We had a pleasant drive from Puerto Penasco, Mexico to the US border crossing at Lukeville, Arizona and after three simple questions we were waved through. One of our reasons to spend much of the winter in the southwest was to boondock and live off our solar panels, AGM batteries and the features of our motorhome. One mile south of Why we stopped at BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land where camping is free for fourteen days, but we only wanted to stay four days. The camping area is in the Sonoran Desert, the most green desert in North America , a great place for hiking, bird watching, studying plants and most of all - relaxing. We had warm days, cool nights and stars so bright they lit the sky.

The nearby town of Why was originally called "Y" for a fork in the road but when it got a post office the name was changed to "Why." The town consists of two gas stations, a deli and a few scattered houses. One gas station named Why - Not Travel Store sells gas, diesel and LP gas, has a convenience store, an insurance agency and the back room is the town's post office. The post office is usually open six hours a day, sometimes more, sometimes less - if the door is open the post office is open and if its closed, well, the post office is closed.

As we had done for the last month we parked the Honda CR-V and rode the motor scooter everywhere we went. Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, located near the Mexican border, has the best display of natural cacti we have ever seen. We rode the scooter on the 21-mile gravel Ajo Mountain Drive stopping to study various cactus - saguaro, ocotillo, organ pipe, prickly pear, teddybear cholla, chainfruit cholla, creosote bush and many others. Saguaro cactus grow to heights of fifty feet, live over one hundred years and don't grow arms until fifty years old. The National Monument's namesake, Organ Pipe Cactus, only grow in the US in and near the park's boundary. Traveling by motorcycle or scooter has the advantage of being able to see more of the landscape and getting a better perspective. Every time we stopped to take a walk, pictures or eat a picnic lunch, people stopped to ask about our scooter. Most people have never seen a motor scooter that cruises at 80 mph. (No, we wouldn't do that.) We recommend if you want to see the best display of cacti in the USA go to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and take a back roads drive.

We rode north to the old mining town of Ajo two times, once to buy groceries and once to see the mine and tour the Ajo Museum. The mine's major product was copper, but many other minerals were by-products. It was an open pit mine covering 680 acres with a depth of 1,100 feet. Roads circle the mine at 40 - 50 feet intervals. The nearby museum explains mining and minerals and the history of Ajo.

We drove to the Elks Lodge in Gila Bend to boondock for the night. (Anyone can stay there and donations are accepted.) Immediately after parking we saw friends Karl and Fran Winckel walking across the parking lot. It is always interesting and a pleasure to meet friends in odd places. Our plan was to spend one night and find somewhere to dump the holding tanks and take on fresh water. We drove into town and checked the Love's Truck Stop. They had a free dump station but no fresh water. The Shell station had a dump station and water, but there were problems. They wanted $5 to dump and $5 for thirty gallons of fresh water. The biggest problem was the faucet to get fresh drinking water was also used to flush sewer hoses and it was dripping with something slimy looking. We would NEVER use a faucet like that to put drinking water in our motorhome. After checking our Passport America directory we found a nice new campground in Gila Bend that wanted only $7.50 a day and that included full hookups with 50- amp service. So we spent two days there and did our laundry (love our Sears washer and dryer) and washed the motorhome.

Yuma

Wanting to use our solar panels and camp for free, we camped on BLM land near Winterhaven, California, just west of Yuma, Arizona. The Yuma area is a dream come true for boondocking with unlimited areas for free camping, warm sunny days and cool nights. We selected an area off I-8 at exit 164 and drove 3.5 miles to our site. In front of us was level desert land with a mountain separating us from Yuma. There was a full moon and we watched it rise across the desert and also watched the sun rise over the mountain and set over a plain. There were no noises and our nearest neighbors were not within shouting distance. Even with watching TV several hours a day, using the microwave, making coffee and using our computers, the solar panels produced more amps than we could use. By 1:00 p.m. every day the batteries were fully charged and the solar panels were cranking out an additional 20 amps per hour that we did not need. With the capacities of our fresh water and holding tanks we can easily go two weeks before needing to dump and take on fresh water.

We had several friends in a campground in Yuma and we visited them and had a great time. But we noticed their views were of nearby RVs while our view was 10,000 open acres. Their sounds were other people and cars and trucks while we had no sound but the wind. From the city glow we saw few stars in the sky but at our site we saw more bright stars than can be counted. We are not saying our friends are wrong by staying in a city campground - we just have a different opinion and our priorities are different. Before leaving the Yuma area we were joined by Norm's cousin Troy Harper and his wife Carole.

There is a lot to see and do around Yuma and we kept busy with daily outings. Below are some of the highlights of our sightseeing.

Yuma Territorial Prison

The infamous Yuma Territorial Prison was built in 1876 by prisoners who became the first inmates. The prison was later expanded and before it closed in 1909 it housed 3,069 inmates including 29 women. Their crimes ranged from murder to polygamy with grand larceny being the most common. A majority served only portions of the sentences due to the ease with which paroles and pardons were obtained. One hundred-eleven people died while serving their sentences, mostly from tuberculosis, which was common throughout the territory. Discomfort grew with overcrowding and at times six prisoners shared cells designed for four. Summer temperatures of more than 120 degrees worsened already severe ventilation problems. Inmates were required to work 84 hours a week with Sundays off.

Despite an infamous reputation written evidence indicates that the prison was humanely administered and was a model institution for its time. The only punishment was the Dark Cell for inmates who broke prison regulations. Inmates were placed in the Dark Cell, a 15-feet square hole in a hill, from one day to as much as 60 days. It had no windows and the only light entering was from a ventilation shaft. Prisoners were stripped to their underwear before entering and were fed bread and water once a day.

The prison is now an Arizona State Park with a video presentation and an excellent museum.

Abandoned Mines Trail

Driving north out of Yuma on highway 95 we took a gravel road east at mile marker 76 and headed across the desert for 25 miles. The road changed from gravel to sand and back to gravel several times and is not recommended for sedans. Our Honda CR-V four-wheel drive did a great job and we never bottomed out or got hung up. As many as 300 mines were opened in the mountains around Castle Dome with the most famous being King of Arizona Mine which was later called KOFA. Many times we stopped to make pictures, take short hikes and climb hills. We found an old mining camp abandoned around the turn of the century with tin cans, bottles and broken pottery covering the ground. We wanted to collect some of the old bottles but we were in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge and collecting items is prohibited. That is the way it should be so further generations can enjoy our heritage.

Castle Dome City Mines, Museum, Ghost Town

North of Yuma on highway 95 at mile marker 55 we took a paved road east 1.9 miles and a gravel road 7.4 miles to Castle Dome City Mines, Museum, Ghost Town. Allen Armstrong and his wife bought desert property ten years ago and built a Mines Museum and Ghost Town that was opened to the public six years ago. The mining district's first mine was opened in 1858 and a reported 300 mines were opened in the nearby mountains. In 1864 Castle Dome's City's population was twelve and in the 1880's the town population exceeded that of Yuma. The Armstrongs rumbled through discarded items in the abandoned mines and cabins to supply their museum and reconstructed town. Eighty percent of their artifacts were collected in the area. Their property contains a museum, rock and gift shop, cabin, mercantile store, dentist office, assay office, stone cabin, church, sheriff's office, jail, cantina, a display of 1890's Levi's jean collected from mines and many other interesting items. The stories of the shootouts, the drunken brawls, the desperados and their way of life is preserved in what they left behind and their historical accounts. We recommend you visit the mines museum and ghost town to see some old west history.

Center of the World

Where would you find the Center of the World? It is located ten miles west of Yuma, Arizona off I-8, exit 164, in the town of Felicity. Frenchman, Jacques Andre Istel, purchased 2,800 acres of desert land in the late 1950's with the intent of building a town. He was an investment banker and owned a parachuting company that revolutionized that sport with new designs in parachutes. He named his new town Felicity after his wife Felicia and the population has risen from two to about thirty residents. Istel wrote a children's book "Coe, the Good Dragon at the Center of the World" and got the Imperial County Board of Supervisor to pass a resolution establishing Felicity as the Center of the World. (Anywhere you stand on a sphere can be called the center.)

Today the town consists of a restaurant, store, post office and a few apartments, but there is much more. A pyramid sits over the official Center of the World and we have certificates to prove we stood on the spot. Michelangelo's Arm of God, a sundial, points to the pyramid. Extending on either side of the pyramid are The Walls for the Ages explaining and preserving the history of the world. Each double sided wall is one hundred feet long and covered with two inch thick Missouri Red granite with engravings. When the project is completed there will be dozens of walls with a chapel in the middle. Oh, a section of the original spiral stairs from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France stands on the grounds. We very much enjoyed talking to Mr. Istel as he explained the history and purpose of Felicity and the Center of the World. We wish him the best with his project.

Algodones, Mexico

A short drive from our campsite took us to Algodones, Mexico, the medical mecca of Mexico. Building after building, street after street, block after block, we found most every building contained pharmacies, doctors' offices, dentists' offices, eye doctors' offices and other medical places. Prices were unbelievably low and elderly US citizens formed lines waiting for services and medications. We did not need any medicine or services but we did check some prices. Can you believe an eye exam, frames and single vision glasses for $40? We saw progressive lens glasses for as low as $70 including eye exam and frames.

There were also the normal souvenir and trinkets for sell, but we found only three places to eat in town. We chose an outside patio restaurant so we could watch the people, with bags in hand, line up to cross back into the USA. After a while we joined the crowd and 45 minutes later we were back in California. Later we learned we were lucky because it often takes two hours to cross the boundary.
 

Salton Sea

After boondocking twelve days west of Yuma, Arizona we headed west with friends Troy and Carole Harper. Actually, Norm and Troy are ninth cousins with their common ancestor being born in 1696. They met several years ago while researching their family trees. During the drive on I-8 for a stretch of twenty miles we saw more RVs boondocking than were at Quartzsite last month. We have never seen so many RVs parked on desert land and the big attraction was "off- roading." Every RV carried some sort of ATV, dune buggy or off-road vehicle. They looked like ants crawling across sand dunes.

Nine miles north of Bombay Beach, California we stopped at Salt Creek Campground in the Salton Sea Recreation Area. The 15.5 mile long state park along the Sea offers camping in five locations. We parked just feet from the water, then self-registered at a cost of $5 a night. There was water available (we didn't need any) and pit toilets.

The Salton Sea is the largest inland body of water in California measuring 35 miles long by 15 miles wide with a surface 228 feet below sea level. In earlier days the ever changing flow of the Colorado River flowed into the Sea which was the northern extension of the Gulf of California. Eventually silt filled the lower section separating the Salton Sea from the Gulf of California. Many times the body of water dried completely only to refill later and once was 46 times the volume of the present Sea. In 1901 the entire valley was dry when a canal was constructed to the Imperial Valley for irrigation purposes and in 1905 the canal collapsed and flooding filled the valley. The canal and flow of water was not stopped until 1907 and since then the water has remained.

The Sea is very saline with a salt content of 45,000 mg/liter (4.5% salt content) and with evaporation it gets saltier every year killing most of the fish. The Salton Sea is a bird watcher's delight providing nesting grounds for over 408 species of birds on their migratory paths. The Sea is part of the Pacific Flyway and the Central American Flyway and provides valuable habitat for egrets, herons, ducks, geese, pelicans and many other birds.

We and the Harpers enjoyed three relaxing days sitting several feet from the Sea, watching birds and ducks and most importantly, eating. With fresh shrimp and scallops from Mexico we kept the grill turning out delicious food to go along with pitchers of margaritas. What a life!!!

Our travel plans were suddenly changed with a family medical emergency in Kentucky and we returned to help Norm's parents. We'll report on it next month.