February 2, 2002
We're still enjoying the beautiful sunrises and sunsets of Arizona. Now parked in the KOFA Escapees park in Yuma. KOFA is the acronym for King OF Arizona mine. Haven't found the mine yet, but there are plenty in the area and one of the residents in this park gave us quite a list of places to visit.
On the left is a shot of the fire ring from the roof of our Road Abode while we were still at Quartzsite. Barb had gone up to catch a picture of the beautiful sunrise, but the exposure didn't work. Great shot of the fire ring though. On the right we're standing by the road to Los Algodones, Mexico, looking back toward where we parked Moby Dick. Waaaaaay down there. About 1/2 a mile from the crossing. Looks like several of us are going into Mexico this morning.
Well, we got in without incident....nobody seemed to care what we were carrying or anything. There weren't even any border guards that we could see. And there's where we each got our new glasses on the left. Exams, new glasses, (Barb's first tri-focals) new frames (Titanium for me in the hopes that the frames won't pit from perspiration) all for $225 total. WOW! No wonder so many people come down here for glasses, dental work, and medications. We had our list of meds, but found that the price we get through Barb's health plan wasn't that much more than we could get here so we didn't get any here. On the right is the line of people wanting to get back into the US. It goes from the border, up this street, around the corner for another block, and then another block after that. Took over an hour to get back "home". All they were checking was backpacks and drivers licenses.
And these are a couple of shots of some of the shopping areas. The place was very clean, paved sidewalks and all. The vendors were all polite and only appropriately "pushy" trying to interest us in their wares. Most of them seemed to be having as much fun with all the snowbirds (RV'ers who go South in the winter) as we were with them. It was more crowded than we'd expected, and it was a lot more fun than I remembered Tijuana (south of San Diego) in the early 60's. We had lunch (Mexican food, naturally) at a place some other tourist had recommended, and without that recommendation we'd probably never have found the place down an ally around a corner behind some vendors. Great food!
Now, is this luxury or what? Full hookups and cement between the truck and trailer. For $11 per night! In the two years we've been on the road, the only thing that even comes close to this luxury is at Hart Ranch, near Rapid City, SD. This park has 11 spaces with no hookups for overnight guests, and the rest is like this. Most of these are leased lots, and the park is a Co-Op in the Escapees system. The arrangement is too complicated for explanation here, but to find out more you can check www.escapees.com. While I washed the outside of everything, Barb was busy inside with the vacuum, dust cloth and all other kinds of weapons of dirt destruction. We figure it'll take more than just a few days to get the place really clean, what with the very fine desert dust sneaking into all storage compartments and every other crook and cranny. When I was out taking these pictures I noticed that it was almost 4 PM and I didn't have on my jacket and it felt good. First time I've been outside at this time of day for over a month without a jacket. Maybe we've finally let the "normal" weather catch up with us.
The resident that gave us the list of places to visit is Ron, and his wife is Lotte. They spent 8 years fulltiming before deciding to settle down. They have a park model on one of the lots, and have rigged a phone outlet alongside a power plug under a small table. Just so people like us can "hook up" and get e-mail and in my case, update web pages. All for free. Only request is to check to make sure they're not on the phone themselves. Now, if this isn't the quintessential sprit of the Escapees I don't know what is. You see, the park doesn't have any hookup for a phone line, and when we got here I was really bummed. That was Monday night. Then on Tuesday we went to the recreation room for morning coffee and met Ron and Lotte and some others as well. Friendly place with plenty of activities including water aerobics in the pool every morning. We haven't tried the hot tub yet -- we'd have frozen getting back home!