place to place.  It was not unusual for us to move 700 - 1,000 miles or more before we stopped for more than a week.  We will see... It is a fact that monthly lot rent rates are a much better deal than the daily rental rates, sometimes campgrounds have weekly rates that are better than daily rates but not as good as a monthly rate.  Also, we have not boondocked nearly as much as we had envisioned, perhaps that will change this second year of RV traveling.  This is a much more economic way to go, but there are less aminaties as well.  In RV living we find everything is a trade off.  For everything you get you must give up something else.  Just the trade off discussion can keep us busy!

Our actual 2014 Route; we added an extra loop from KS to SD and traveled south via CA rather than NV as predicted back in January 2014 here http://pullinchocks.blogspot.com/2014_01_01_archive.html

But I digress, back to Yuma!  We are very fortunate that Jerry and his girlfriend Yvonne are here in the area.  They both know all the places to go and things to do and they have been very generous in inviting us along.  This has given our socialization activities a jump start in this hopping town of Yuma.  There is a free-ish dance happening most everynight, and I might add that there are a bunch of really good dancers hanging out here.  We are not among the talented, but just being here and around these dancers will no doubt have to raise our level of dancing expertise.  Yvonne knows just about everyone in a hundred mile radius around these parts so there are afternoon and evening get togethers many days and the evenings often have fun and games.  Cards, dice and dominoes dominate the game scene here.

There are many, many RV Park and Resort options here in Yuma.  We are parked on a privately owned lot in the Fortuna Foothills.  The lot belongs to Uncle Bob & Aunt Joann and is for sale!  We have another couple from Washington parked on the lot with us.  They live in a 45 ft Monaco mothorhome, it is a fancy and bigun!  Coincidentally they lived outside Lexington, KY for a while working on developing a horse farm there.  They are a great couple and we have become fast friends.  We play Farkle with them... it's a Yuma thing!  ;-)

Pictures below are on the road to Yuma; GPS check, Dash Cam check, Rear View Cams check, Tire Pressure Monitor check, Sirius Radio double check!

We spotted another Solar Electric facility on the road to Yuma.  This one was a different configuration.  The Solana Generating Station is a solar power plant near Gila Bend, Arizona, about 70 miles (110 km) southwest of Phoenix, completed in 2013.  When commissioned it was the largest parabolic trough plant in the world and the first U.S. solar plant with molten salt thermal energy storage. Built by the Spanish company Abengoa Solar, it has a total capacity of 280 megawatts (MW), which is enough to power 70,000 homes while avoiding around 475,000 tons of CO2 every year.  Its name is the Spanish term for "sunny spot".

We stopped at a gate and got this closer look.... it was right after that we saw the sign that said no cameras, no pictures! oops!

Approaching the mountain range that we had to cross to get into Yuma.  You can just see the microwave communication at the top of the pass a little to the left below.

A closer look at the microwave communication antennas at the top of the mountain pass going west into Yuma.

 That's our Pepe and Penelope on the private lot in Fortuna Foothills with our new friend's 45ft Monaco

Various views from the lot and our coach; Below looking from front wall and then standing in the street looking east.

 Looking out our front window from the dinner table.

 Looking out our back window.

Below is an example of a boondocking spot, that which we may attempt to park in 2015.  Hopefully these type spots will prove to be much more quiet and secure than I-15 Exit 213!  This spot is less than 2 miles from the lot that we are parked on now.  We found our RV friends we met in Junction City when we picked up our coach 18 months ago parked not far from this exact spot.

Partying with Yvonne and Jerry in nearby Wellton, AZ

We found John and Sharon our RV friends from South Dakota here in the Fortuna Foothills.  We had a little NASA memoribilia left over and were able to make a cerimonious presentation to each.  John received the Performance Award Medallion and Sharon received the Honorary Antartica Polar Program Patch.  Sharon immediately informed me that she will not be going to Antarctica!  Gari & I did not go away empty handed, John and Sharon produced an interesting desert rock that they named Igor.  John had embellished the natural features of the rock to complete Igor's face!  :-)  Igor is now employed in Sun City West guarding Shilo's gate from any evil would be intruders.

We took a ride out to the Painted Rock Petroglyphs at Dateland, AZ.  It is an amazing site, one of the best petroglyph sites in our Nation I understand.  It is believed that the petroglyph work was done by the Hohokam people. The Hohokam disappeared about 1450 AD. They are responsible for a huge ancient canal system throughout the Salt and Gila River valleys. Some of their canals are still in use today.  The Petroglyph site is located near the banks of the Gila River which made it a natural area for the Hohokam to pass by.  In more modern times the river was still used as a natural area to travel and became known as the Southern Trail. The Butterfield Trail, an early stage route, passed by the site as well. The Mormon Battalion, a regiment of Mormons organized during the Mexican-American War, came by the Painted Rocks. Even earlier Juan Bautista de Anza led a group of Spanish settlers through the area on their way to colonize the western regions.

We are still riding our bicycles in Yuma.  Gari checking the GPS to figure out which way next.

...and wondering why the camera is pointing at her...  for the Blog of course!

And that is the Blog circumstance for tonight.

Scariest 2014 Event

We had an event that rattled us good this first year on the road and this post will tell that story.  We thought we would do a lot of boondock (no hookups) camping when we bought our trailer and we set the trailer up to do just that.  However, most of the boondocking we have done to date is the overnight variety when we are enroute from one location to another.  We may boondock 3 or 4 nights in a row as we move from one place to another.  Mostly we have been stopping at WalMart's, Sam's, Lowe's and similar Big Box stores and other large shopping centers; truck stops have also been readily available to us but a lot of the truck stops are busier and noisier, and it can be hard to get much sleep.  In the east it is harder to find free parking spots, but out west there are lots more wide open spaces and firm ground to park on.

I thought I saw a good first opportunity for us to boondock along I-15 just east of Barstow, CA.  While using the Google Maps feature I found a great looking parking spot well off of the highway at Exit 213 where there was absolutely no infrastructure.  I thought no one would get off there and we would be far enough from the highway that we would be able to sleep.  It was about in the right place giving us a 300 mile drive for the day, perfect I thought.

I-15 East, Exit 213, the perfect stopping place in the middle of nowhere, or so I thought...

Look at that fantastic looking free pulloff area.... and look at the volume of traffic on I-15!

We arrived around 4:00 PM and it appeared just as we had imagined from the pictures and it was far enough from the road to be comfortable.  I didn't fully realize the situation along I-15 in that this is pretty much the one and only best route between Los Angles, CA and Las Vegas, NV.  Tons of traffic on this route is an understatement and it runs 7 days per week 24 hours per day.  There is continuous truck traffic carrying supplies in and out of Las Vegas and an untold number of visitors coming and going.  Nevertheless, we set our trailer up, popped out the bedroom slide so we would have plenty of room and be completely comfortable.  In the shopping centers and truck stops it is very rare that we extend any of our slides so it is a bit more cramped when stopping in those locations.  We ran the generator and made a nice dinner and soon it was dark.  We showered and got into our sleeping clothes and retired to bed.  As we layed there in bed, in the total darkness of the Mojave Desert far from any civilization we noticed that cars and trucks were pulling off at our exit about every 20 minutes.  However none of these vehicles came into our parking area, but I can tell you every single one of these vehicles got our attention and stirred us from our resting positions.  I was not as surprised by the number of vehicles on this section of highway, but I was completely caught offguard by the number of vehicles pulling off at this exit in the middle of nowhere with no services.  In our travels we have seen many, many trucks pull over and rest, and some cars too.  So I figured that's what this was too and that made sense.

Then it happened.  It was now 11:30 PM on a Wednesday night.... middle of the week.  Two cars exited the highway and kept coming toward our parking spot.  This area was big enough for another camper rig, but these vehicles were not campers.  The cars pulled in, head to head with our rig less than 20 feet away.  Both cars were shining their headlights right at the front of our rig for a very long time.  The headlights flooded in our bedroom window that is on the slide sidewall that faces forward when the bedroom slide is deployed.  There was loud music, car doors opening and closing, and cigarette smoke. The spidey senses were on full alert very quickly.  We certainly didn't want to get out of our trailer now, but we were waiting for the occupants to approach and start messing with our truck or trailer.  It's now midnight in the middle of the week, in the middle of nowhere.  These folks don't work, at least not day shift, and I figured that they were up to no good. 

Long story short, these two cars finally left after about 45 minutes which seemed like 4 hours.  We quickly pulled our day clothes on over our bedclothes and got out of the trailer, prepared the trailer for travel and got out of there within 10 minutes!  We rode another 30 miles to the next town, Baker, CA and found a truck stop there.  We were immediately security comfortable again; our level of room comfort and relative quietness was gone, but it was well worth the trade!  I admit, Gari said this was not a good place before we stopped there, but I assured her it was fine.  Well it wasn't fine and I will have to rethink my boondocking ideas, and continue to increase my acceptance of Gari's good ideas and skepticism of my bad ideas!

Fortunately for us, with a little help from our Guardian Angels above we made it to our currnet destination Yuma, AZ and are enjoying the area very much.

Leaving Las Vegas

We are a little behind on the Pullin' Chocks Blog.  This post will attempt to catch us up.  We are currently in Yuma, Arizona and enjoying fantastic weather while much of the country deals with the frigid temperatures of the persistent High Pressure system that has parked over the Great Plains.  We enjoyed a wonderful six week stay in the Phoenix, AZ area, Sun City, AZ to be exact.  We spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with Gari's mom Shilo and her sidekick Alex the Miniature Poodle. Alex has been my pal for many years and we picked up right where we left off.  Shilo treated us very well as usual.  We ate way above our regular life station!  We rode our bikes around the area for fun and exercise and we got to see some great family friends from Bay Village, Gaby and her mom Barbara. Reconnecting with old friends has become a top highlight for me in this RV lifestyle.  It is so exciting and brings such great happiness!  It was hard for us to move on to Yuma.  But move we did, right into the Fortuna Foothills of the Yuma, Arizona area.  We will write more about Yuma as we get a few more weeks under our belt here.  I also need to write up our scariest event of our first year RVing in a new post.  That was on the road to Las Vegas...

My old pal Alex on my lap.  Shilo has Alex trained very well and I am here demonstrating the bad habits I am encouraging.  Alex is not allowed to beg, eat or hang around the table.  I managed to sneak Alex in for after meal lap visits pushed away from the table just enough!

My Bay Village family pals Barbara (L) and Gaby (R) came to visit us in our coach at Paradise RV Resport in Sun City West.  Gaby & I share the same birthday.  Our familys traveled together from Bay Village, Ohio to Bar Harbor, Maine via Niagara Falls in a big black Cadillac Limosine way back around 1965!  It was an epic adventure for both of our familys' that none of us will ever forget in our lifetimes!

Pepe and Penelope on site 2105 in Paradise RV Resort, Sun City, AZ

 The view on our street, 21st Street

In addition to the RVs in the resort, there are many Park Model dwellings.  This sweet little place was directly across the street from our lot.  It was for sale when we arrived and the buyer moved in before we departed.  We like the small size for many reasons.  Maybe something like this in our not so distant future...

After all the fantastic gourmet meals at Shilo's house and restaurant treats we grabbed a little exercise by riding our bicycles everywhere and every chance we got.  Below are a few pictures of typical neighborhoods in Sun City.

Lots of gorgeous cactus here.

 And of course the Christmas Cactus!