We bugged out of Phoenix, or Sun City to be exact on December 28th in order to beat the Holiday traffic and get settled on our new rental lot this year in the Yuma Foothills neighborhood. The trip from Sun City to the Yuma Foothills is a fairly easy day and a very familiar drive to us. We covered the ~180 miles in about 4 hours with one rest stop just past Gila Bend. We met friends John & Sharon already set up on the 49th St lot. We had met them on our first visit to South Dakota five years ago, and have run into them along the road somewhere again each year since. This is a shot of our lot looking toward the south. Ours is the tan trailer pulled in head first onto the lot so you see our ladder from the road; John and Sharon's white Teton trailer and Freightliner "Fred" is to our right in the picture below.
Below is a shot of our lot camp looking to the north taken from the back of this very deep lot.
On New Year's Day we woke up to a surprise in our lot by our trailer. It was a wine glass full of grapes complete with a New Year Party hat and noise makers! What a nice neighbor we must have, but we don't know who left the surprise.
Below is a shot looking to the east down 49th Street in front of the driveway at our rental lot. We have a very nice view of the Gila (Heela) Mountains from the front of our lot. We always love the view in Yuma.
Below is our set up as seen on the sunny side. This side gets the afternoon sun which is the hottest part of the day. We put our outdoor kitchen gear under the trailer overhang for shade whilst stored. We also hung shade screen on the slide out skirt to keep the sun from beating on our tires.
Below is what we call the dark side of the trailer. That is where the utility hook ups including the sewer connection is found. This side gets a little bit of morning sun and is in the shade by about 10:30 AM We are storing the kayaks and our bicycles here in this mostly shady area. You can just see Pepe the F-450 peeking out in the front of the trailer.
There's a new herd of sheep in town... as seen on the way to Walmart one day.
Below is a shot of the Gila Mountains as seen from the Walmart Auto Service parking area. Love those Gilas...
One of the important projects that we have been working on this month is preparing Pepe the F-450 for trade. We removed the air ride hitch from the back of Pepe this week and took it to a business that helped us ship it back to Hensley for a buy back. The new truck will get a new hitch of the same model. There is the old hitch on the fork lift at the shipping terminal below.
We also removed the Yakima roof racks that carry our kayaks on the roof
of the F450. Surprisingly enough these two racks represent about a
$1,000 investment. Luckily we were able to find a small replacement
part for these existing racks, a part called Q-Clips, which will make
the racks fit the new Ram 5500. We ordered, received and installed the
new Q-Clips for about $80. That was a big win!
Gari checks the rear-view camera monitor for the existing interface. We will reuse this monitor in the new truck. It will have the same 3 cameras that are on the trailer, plus we will add a 4th camera on the new truck that looks at the hitch/trailer pin interface.
We replaced our damaged macerator pump while we were here. The picture captures the make and model we used to find and order the replacement. We received the replacement a few days ago. The next step will be to reintegrate the pump with the custom sewer fittings that we built a couple of years ago.
We celebrated Yvonne's birthday in the front room of the Fortuna Pizza Hut. A good crowd of about 20 friends from the street came out to celebrate a Happy Birthday.
Birthday Princess Yvonne receives her blinking blingy tiara from Miss Lydia. Lydia made the magnificent birthday cake you can see in this shot. It had fresh flowers and strawberries on it, plus it had three layers with chocolate moose and more strawberries inside! It was delicious.
Steve and Jerry enjoy the party with Yvonne below.
Onto the Wood Carving show at the Yuma Armory. Gari and Jerry admire the large locomotive carving below.
Below are some fancy spoons of left and right hand models it appears. Some ideas for our spoon carving friend Joel S.
This carving show had a little bit of everything and the picture below demonstrates that point.
This carver had a variety of small animal carvings.... Moose, Caribou, deer, bear, wolf...
Outside were the large chainsaw sculptures. Steve admires the flippers on this mermaid below.
Jerry, Yvonne and Gari gather around the magnificent Elk Table below.
Steve and Jerry dream of the big ones that got away. There we see a giant Walleye and a Northern Pike carving below.
And some great news, we finished the caulking remove & replace job that we started in Sun City. That was a tedious job. Below Gari is on the ladder removing caulk along the rear cap joint.
