Wanta date? Come to Yuma!

Date plantations are everywhere around us, except for the orange, lemon, grapefruit and tangelo orchards and the lettuce and alfalfa fields! Other than that, we're in date country.

I thought dates were dates but I discovered that's not so and my new favorite are Medjool dates - melt in your mouth goodness. Check out www.MarthasGardensDateFarm.com. We haven't been able to take the tour yet but we worked hard at buying out the store.

 This is a picture of a date palm in our RV park. It's the one on the right. The dates are growing in a cluster in the middle.

 Here's what they look like growing. These are just in a tree in the park. Date season is over so I think they didn't get cared for like you would if you were growing them for a crop and they're probably old and dried but I did get a picture. I had no idea how dates looked growing.

This is a young Medjool date plantation at Martha's Gardens. They also had quite a few date trees for sale in 5 gallon pots - about 2 years old and ready for transplant at only $249 apiece!

 Here's a picture of a palm. They have such an interesting cross-hatched pattern on their trunks. That's a palo verde tree behind, I think. They don't have leaves and apparently turn bright yellow in the fall.

 Here are some palm souvenirs Dick picked up for me to paint. We thought at first that they were cactus because they have such wicked points on them. The top "thing" is a piece of palm bark.

Here's my guy reading outside at 9:30 in the morning. He came in shortly after I took this picture to shed his shirt because he was too hot! It's 63 degrees but hotter in the sun. The water jug in the background is full. Fifty cents for 5 gallons at the water shop we went to. They have water shops like we have coffee stands back home! All the water in Yuma is alkaline and tastes terrible. Plus where we are there are nitrates and nitrites in the water, we've heard, because of the fertilizers and crop watering in the area.

We are really enjoying the park we're staying at. It's called Southern Mesa RV Park and is out in the country, about 8 miles south of the main drag into town. The parks in town are wall-to-wall RVs, not that we're not close to our neighbors, most of whom are Oregon transplants, but we don't really like the in-town atmosphere. We're liking the country.

I know these are random, probably disjointed thoughts, but I haven't been able to sit down and compute for awhile. Anyway, when we first got to SMRV we signed up for a week for $135, not knowing anything about the place. Then we extended and extended and have been doing some checking about another time. It would be cheaper to stay here for a month, which, since we got here on Feb. 15th, we're almost to. Monthly rate is $400 which includes water (don't drink it) electricity, sewer, wifi, and pretty good cell service (although they're close to Mexico and nobody wants to put a tower in this close, apparently, but we haven't had any trouble.) The people are friendly; they have a few activities we could participate in, a swimming pool. Bottom line, I think we'll come back.

Yuma has many interesting places to visit or you can just sit around and live in the sunshine! We have had a few windy days - yesterday for example the wind was terrible with lots of dust in it, but mostly sunny during the days, cooling in the evenings, chilly at night.

I've got to go back to the indoor market. There are three big ones in Yuma: the one by the airport is a lot like visiting Mexico and rates 3 fleas in my ranking system. (Shudder, shudder.) The outdoor one is set up in a huge parking lot and has booths with everything from soup to nuts, literally, and is comparable to Quartzsite but cleaner with lots of great stuff. The indoor one is in an old Mervin's store and is nice and clean and interesting, with possibly the best used book store I've seen. We bought a new shower head at the RV shop there but didn't buy a new cord, so we've got to go back!

Later, Lynn

Fun in the Yuma sun:

There's a lot of military activity in this area. We turn by the Marine Air Base to get home these days. Their jet fighters and harriers are often streaking through the air.

We drove out to Yuma Proving Grounds north of here the other day. They test military equipment in a vast area of desert to make sure it works before it is used. This was where they developed pontoon and other type of portable bridges for WWII. We were able to see simulated bridge approaches where they test tanks and armored personnel carriers. Many troops come to the area to learn how to use the equipment in simulated battle situations. They had a fascinating museum as well as all the stuff outside:.

This thing was huge.
General Patton did most of his training here before going to North Africa. We saw a museum dedicated to him in California on a side trip we took to Twenty-nine Palms. George C. Scott was standing outside it ready to shake our hands! (kidding)

I think what has been so strange about this entire trip is that all our lives we have known about this stuff but it's only been head knowledge. It's been really fun learning about a completely different part of the country than we've lived in all these years. For example: palm trees. They are all over the place. 29 Palms had more than they were laying claim to. That's a town around a military base and as we drove thru we saw many barber shops with big advertising for military haircuts.

My conclusion: when you-ma come to Yuma, don't miss Yuma Proving Grounds.