November 2008 - Yuma AZ

We finally arrived in Yuma, AZ on November 2nd. It was hot (mid 80s) and very dusty. In Yuma, the wind always blows and since they get a a whopping 5" of rain a year, there is not much that keeps the soil from blow'n in the wind. Yuma's major industry is growing vegetables for your winter table. In the month of November, the thousand acre fields were formed into rows with trenches running between them, planted, sprinkled with water to start the germination, and growing with lettuce of all varieties, celery, broccoli, cabbage, etc. The area is also a large citrus producing area - we are still enjoying fresh picked oranges. Our campground was quite beautiful sitting on a bend in the Colorado River. The campsites were situated along the golf course. I think we were the only folks in the whole place who did not play golf! We were surrounded by Canadians in the half empty campground. The Americans don't come until December or January when it isn't so hot - daytime temps were in the upper 80s for the whole month. An interesting note here - most nights we heard the drone of a helicopter going up and down the river looking for wetbacks. Mexico was just down the river 1 mile so routinely they found them swimming upstream.

We thought we were going to be in Yuma for the whole winter as Doug was told his aerial photo business would have enough photos to keep him busy for the winter. While on our way to Yuma, we got a call that we would only be in Yuma for one month and then move on to Tucson, AZ. We did that on December 1. Sales really fell off in Yuma as our economy fluttered. While searching for a campground in Tucson, we got a phone call that due to economy, the aerial photo business was cutting back on salesmen and keeping only their full time top sellers. So we were now free to go where ever we wished! We thought of going back to Yuma since we like the resort and had been part of a Bible study group there and a church service that had about 300 people from the campground. We decided against that since Nada suffered asthma-type symptoms from the dust the whole month we were in Yuma. We decided we liked south Texas when we were there 3 years ago so we decided to head there. Along the way we visited with our friends, the Shaws, in Carlsbad, NM.