On the Road in the Left Whale: Yuma and back to Phoenix

Yuma to Phoenix

So decided not to stay over at the BLM land by the hot springs, and continued on to Yuma.

Caught my first sight of the great southern wall, and drove through some amazing sand dunes - 300 miles from the sea.

Trumps folly

Imperial Sand dunes national park

Booked into a 55+ RV park that was mainly permanents or seasonal people (Canadians) and a few transient RVs. Neighbor was a cranky 85? year old living on his own in a top of the range Class A RV. He was banned from driving anymore by his son after flattening a few trailers, etc. the previous year trying to back into his spot.

Nice bit of the RV park was the fact that every morning at 3am, I would be woken up by the local chickens making their way through the park crowing and causing a general ruckus.

The park alarm clock

The downside of the 55+ crowd...

The Yuma valley produces a huge percent of the US leaved vegetables e.g. lettuce, cabbage, etc. They import bees to help with the pollination. It was quite crazy - was cycling along and suddenly I was in the middle of this swarm of bees.

Worker bees

Cycled down to the border which was 3 blocks away to see the great southern wall built to keep the new immigrants away from the old immigrants...

Large gaps in the 'fence'

Visited two of the local museums - one was the old outpost for goods being transported up the Colorado river - once again... it is an awesome river. The saddest part of it is that today none of its waters end up in any sea. Us humans suck it dry before it gets to the Sea of Cortez.

The water for Yuma comes from the Colorado river (naturally), but it comes from a canal that goes under the actual river.

Could not have been a nice prison

Even back in the day, they jailed children

Really eerie drawing by one of the prisoners. The eyes follow you...

The prison graveyard

The river

Amazing info

The next weekend I headed up to Phoenix to meet up with Gene who was flying in on Sunday.

On the way, I passed through tribal land that had these huge feedlots with 10s of thousands of cattle in it.

Stanfield, AZ

Spring was springin

One of the feedlots

Found a spot north east of Phoenix in a town called Fountain Hills on tribal land. Upmarket town, upmarket RV park and prices to match, but beautiful scenery.

It was spring training in Scottsdale, so buzzing

Scottsdale - all gold courses and walled developments

Gene had rented a car, so on my birthday (Monday 3/20) we drove up to Sedona on Highway87 - once again one of those serendipitous decisions that worked out really well. We started the drive in 80F in shorts and flip-flops, by lunch it was 45F and 2ft of snow, but Sedona was bearable at about 55F and we did bring a few warm pieces of clothing. Sedona is just awesome. The pics do not do it any justice and the red rock cliffs need to be seen. Definitely going back at some stage. Also figured out what that ley line vortex was that everyone talked about... its that sucking thing that pulls all the money out of your wallet. Rich affluent town full of tesla's - but beautiful. Need to go do a few walks there.

On the way to Sedona stopped at a huge rock arch

Sedona

We also did a few great walks in the hills around Fountain Hills.

Large developments everywhere

Gina and Jack flew in the next night and we met up for a great evening on the town. Jack had rented a convertible mustang (as that is what one does) and we all had great fun putting it in 'drag' mode.

Jack was there to start his walk of the Arizona trail. Nearly 800miles of serious hilly country, but hey, cannot be worse than the Appalachian trail...

After they left, I checked into the weirdest RV park of the trip. It was behind an All Hotels hotel - I could not book - it was first come first serve, you could use all the hotel facilities and even get the free hotel breakfast (which was awful), but free. Went to check out the parking spot for the whale at the Arrowhead RV and Boat Storage facility. It was tight, but had a roof and the owner, Jim, was really nice - actually lived on the premises.

Neighbor 1

Neighbor 2 - the Man Cave. Actually met him as I was going in. Really nice

Heading back to Boston

On Friday I washed the RV to get all the grit off, Saturday morning got everything else together for a long term storage in dry 120F weather and then hopped on a plane at 5pm for Boston. And so ended the 2nd trip.9,800 miles in the RV over 5 months, 1,200 miles on the bike and some awesome places visited.