I’m still behind in my postings… have a few more days to get you caught up on:
On Saturday we visited the Yuma Territorial prison. Click on this link for more information about this attraction. And here’s another good link that has interesting stories about some of the notable inmates.
We jumped in the Silverado with our little dog Coach and arrived by 10 AM to meet up with Lloyd DeGerald, (the Aqua-Hot Service Rep), as previously planned. I mentioned in a previous post here, that I would meet up with Lloyd and his wife to return the special tools that he lent me to fix the Aqua-Hot last Thursday, and we would tour the prison together. As it turned out – the prison tour doesn’t allow pets, which unfortunately, is the case with almost all federal or state run parks or attractions.
Lloyd and his wife also had their little dog with them, so Lloyd’s wife volunteered to stay with the vehicles and watch the pets while we went ahead and took the tour. That was nice of her.
Here’s a pic of the sign at the parking lot entrance that I swiped from Google images. Click here to see some other more professional images.
And here’s some pics of our tour taken with our iPhones.
The sally port (entrance gate) to the prison.View inside the courtyard after paying entrance fee. The Yuma coast-to-coast bridge in background.Water tower with guard tower built on top.
Here’s what the main museum building looked like inside.
A well made diorama of the prison as it looked back in it’s heyday was on display.
Diorama of the Hell Hole.
Can you imagine being packed in these 6 person cells?
Hmmm… there could be a snappy caption for the photo below… but I better leave it alone 🙂
Here’s the archway leading to the cells.
We almost had the courtyard all to ourselves… I wonder if any of the prisoners ever experienced that?
We posed for a “selfie” in front of a portion of the old cells.
After our tour of the prison, we got back to the parking lot to relieve Lloyd’s wife from her dog-sitting duties. We were able to walk the dogs outside the prison walls and tour the prison cemetery.
Yuma Territorial Prison Cemetery with the prison in the background. Guard tower on top of the water tank is on the right.
Once we had seen all there was to see in the immediate area, we piled back into our respective vehicles and headed over to see a locomotive that is on display a few blocks away from the prison.
We had to compete with a wedding photographer for pics of the 1907 steam locomotive. Click here for more images of this locomotive.
After checking out the nicely restored locomotive, we said our goodbye’s to our new friends and parted ways. We drove through the historic downtown area but didn’t find anything that peaked our interest. So, we hit a fast food restaurant that shall remain unnamed and went back to our Coach for a quiet evening.
It was another good day. I would highly recommend this tour to anyone visiting the area… definitely worth seeing.
Stay tuned for our day trip to the Imperial Sand Dunes in CA that we did on Sunday…
I’m still behind on my posts, trying to catch up… here’s what we did on Friday:
While boondocking just south of the Quechan Casino, our nearest neighbors, (Don and Peg), organized a day trip for many of the folks camped on our little hill-top overlooking the wash.
Don & Peg hail from Ohio and are no strangers to the area – they stay here during the winter months, and have done so many times in the past. A couple neat things about Don is that he painted his own Coach. A ’95 American Dream. It looks really nice. He is also an avid wood-carver. He showed us some of his work, ranging from walking sticks, wood stump bowls, wall hangings, and even intricate thread spool carvings. Yes, I said carvings made from old wooden thread spools. I haven’t seen that before – pretty cool Don.
There were six vehicles that took Don up on his offer of 4-wheel drive adventure. We followed Don’s Toyota through many a dry wash with the Silverado as Don took one shortcut after another. I was worried about the front plastic spoiler that dug in to the dirt a few times, but it survived alright. So did the hard plastic mud flaps, I was sure they were going to break off a time or two as the side-bars/steps scraped the ground. But we made it relatively unscathed. Now I have another excuse to detail the truck 🙂
Here’s a few pics of our trip to get there… as usual, the pictures don’t do justice to the scale of the holes, dips, twists and hills:
At one point, Don got out his saw to clear some of the brush that would have otherwise scratched the sides of our vehicles.
Some of the road was through a very sandy dry wash.
And there was even some sections that could be considered “super-highway”.
Here’s a view of the surrounding mountains in the area.
And finally, we made it! Here we are enjoying lunch that everyone had brought along.
Here are some samples of the “rock art”. They were everywhere for miles around us. After lunch we all drove around on our own to view the names from different roads which wound in and around the area. Again, the couple pics here don’t do it justice… it was very hilly in most areas… you had to be careful traversing the hilltops.
One gentleman, sorry – I forgot his name, had developed a home-made rack for his pickup complete with swinging lounge-chair. I had to put this picture in the journal. We all got to try out the unique chair – very comfortable 🙂
On our return trip, we stopped for a “Date Shake” at the Imperial Date Gardens. The shake was good. We also bought some cactus candy.
Here’s some members of our group enjoying their date shakes outside the retail store.
After our 4-wheel drive adventure, we peeled off and hit the local WalMart to stock up on a few things. We made it back in time for “Happy Hour” and later on the group had another campfire.
Stay tuned for the next post about our visit to the Yuma Territorial Prison on Saturday. And no, they didn’t keep us there 🙂
I have some catching up to do… Here it is Monday – and I haven’t posted since Wednesday! I think I’ll break it up into a few separate posts for easier reading.
Therefore, for this first post I’ll tell you about Wednesday and Thursday. I last posted on Wednesday morning and predicted that we’d just hang around the campsite, which is exactly what we ended up doing. At one point during the day, we did a nice hike around the area and then we joined our neighbors here at our boondocking spot around 4 PM for “Happy Hour”. This has clearly become a daily tradition with the six or seven rigs that are parked near us. Everyone brings their own beverage of choice along with a small snack to share. We took cheese cubes and pretzels.
After happy hour, our little dog, “Coach” had another “episode”. This is the second or third time he has had this “seizure” of sorts… he seemed disoriented and was wobbly on his feet and would just plop down on the ground… probably out of necessity, because he’d fall over if he walked any distance. All we could do was put him in his bed and make him comfortable. We tried to have him drink water when he could hold his head up steady enough. I watched him until about 3 AM, when he just jumped up and started to walk around again. Although, unsteady at first, he seemed to quickly regain his balance, so I walked him around the campsite while keeping a watchful eye out for coyotes. He drank lots of water and seemed pretty much fine again. Sure wish we knew what causes this… internet searches point to several causes, and we can’t afford seizure medication. One source says that if you start anti-seizure medication, you have to administer it for life – you can’t stop or it will actually trigger seizures and make them worse. We remember that he was chewing on some peanut shells during “Happy Hour” – maybe he’s allergic?!?
The first time he had this “episode” was while we were in Redmond Oregon at the FMCA Rally back in August. But that time, he threw up first, so we thought for sure he’d eaten something while we weren’t looking. He was fine in the morning after we watched him all night. The second time, was a couple months ago, when he seemed to have to throw up, but couldn’t produce anything other than foamy spittle… he just fell over and laid there until we picked him up. He was over that in minutes, which made us believe he had lost his breath coughing/throwing up and just got light-headed. He’s always had a strange cough, kind of reminds me of the kennel-cough that our previous dog “Elvis” had at times. For those that don’t know, we lost Elvis to a coyote in our back yard just before New Year in 2013-14 🙁 He was 8 years old. Little Coach is 2 years old now.
Little “Coach” walking his squeaky toy.Little “Coach” at his favorite spot on the back of the couch by the big window.
With little “Coach” back up and running around like his usual self – on Thursday morning, Stilla jumped in the shower after turning on the diesel switch for the Aqua-Hot and quickly reported that there wasn’t any hot water. Huh?!? I went outside and confirmed that the Aqua-Hot exhaust pipe was cold. Yup, not working! I opened up the bay compartment to check the light panel.
The “Diesel-Burner Status” light and the “Pump # 3” light were on but the “Heating Status” light was not. I broke out my service manual which I had printed out from the resources available on the Alpine Coach Association technical library website. I keep this in a plastic document protector inside a plastic envelope stashed in the bay next to the Aqua-Hot system. I pulled off the Aqua-Hot cover and began troubleshooting with my multimeter. I did the voltage checks for the “control module” because it seemed like a good place to start. It checked out good on all the inputs and outputs except for one test that indicated replacement of the control module. But, the fact that the “Heating Status” light wasn’t on still bothered me, so I kept flipping through the manual and found the obscure note that indicated the tests I had just done, were only valid after ensuring that both the “Diesel-Burner Status” and “Heating Status” lights are on.
Aqua-Hot system innards. Cover removed.
Since I already confirmed that 12 volts was present at wires 22 and 23 on the electronic controller, the book led me to the coolant sensor.
Electronic Controller with panel cover removed. Located on left side wall of bay.
While troubleshooting, I had to “fool” the switch into thinking the cover was in place by using the tool below.
And here’s the culprit. The boiler fluid “coolant” sensor wasn’t working. There was zero resistance between tabs on the sensor and when I jumped the two wires… the Aqua-Hot fired right up!
I remembered seeing an RV in the lower parking lot back at the casino that had a banner advertising RV Service/Repairs. I jumped in the pickup with manual in hand to see if he could help me locate a new sensor.
After playing twenty questions… the nice gentleman at the service rig concluded that my troubleshooting was sound and he gave me the number of an Aqua-Hot Service representative that was in nearby Yuma. I called him and quickly made an appointment to meet a couple miles down the highway at Arizona exit 2.
I met Lloyd De Gerald, a factory authorized service representative – He sold me the sensor for the low-low price of only $63. 🙁 He not only had the part on hand, but for an additional $50 deposit, he also had the special tool needed for installation since the new part had wires “pigtails” already on it, so you had to use a home-made special cut-out socket to install. After paying for the part and leaving a deposit, I went back to the Coach and drained a couple gallons of the boiler antifreeze into a bucket. I installed the part with no problem, Lloyd even teflon wrapped and pipe-doped the sensor for me. But then, I ran into the next problem. My Aqua-Hot doesn’t have the radiator cap on it like most(?) models. It only has a recovery tank… and well, you can’t fill it back up with the fluid I saved in a bucket through the recovery tank. I called Lloyd, who had another special tool for filling these type Aqua-Hot systems. So, I made another trip to meet Lloyd, luckily it was only a few miles away in Yuma (we’re right on the CA/AZ border by Winterhaven), and I exchanged the first special tool for the second, which is an RV water pump with quick-disconnects for easy hook up to my drain valve along with the battery clips to power it up.
While talking with Lloyd, I found out he and his wife, planned on visiting the Yuma Territorial Prison in a couple days on Saturday. As did we… so we made plans to meet up and tour it together… I could return his special tool to him then and get my deposit back.
Once back at the Coach, (and just before dusk – we missed today’s happy hour, I might add), I used the pump to put the boiler fluid back into the Aqua-Hot system without incident and it fired right up. Yeah! We can shower again!
Here’s a pic of the Aqua-Hot all back together again. This is both our hot water and heating system for the Coach. Although we haven’t needed the heater since we left Colorado, we still need our showers 🙂
We closed out our Thursday evening with a trip over to the casino for a bite to eat and to support the local Quechan Indian Tribe by leaving some money in the slot machines 🙂
Stay tuned for my next post… the neighbor’s invited us to tag along on a 4-wheel drive trip to the Valley of the Names on Friday. And then we visited the Yuma Territorial Prison on Saturday… Imperial Sand Dunes on Sunday… lots of pics…
On Tuesday morning, we jumped on the ATV to check out some of the trails behind our campsite. Stilla carried our dog, Coach along for the ride.
We ran into a lot of “dead end” trails:
At one point, we rode down through the “wash” below our camp site. You can see our Coach on the hilltop.
The Urban Escape Vehicle is 2nd from the left.
We found a lot of hidden campsites… some occupied, some not.
We even found a Pet Cemetery. We stopped to look around and pay our respects. It was rather unexpected to find this as we were riding along one of the more improved roads. Some folks put a lot of work into their pets’ final resting place.
There were even a couple gravesites marked “Unknown” that some caring folks took the time and effort to do. I thought that was nice.
One of the trails we followed ended abruptly at a cliff-edge overlooking the canal.
After backtracking a ways… we got on a trail that went as far as the border which you can see in the pictures below. The parking lot is the one we paid our $6 to park in when we visited Los Algodones last Saturday.
We had worked up an appetite, so we decided to spend the afternoon on another trip into Los Algodones, Mexico for a late lunch. We left little Coach in the big Coach with some windows and vents open for cool air circulation, and took the Silverado to the $6 dollar parking lot, which is just a couple minutes down the road from our campsite.
It wasn’t long before we were sitting in the shade at one of the restaurants in Los Algodones, Mexico.
I took pictures of the menu in case any of you “blog-readers” want to place an order for delivery… might take a while tho 🙂
I ordered a Pacifico beer with my meal expecting to get a normal size one… this guy was huge, but it was OK, Stilla helped me finish it.
Stilla ordered one of the combo plates – burrito, enchilada, and tostada.
Stilla also ordered the tortilla soup that we shared.
I had the fish tacos, they were delicious. I’m becoming a fan of these.
After, lunch we ran the gauntlet of vendors again… I couldn’t count the number of times we heard; “look here – almost free”.
I was thinking of Cheryl and my brother Steve when I saw this horse sculpture:
I was thinking of myself when I took a picture of these neat stained glass items:
When we had enough of the vendors and peddler’s, we headed back to the border crossing, which to our surprise and amazement, had a line that stretched for blocks… it wasn’t at all like this last Saturday! We walked right out as quickly as we walked in the last time we were here. We overheard some folks say that they hadn’t seen it this busy since 2008… it was like some sort of weird star alignment and everyone decided to come visit at once on this Tuesday.
Here’s a picture of the front of the line. The border crossing building is at the end of this covered walkway and to the right where there is still more covered walkway up to the checkpoint.
Here’s a picture of the middle of the line. You can see more vendors and peddlers trying to get everyone’s last dollar up to the last minute.
And here’s a picture of the end of the line… way back in the distance is the end of the line. As you can probably tell from these pictures… Stilla and I sat at the outside bar section of one of the restaurants, took pictures, and waited until the line became more reasonable. We sat there for almost two hours while we nursed a margarita. Sometimes, you just have to do, what you got to do 🙂
It was almost dusk again by the time we got back to little Coach. He was just fine again. What a good guard dog. Sadly, we missed “Happy Hour” with our neighbors today since it took so long to get back out of Mexico.
And that’s all for now… it’s late morning on Wednesday as I finish up this journal entry. We’ll probably hang around the Coach today and maybe go check out the casino at some point later this evening.
On Monday we decided to head over to the Quechan Casino Resort. It is located on the south side of Interstate 8, about 8 miles west of Yuma and 2 miles north of Los Algodones, Mexico. This is the place we reconnoitered last Saturday when we visited Los Algodones for the first time.
View of the Quechan Casino after exiting I-8
We settled on a boondocking spot just south of the main RV parking lot at the casino. The spots here are more open than at the casino and we backed up to a dry river bed, aka “wash”, that is about 20 feet below the back of the Coach.
I wonder if I can take the ATV down this embankment into the wash? Hmmm?
Before we headed over here in the early afternoon, I spent a little time getting some more waxing done on the Coach, which as I mentioned before, is a multi-day chore. It’s best to tackle a little at a time until I get it done… and then when I’m finally finished… it’s probably time to start again, right?
We said our goodbyes to our friends from the Alpine Coach group. They are going to stay at the Cocopah Casino for a while longer. And then we followed their advice, and found the Union 76 service station that allowed us to dump and take on water.
When we arrived here and picked out a spot, we had just backed in and started to put down the pads to keep the jacks from sinking into the sand, when the neighbor came over and introduced himself and his wife. They invited us to come over for “Happy Hour” – they (and other’s) were grilling up some shrimp and had made some jalapeño poppers stuffed with smoked salmon to share.
It’s amazing the number of nice people you meet out here RVing 🙂 After we extended the jacks, put the slides out, and staked down the patio mat, we pulled our chairs over and enjoyed an hour or two with our new “neighbors”.
After “Happy Hour” we fell back into our usual routine – Stilla had made a stew earlier, so we had dinner and then watched TV. And also, as usual when boondocking, we ran the generator for an hour or so to top off the batteries for the night.
Stay tuned… I wonder what we’ll do tomorrow?
BTW – Have I ever mentioned that Monday is my new “favorite” day of the week now? Since I retired – when I wake up on a Monday morning and realize I don’t have to go in to work – I feel good. Life is good 🙂
On Super Bowl Sunday, we just hung around the Coach until game time at the Cocopah Casino. I used the morning to get a little waxing done on the Urban Escape Vehicle. Stilla took a picture for your amusement:
I called the Military Fam-Camp at Yuma Proving Grounds to tell them we wouldn’t make it in today as previously planned. Naturally, no one was in the RV park office, so I had to leave a message. It’s a little over 30 miles to the North on I-95 from here and we’re going North anyway eventually, so why not stay down here in the Yuma area for a while longer we thought… there’s so much to see and do right here. I’ll call again to be sure we can get in later this week.
We think we’ll follow through on our idea to go over to the other casino in the area that we checked out on Saturday. It’s called the Quechan Casino Resort. And it’s closer to the Imperial Sand Dunes that I hope to check out with the ATV. A link to the Wikipedia site for the sand dunes is here, or click here for images.
But first, we have to fill the water tank and dump. I didn’t want to travel with a full water tank (100 gallons) when we left the Fortuna De Oro Resort, so I only put in a half-tank. We’re already on a quarter-tank now. So if we’re going to do some more boondocking, then I better fill it up. Our Alpine friends gave us the scoop on a service station near us here, that allows RV’ers to take on water and dump. We’ll plan on doing that enroute.
At super bowl time we took advantage of the Cocopah Casino Super Bowl Party that they held in one of their conference rooms with big screen projection TVs. Our Alpine friends decided to hang around their Coach(s) to watch the game because of the crowd. We were pleasantly surprised.. it wasn’t entirely too crowded, they had free food, (hot dogs, wings, chips/salsa, little burgers, veggies/dip, etc.,), and they had door prizes. Unfortunately, we did’t win anything… we just enjoyed the game and company around us. They also had $2 beers and $3.50 margaritas.
Stilla took a break during the game to give little Coach (our dog) a pottie-break. She took this nice picture of the evening sunset and the casino’s lighted palm trees.
After enjoying some time at the casino and its’ buffet on Friday, we woke up Saturday to a parking lot full of cars and activity. There was a marathon going on and the Casino was the Start/Finish line. Runners were doing a 26 mile route. Here’s a picture of the main entrance from the day before. Today, it was cordoned off and full of EZ-Up tents and tables, banners, grandstands, etc.,
We watched some of the activities and then wandered over to talk with our Alpine Coach friends. We got the scoop on visiting Los Algodones Baja Mexico from them. They had visited several times. Be sure to click on the name above for some interesting information on this place from Wikipedia.
It was a little less than 20 miles from the casino where we’re parked. Of course, we took the Silverado with the ATV still loaded on the back. Here’s a picture of the border crossing into Los Algodones, taken just before we saw the signs that said “No Pictures”:
And here’s a picture I swiped from the Wikipedia website of the border crossing.
It’s been many years since we visited Mexico. The last time was in Laredo Texas where we crossed into Nuevo Laredo, back in the early ’90s.
We parked the Silverado in the huge parking lot before the crossing and paid our $6 parking fee. Then we simply walked through the fence and around the entrance building into Mexico. Voila! Here we are… didn’t have to show anything or talk to anyone. Makes you wonder how many people forget their passports and then can’t get back in, eh?
We wandered through the crowded sidewalks while trying to avoid most of the vendors attempts to get us to look at their “stuff”. It almost became annoying at times… you couldn’t just look at anything without getting pressured to buy it… and every “no thanks, just looking” was followed up with a lower price offer or the item was pressed into your hands.
We hadn’t eaten lunch yet, so we followed the tip we got from our fellow Alpine Coach friends, and found one of the Taco restaurants.
The tacos were delicious. I tried one of each; a shrimp, a fish, and a beef taco. Stilla had the Chili Relleno. And the margarita was great. So were the prices 🙂
After lunch, I couldn’t say no to a $2 shoe-shine. Especially since the guy followed us for a block.
Here’s Stilla checking out some wares. Notice the vendors in the background waiting along the sidewalk to “pounce” on you as you pass by. Just kidding, of course. All the vendors were very friendly, but persistent. One guy called his store the “Mexican WalMart”.
We even broke down and bought some of the cute kid’s little bobble-head toys. Many of the children there were selling trinkets of some sort or another. They’ve got their marketing technique down. We couldn’t resist.
Now where are we going to put these in the Coach? Oh well, maybe we can gift them…
Here’s a few more pictures of some of the items for sale along the sidewalks and alleyways of Los Algodones:
We made it out of there with a few shirts, a new hat for Stilla, some sleepwear, and I couldn’t say no to a $20 silver & turquoise Harley-Davidson belt buckle. And, oh yeah – a shoe-shine.
We found another open-air restaurant/bar of sorts, complete with tiki hut and palm trees, to enjoy some more refreshments.
We walked back through the border crossing without incident, luckily Stilla remembered her “green card” 🙂
On the way back to the Cocopah Casino where we parked the Coach, we stopped to check out the Quechan Casino that is located at the Interstate 8 exit to Los Algodones. It’s just a few miles up the road from the border. We noticed a huge amount of RV’s either parked in their lot or surrounding area(s). And it looked like there were lots of ATV trails in and around the parking area(s). We drove through the Casino RV parking area to check it out. We were flagged down by a group of people sitting outside their RVs enjoying adult beverages. They noticed our Colorado license plate. They were also from Colorado and invited us to come park near them if we decided to bring the Coach over. Hmmm, we might just have to do that…
We had tentatively reserved a spot at the Military Fam-Camp in Yuma Proving Grounds for a week beginning on 1 February, but that still left us an open week before we go back North to Lake Havasu for the Fireworks Rally on the 11th. So we might just revise our near-term plan and stay South for a while longer. Stay tuned…
The Resort has a restaurant that was having T-bone night and we had made plans earlier to meet our friends from the Alpine Coach group that got here a day or two ahead of us. We met our friends on the extensive deck area of the resort’s restaurant/bar. Included in our arrival packet was a $5 dollar “cactus cash” coupon and a couple free drink coupons, so dinner was very reasonably priced (after using the coupons). We lit the propane heaters on the deck and enjoyed our friend’s company for a while and then retired to the Coach.
Thursday was a stay-at-home day while we caught up on laundry. The Splendide washer/dryer combo in the Coach takes longer than traditional washers and dryers. We also took advantage of one of the local RV mobile wash businesses. The prices were relatively good compared to what I’ve experienced at other parks. Probably due to the large amount of competition. I saw several different company logos on trucks and vans cruising around the park and washing and/or waxing rigs.
The Coach hasn’t been washed for at least a couple months, probably three. So I bit-the-bullet and shelled out $40 for a power wash. It was $45 after tip. Now I can get bad to waxing the Urban Escape Vehicle… one section at a time. It will take me several (or more) wax sessions before I can get it all to my satisfaction.
We also checked on the rates to stay another day or so at this nice resort, but they don’t offer the Passport America 50% discount until after March. So, at $40 dollars a day, we decided to move on. Our Alpine Coach friends that we’ve been following since Quartzsite told us about the Cocopah Casino located just South of Yuma. They left to go there on Thursday. Therefore, on Friday we followed them again, albeit a day later…
On Friday, after pulling in the slides, raising the jacks, and hooking up the Silverado, we made the short drive to the Cocopah Casino and RV Park. When we arrived, we saw our Alpine friends again but the RV park was full. We decided to join a few other rigs in the adjacent parking lot. Actually, all the parking here is “dry”, meaning no electrical or water hook-ups, so it wasn’t any different in the parking lot as opposed to the designated RV lot. And we actually came out better for it because we parked right next to the open grass area between the two parking lots. Little Coach likes that 🙂
This Casino offers three nights for $10 at the RV parking lot, but it clearly isn’t following up on this very closely. Many rigs in the parking lot didn’t have the tags in the windshields and after talking to some folks, they’ve been there for a week or more. We checked inside and were told not to worry… just park in the lot and come inside to spend money. And Stilla did just that…
Tomorrow, (Saturday), we plan on going across the border to visit Los Algodones. Stay tuned…
