We Made It 42 Miles And Then....

David looked out the window and said, "We have a problem back there". I wondered what kind of a problem...well he sees smoke coming from the back of the camper. I frantically call Mikey and Jan who say they will look for the next exit. You see we happened to be on a busy busy highway traveled by tons of motor homes and semis and it had construction going on. There was absolutely no place to pull over. We did come to an exit and here we are.

After the guys inspected it all they found that the wheel bearings had gone out. I guess we were lucky that we didn't have to drive any farther as we did because we could have lost the spindle which would have ruined the axle. Now I am certainly not a mechanic but as Jess says, I do know enough to know that axles are a much needed item on a vehicle! Needless to say that our camper is brand spanking new and this should not have happened...but it did. Mikey and David got it all fixed and back on the road we went.

Mikey and Jan took the exit to their campground and we took the road to ours. It was dark and as we turned onto the dirt road leading to our campground it looked to be in the middle of no where and the road was one big washboard. We both were thinking, oh no here we go again out in the middle of no where lost on a bumpy damned road. But it lead us to a very nice campground in the middle of the desert that we really do like. Today the four of us went into Mexico and shopped at Algadones, a border town. The retired folks come here to get their hooch, their glasses and to go to the dentist!

The guys looked thrilled as can be don't they?

The rest of the week was spent exploring the Yuma area. We took a drive into the desert to have lunch at a unique spot. The buildings weren't such a much but the chili fries were quite good.

The bar's walls were covered with dollar bills...seriously.....there was very little wall space that did not have a dollar bill stapled to it. It makes for an interesting chandelier don't you think?

We drove to the sand dunes and watched in awe as folks ran their dune buggies, four wheelers etc up and down the dunes.

The road to the dunes.

And then Mikey and Jan took us to the center of the earth. Yup it sure is...well it is deemed the center of the earth by French law. For some danged reason or another a Frenchmen decided to call this spot the center of the earth. This little church that he had built is not an active church but it is cute as can be. That would be Jan waving down at me.

We have seen fields of cabbage, lettuce, broccoli...pretty amazing. And Mary here is the promised picture. Harvesting lettuce. Harvesting, shrink wrap and boxing it to sell, all while in the field. The work looks to be pretty labor intensive. The lettuce head is cut of the stalk with what appears to be machetes, they then throw it up to the folks in the truck who seem to take off the outer layers. It is then passed back to the people that shrink wrap it. Then put in boxes and loaded onto the truck ready to go to the store. The gal in red is making the boxes as they are needed. We were amazed at how quickly everyone works. Unbelievable.

Tomorrow we head out for Quartzite. While there we will be dry camping so I will probably not blog until we move elsewhere. We will spend the next week with no electricity (unless we fire up the generator). We will have only the water that is in our tanks to bath, wash dishes, use the toilet etc... It is going to be interesting.