A Visit to the Center of the World!

Still in Yuma...Site:134    Highs: Low 60's   Lows: high 30's to low 40's

When we heard a winter storm was going to sock most of the northern US this week, we consulted all our 3-4 of our weather apps (they differ wildly in AZ, we're not sure why), as we were scheduled to leave this week. We saw that our last Cottonwood, AZ visit-- near Sedona was going to get 6" of snow, and the temps at night were going to be in the low twenties. That's even too cold for Sparky and too risky to travel through the high winds and bad weather in the mountains to get there. Besides that, in the next couple of days, a wild windy weather pattern was calling for 50-60 mph in Cottonwood, and being situated near the top of the park was a concern, because the the winds sweeping across the mountains and the mesa table top at the park where we were supposed to be, meant significant swaying and movement of the RV.  So-o-o-o, we decided to add another week to our Yuma stay, and skip Cottonwood as hiking would be out of the question as well with the snow in Sedona and higher elevations. Phooey! But---there's always next year. Sparky wants to hike the Boynton Canyon Trail....it's on her bucket list. But at 6.1 miles, this is a significantly difficult hike for someone her age, so we'll see. (SPARKY said that? asks an incredulous Eldo.) Yep, she does have her limitations and is starting to accept that.  (THUMP!) That's Eldo falling on the floor in shock. 

This part of the Boynton Canyon hike is called Subway Cave and is the most difficult part of the hike to get there. There are many other beautiful hikes in Sedona, so if this one is out of reach, she will try for another. BUT--maybe her adventurous brother, Charlie, would be up for this hike--he did the Ironman at age 65 this year!

Subway Cave

So our remaining time in AZ was spent visiting friends the first day we got here, Denise and Shane Selby, who were leaving the next day. We checked out an interesting outdoor museum called the Museum of History in Granite at the Center of the World, checked out some of the beautiful art installations all over Yuma, and met with more RVing friends at the end of our stay in Yuma. We met them in Maine two summers ago. George and Lynn Venezia spend a long period of time here in Yuma for the winter so it was great to see them again!

The Museum of History in Granite is an outdoor museum of  granite panels made from Missouri red granite located just over the California border in the very small town of Felicity, CA, exit 164 off of I-8. Not only is the cool granite installation of the world's history here, but also the "official center of the world" as proclaimed by Imperial County, CA, and Jacques-Andre Istel-the founder-and his former native country of France. 

standing on the center of the world!

The center of the world can be anywhere since our world is spherical, but it was fun to stand on the "official" spot, get your photo taken and receive a certificate that says you visited the pyramid and stood at the "official center of the world". Then you head out to the courtyard of monuments. A great guide, Ms. Baptiste, was very informative and enthusiastic, and filled Sparky in on some interesting facts about the founder and his compound. 

The pyramid with the sweet center spot

Jacques has a great background story. He and his family escaped the Nazis and landed in New York. From there, Jacques grew up and traveled the country, becoming a young successful entrepreneur and avid parachutist. He is renowned as the "father of American skydiving". He invented safer ways to jump and safety mechanisms for the chute and started his own parachuting company. He served in the US Marines during the Korean War. At some point, he chose the Sonoran Desert location between Yuma and San Diego to start a little town called Felicity, population 2, himself and his wife. He had a vision. He was going to perpetuate history with a series of triangular granite monuments and attract attention to his vision by proclaiming his place "The Center of the World". With his successful background and perseverance, he almost singlehandedly built this compound into the weird and unusual tourist attraction it is today. 

There are 20 triangular slabs of granite, with 700+ professionally engraved panels, with over 1,000 illustrations that are hand etched and each monument is over 100 feet long. They are arranged in a compass rose with a multilingual Rosetta Stone in the center.  A great guide at the museum said that the etchings are done by a single artist who has been with Istel for over 30 years, and the lettering is done by hand by another single artist. After etchings, the stone is painted or sort of white washed, to make the lettering and illustrations "pop". The painting has to be redone after so many years due to the relentless desert sun.

The choices of what is engraved on them, the bits of history were all chosen by Monsieur Istel. He researched extensively and chose some odd ones along with the basics, starting with the "Big Bang" and went from there, combining human accomplishments and traditional history with a bit of silliness and oddball facts. He also included some French history--the Foreign Legion and the history of French aviation. He's got Vincent Van Gogh's "The Starry Night", Sandra Day O'Connor, first woman on the Supreme Court, the first game of polo, the origin of the hamburger, and on the American History monument, he has the safety pin listed FIRST--before the airplane and the computer. George Washington is remembered for his taste in beer! Culture is almost as important as factual dates and historical events.

There is a quote from Julia Childs, famous chef--"If you are afraid of butter, use cream." Lest you think this is all just silly historical nonsense, it is not. There is an amazing progression of important information, facts, and valuable history, truly a treasure trove for future millennium.

from the church doorway

On the site is also a church high up on a manmade trapezoidal hill that is 35 feet high. It's a beautiful little church. Remarkable, because Jacques was not religious, and his mother was Jewish. He doesn't really know why he built the church, he just thought it was needed. 

inside the chapel

At the top of the church hill, you can see the layout of the compound below.

There is a piece of French culture sculpture there, too. A staircase that leads to nowhere. It's from the Eiffel Tower, a set of original iron steps! Over time the heavy iron steps caused the tower to sway, so they were replaced. The original steps were cut into 20 portions, auctioned off and Mr. Istel purchased a portion and placed it at Felicity. 

There is a Maze of Honor separate from the monuments. It's a granite walkable labyrinth that you can put your own historical remembrance with an illustration and backstory on a 12" X 12" piece of black granite for the cost of 1,000 dollars, but it will be there for eternity or somewhere close to it.

You have to remember that Jacques Istel is an amateur historian, but the immensity of this project leaves you with an admiration of his achievement and his vision. Some people might call that a bit of eccentricity, but who knows? Several thousand years from now, this place will still be standing and a glimpse into what passed before in a condensed version, will be there for someone to ponder and wonder--a"modern" day time capsule.

We highly recommend visiting this cool place. It's a little bit weird, a little bit touristy, but a whole lot of interesting to view one man's vision. It makes you wonder....What would you have included? What was left out and why? Why did he pick this event and not that? 

See you down the road....one last stop in Yuma to see some terrific art and a trip to the Prison Brewery and the famous Lutes.

Yuma Arizona

 Foothills Village RV Park. Site: 131 back in   Highs: 60's, lows: low 40's  Site: 131  AT&T very good (LTE), T-Mobile excellent--133 download, upload 79.5

Friday morning dawned cold and sunny. It was 25 degrees and after pulling in all slides and disconnecting from power, we were to have our truck hitched up to the fifth wheel ready to pull out at 8:00 AM  when the mobile repair tech (Currier Masters) would arrive to replace the front jacks. We were asked to hitch up to take the weight off the rig so he could take each jack and motor out and put the new ones in.

Just one problem. One of the jack motor's was on its last legs and it takes both front jack motors to raise the hitch up to go onto the truck. The left jack motor actually breathed its last breath and quit right then--nada, zip, zilch. The hitch was about three inches too low. No way to get the hitch up onto the truck without damaging it. 

Even though our rig is called a 5th wheel or a 5er, the part inside the bed of the truck is also called a fifth wheel, and that is what the hitch on the RV slides into when we are getting ready to pull out of a campground. It works to connect the truck to the RV. The contraption on the bottom photo is the "fifth wheel". When you are lined up correctly, (Eldo uses a variety of "sightings" to line himself up along with Sparky's recommendations of "a little more to the left", or "a little more to the right", a very precise measurement). (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA)....Eldy is rolling on the floor laughing. That narrow slot in the contraption in the bottom photo is where the round hitch pin slides up, onto and into the slot till it "clanks". Then you know you are hitched up along with a visual confirmation that it's locked in place.

the hitch pin that slides into the truck

The fifth wheel slot that accepts the hitch pin

Currier Masters, John Currier, to the rescue. He used a 3/8 socket wrench to crank up the hitch high enough to slide on and we backed up and locked in. He went to work and about two and half hours later, new jacks were on our rig! Bright, shiny and no road dirt and oil. At this point, we still can't use our automatic leveling system. When you replace the jacks, you have to recalibrate the whole leveling system. Because the drive was delayed this morning getting to Yuma, we needed to get rolling. We will wait a little bit till we have more time to set up and follow the recalibration directions using the control panel. Until then, Eldy has gotten quite good at leveling the coach manually. He uses the Lippert app called One Control. He stands outside and the app controls each jack, the lighting system, the awnings and more. It's pretty cool! He also uses a regular level to check for tilt and horizontal leveling, AND--the most tech advanced tip of all--the half bath bathroom door which is in the center of the coach. He opens it and if it stays open halfway and doesn't swing in or out, we're good!

We made it to Yuma to Foothills Village RV park. This is a nice little park and more for RVs than park models like many Encore parks are. All the sites are back ins. We would say that the majority of Encore parks cater to long term residents and require 55 and older, so usually there are a ton of annual residents and many many park models. (Park models are like tiny homes, single wide house trailers.) Also, the sites are usually extremely tight as they are older parks and were designed for smaller trailers. The sites are narrow, but not as close to your neighbors as they sometimes can be. Although the sites are narrow, they are long enough to put a 42 footer and your tow vehicle in the same site. The gentleman that guided us in got us SUPER close to the electrical post, but we had to fit between the concrete cement pad and the electrical post so that's the way it is. It's about 4 inches or less to touch the post.

After a week here, and checking the weather heading back into Cottonwood, the temperatures are so much colder in Cottonwood, we decided to extend our stay another week here in Yuma. Unfortunately, somebody was coming in to take our spot the day we were supposed to leave, so we had to switch to a 30 amp spot. The angles for the back in's are a little more challenging with a big shrub hedge in front of you, a palm tree immediately to the side of the site, and you have to back in right next to the concrete pad in order not to infringe on the neighboring site. It took a lot of backing up and forth, which wasn't working, and finally, just a drive "around the block" and pull thru from an empty site to get ourselves situated. Close.

Families are welcome here and Sparky enjoys seeing the kids play and sometimes even chatting with them. This week she met Winnie, Winston, and Willow and has been having nice conversations with them. Super well behaved and polite little youngsters. We are here for a week, and our type of membership means no out of pocket cost, it's free for this particular park. They have a very small swimming pool, a hot tub, laundry facilities, and shopping is close by. 

There are cute little cabanas at the end of each row that are available for anybody to sit in the shade, read a book, or drink a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, the next person's site is immediately behind the cabana, so it's not very private as their window looks right out on the little covered patio site.

site #131

There is a LOT of road noise, from interstate 8 and the frontage road. But Sparky doesn't mind as she wears ear plugs at night. Guess why? (Hey, now....cautions Eldo.) 

What will we do while we are here? Well, last year, Sparky climbed a mountain with the most arduous, steep elevation change, over 1200 feet. Because her sciatica has gotten worse, that might not happen this week. Phooey! It's a great cardio buster for sure! She really wanted to do it again, maybe with the help of a lot of Aleve or Tylenol.  NOTE: After going back and reading last year's blog about Telegraph Pass, Sparky decided not this time. It took over 5 hours last year, was over 5 miles, and it was grueling. You can read more about that hike and Yuma here: 

                                        A Grueling Hike

There is a bike trail down near the Yuma Territorial Prison. The prison is a great tourist stop when you are in town. We visited last year and you can read about that here: Yuma Territorial Prison The historical Yuma Prison has been rated the "best haunted destination in the US" by USA Today.

You can pick up the paved bike trail at West Wetlands Park, in northwest Yuma, about 12 miles from the RV park. It is located along the Colorado River within the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area and you can ride to the East Wetlands and back, about 4 miles each way, from the West Wetlands Park to the East Wetlands Park, which is developing a nice park at the end of that section. It's a nice short ride with a pretty starting point at the family park. 

West Wetlands Park

Shortly after leaving the family park, you see this bike sculpture. Sparky always likes to see it, because she has a brother named Charlie.

There's not much to see after that except the pretty park in the center of town, very close to the prison. Once you get out of the city park, it's riding along a canal on one side and the wetlands on the other, with the Gila Mountains in the distance.

There is a cool little ramada on the way out of the East Wetlands Park. A ramada is a shady place, a temporary shelter with a roof but no walls, traditionally built with native local materials for shade on a hot day. It had some branches across it like you weren't supposed to go inside it, but it was still possible to see what a pretty view was out in the distance, of the marshes and mountains.

Sparky took a little side route along the main bike trail and saw beautiful broccoli fields growing. Temperatures are much cooler here in the southwest, about ten degrees below normal right now, so there is more green and less brown in the areas in Arizona we've visited lately. Did you know that 90% of the nation's leafy greens comes from Arizona, specifically Yuma County. Wow! Amazing considering everywhere you look is desert, but then there are irrigation fields of green, green, and more green. It's really beautiful against the mountains backdrop and the beautiful blue skies. It's sunny most of the time here, 91% of the year! This would be a great place for someone with seasonal affective disorder! 

There are other bike rides and mapped out routes, but they are on city streets and side streets. You can always ride around the RV park, too, for the safest ride! Sparky was warned by two different people just outside a couple of old RV parks to be careful where she rode, probably because they were not in the best areas of town. All righty, then. She will.

Martha's Date Farm

You can visit Martha's Garden and date farm. We did.  It's a very low key operation as far as entertaining visitors. They have more important work to do! The visitor's center is a lean machine. It's large but open areas with a small snack area and some shelves filled with lots of different Medjool date packages--be sure to try a date shake! Medjool dates were imported to this country from Morocco in the 1940's. You can buy boxes of dates and other goodies or have them shipped, and you can take a tour if you sign up on the internet. Trying to connect with them directly by phone can be a problem due to service in the area. Tours are offered twice a day and the price is 10.00. OR--you can watch a video at the visitor center/store and learn a LOT about the date growing and harvesting process. It's pretty interesting! 

Dates have the highest polyphenols among dried fruits and have a low glycemic index for fruit lovers who struggle with blood sugar. Martha's Date Farm grows their dates organically, use no preservatives of course, and the dates are not processed. Dates grow on palms, Sparky did not know that! (Eldo will refrain from saying there are a LOT of things she doesn't know, but she will be the first to admit that, haha.) 

Medjool date palms

The process of growing and harvesting dates is a very labor intensive one, and it's all done by hand here in Yuma. The growing season is six months spring through summer. It takes about 7-10 years for a date palm to fully mature and they can produce up to 300 pounds of dates. 

There are male and female palms. The males don't produce fruit. One male date palm can pollinate 50 female palms. Hmmmmm.....Letting nature do the pollinating is too unreliable with the wind, so it's done by hand. The harvesting is August thru October and several yields result in big, beautiful dates. Dates can be frozen and thawed repeatedly with no harm done to the fruit, just in case you want the best dates in the world shipped to you from Yuma, AZ and you want to save them for the holidays.

  Sparky and Charlie

Besides a visit to the date farm, Sparky visited her brother in the beautiful city of La Quinta, CA. It was a long drive each way, but well worth it and the closes she will be to her youngest brother for a long time. We had a great visit and a great lunch, and Charlie took us for a tour around the area, visiting a nice RV park, and some areas where Charlie sells homes. We also saw the area where the Kardashians have a home, along with Tim Cook, the Apple CEO. The city of La Quinta has an amazing backdrop of mountains and so much beautiful greenery with amazing landscaping, along with cool shops and eateries. And of course, all kinds of amazing, nationally known golf courses. (Sigh)...That's Eldo missing his golf a bit.)

Charlie and Eldy

As far as things to do in Yuma, if nature is your thing, there are two national wildlife refuges in the area, the Kofa and the Imperial. The Imperial refuge has 40 miles of sand dunes where they filmed "Star Wars Episode V: Return of the Jedi", "Spaceballs", and more movies. The Colorado River offers plenty of boating and rafting/floating opportunities.

Imperial Sand Dunes

If off roading is your thing, there is the Arizona Peace Trail, over 750 miles of thrills. If history is your thing, visit the territorial prison, the Colorado River State Historical Park, the Castle Dome Mine Museum, or the Museum of History in Granite and the Center of the World, a quirky tourist attraction outside of Yuma. The granite museum is an outdoor exhibit with massive monuments crafted from Missouri red granite. And of course, there is a lot of Native American history here as well, with the Cocopah--Keepers of the River and the Quechuan--Those Who Descended- having settled the area since ancient times. If art and culture are your thing, there are colorful murals and sculptures all over Yuma's historical downtown district and public art galleries at Arizona Western College.

There are plenty of great eating spots, too! Sparky is always looking for those, haha, because she really hates to cook. We found Mr. Fish & Chips right at the corner lot at the edge of our RV park. It's a tiny place with terrific seafood and jammed every afternoon from about 4:00 on. 

Of course, you've got great Mexican restaurants all over the place. And speaking of Mexico, you can cross over to Mexico just ten miles away, at Los Algodones, to get REAL Mexican food, or great dental care and medications at a fraction of the cost in the US. It's a non-complicated process to go over and back and thousands of people do that every year to save money on prescriptions and dental work. We went to Mexico a couple of years ago, crossing the border at Nuevo Progreso. It was a little depressing at how touristy and economically depressed the area was at that location, truly not a good indicator of the true beauty and culture of Mexico. 

That being said, we have a few more days to enjoy Yuma, then we will head back to Cottonwood, cold or not, for two more weeks, because Sparky's tooth is still not ok, then we leave Arizona and start heading across the southeast through Texas and onwards. We're already planning our summer itinerary, and it looks like we will be weathering the heat in the midwest, PA and NY, then the upper peninsula of Michigan! See you down the road.... Eldy and Jeannie

More About Yuma

High: 86.  Low: 51.    Site: 113.  Foothill Village RV Park

Any time we are in an area, we try to learn more about it if we haven't been there before. Yuma has some interesting facts about it that perhaps you didn't know.

If you like salads, chances are that the lettuce/greens in it were grown in Yuma. More than 91% of North America's leafy greens are grown on Yuma farms. Agriculture is a 4 BILLION  dollar industry here.

There are two military installations here, the Marine Corps Air Station Yuma and the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Grounds. Can't beat the superb flying weather! The Yuma air show is every March, and is one of the area's most popular. Yuma is the "sunniest place on earth", according to the Guiness Book of World Records. The sun shines 339 days a year! Year long average high is 88. 

Sparky is going to try to check out a biking trail/path or two with the few remaining days left. There is a LOT of hiking in the area. Many trails require "high clearance" vehicles to get to the trailhead so that means very rocky, rough backroads to get there. We don't like to take our truck on those roads, even if we could. Just too rough.

If you get the local magazines from the Visitor's Center, or consult the All Trails app, you will find them.

The other beautiful guide with SO much useful information, is the Arizona "Yuma" Magazine.

There are three national wildlife refuges in the area: Kofa, Imperial, and Cibola. If you visit these areas, you MIGHT see bighorn sheep, wild burros, desert tortoises, bobcats, and many different bird species. We went to the Kofa Refuge and it was all desert and really rough driving roads as far as we could see. There's Mittry Lake Wildlife Area with three scenic mountain range backdrops. There are three casinos in the area if you are feeling lucky. The Center of the World is here in Felicity, CA, just a few miles away--one of those kitschy road side attractions you won't want to miss. The eccentric owner has built granite slabs etched with the entire history of the planet with unique formations of the stone. There's Martha's Date Farm, where you can get a delicious date shake and a tour. Check out the Imperial Sand Dunes National Recreation Area. It's on the Bravo TV list of "22 Essential Places to Take a Selfie Before You Die". This is one of the most popular off road riding areas in the country and the terrain used in a couple of the Star Wars movies. And of course, the Colorado River is here for boating and fishing activities. Then there's the gustatory scene--many great Mexican restaurants and other delicious offerings! So many things to see and do, and not enough time to do them. 

Hiking to Telegraph Pass

One awesome challenging hike is just a couple of miles down the road from the Foothill Village RV Park where we were staying. About three miles from the park, on North Frontage Road, is Telegraph Pass. It's about a 5.3 mile hike total up to Telegraph Pass and back down. The trails aren't marked at all, but most lead one way or another to get you to the base kiosk where the trail REALLY gets serious. It doesn't look too bad here at the left, you are heading for the towers at the top of the mountain. And the serious climb begins....

Once you get to the base of the mountain where the kiosk and fencing are, which has some elevation from the parking lot, but not bad, you then take an old paved gravel/cement road which travels almost vertically to the top where the electrical towers are. It is a GRUELING  climb and Sparky's heart rate got up to over 152 bpm just with every few feet of elevation change. Lots of very sharp switchbacks.

But she wanted to complete the hike to the top, a total of over 1220 feet in elevation. Getting closer to the top!

The one thing that spurred her on, was a young woman with a BABY in a loose slung baby carrier across her front. There were also two guys who JOGGED to the top and back down TWICE while Sparky was navigating her way to the top. GEESH! And--Eldo was sending Sparky encouraging words, "YOU CAN DO IT!" which really helped while she was huffing and puffing. Believe it or not, there was a cellphone signal just about all the way. That was a good thing, in case Sparky should fall off the mountain, but seriously, the trail was fairly wide, no worries there. (WHEW! says Eldo. I always worry about her.) And....here was the payoff at the top....

Sparky made it!

It took her almost 5 hours to climb to the very top and back down, but it was worth it! The next day, time for a bike ride....Sparky has no idea who Yuma "Charles" is, but because she has a brother, Charlie, she liked this bike and so took this photo. Her Charlie is a BIG bike rider! He just competed in a 100 mile bike ride in the California desert last week!

Bike trail past Yuma Prison State Park

Sparky checked out recreational bike riding in Yuma, and it's kind of chopped up as far as how you can ride for any distance, but you can get a lot of miles in by mixing up the trails and spurs.  Ride a little ways on one paved trail, pick up another spur, ride along the canals or levees for awhile, ride through the city parks closely connected to each other,  pick up another spur, etc. You also can ride very quickly (less than 6 miles?) between a set of city parks. One of the nicer riding areas is in the West Wetlands Park. 

West Wetlands Park

Some of the park is under construction, but a lot of it is completed. Beautiful duck pond, an awesome children's castle playground and plenty of space to ride around to check out some things at the park, like the Solar Garden--simply an array of solar panels fenced in with metal plates posted on the fencing with awesome Native American signs/designs/motifs all the way around it.

Solar Garden

a Yuma bike trail

We will say that our current park location, which is east outside of Yuma, in the unincorporated Foothill Village area, is a bit of a drive to do so many of these things. You have to hop on I-8 and drive 15-25 miles or more to get to trails and it's about 14 miles to downtown Yuma and the California border, so just keep that in mind. Be sure to check out Slab City, or "The Slabs" near Niland, CA, 1.5 hour drive from Yuma, a VERY kitschy famous American road side attraction. 

It's an off-the-grid alternative bohemian lifestyle community consisting of mostly snowbirds in the Salton Trough area of the Sonoran Desert. Supposedly 3500 people winter in "The Slabs".   During the rest of the year, about 50-100 people live there year round. The entry section looked like people REALLY down on their luck to us. Dusty full junk yards, a real mishmash of stuff. Maybe a couple of eccentric snowbirds in the bunch, but the living conditions seemed pretty destitute with the RV's we saw. But, for the residents, they are absolutely fine with their lifestyle. No judging meant here, to each his own, whatever you are comfortable with! There were all kinds of yard art laying around, heavily painted and decorated with biblical sayings and thoughts. 

There were more RVs appearing to be clustered farther away. There are actually 3 parts to the Slabs--a religious art installation, the East Jesus Sculpture Garden, and the "city" itself. The community started in 1942. If you look deeper, you would find artists, homesteaders, and retirees living off the grid. More power to them, to be able to do that in the desert! There are NO city services, no water, no electricity, no garbage. You live there, you pack it in, you pack it out, or make it on site. Sparky loved all the paint cans left that were used. They were very much apart of the art.

The Salvation Mountain religious art installation was very interesting.

 Leonard Knight, the "founder" of the community, loved Jesus and believed in asking for forgiveness. He felt compelled to build a monument out of sand and adobe attesting to his beliefs, hence the Mountain. It is crumbling and decaying a bit and was damaged recently by a storm, (they have storms in sunny, sunny Yuma????) we are not sure if they are trying to maintain that part of the area or not. Leonard died in 2014, but seven volunteers keep the site going. There is a library, too, that takes book donations and has a list of desired items on an Amazon list! What a place! This guy seems to be connected to the world in his own way....

And with that, we head back to Tucson, AZ for another couple of weeks where Sparky will revisit the Loop biking trails and we will enjoy a little bit cooler weather now that we are away from the Mexican border. See you later!