I got these pictures posted in the wrong order and I can't figure out how to put them in the right order so please put up with me. It starts with the employees walking behind a conveyor belt and cutting the brocoli or cabbage off and placing it on the belt. It goes up the belt where they trim and box them. Goes on another belt in the box where they put the lids on the box and place the boxes on the flat bed truck. When the truck is full it goes to the warehouse.
















































This is a cotton gin plant. The yellow stacks are the cotton
seeds and the white is the cotton bales.








This is the elementary school in Quartzsite. A big 2 story building very few windows. So plain looking.










A front yard in Quartzsite. there is also a alligator and what
you can't see is the elephant. The picture below is the
typical front yard only more so. Usually it is just crushed
rock with big rocks winding thru for paths.













This is our new hood ornament. The dove just sat there while we got in the car. Then he flew away.






The old and the new. RV 's out in the desert and then across the street you see this new house. It just doesn't belong here. The porch goes all the way around it both upstairs and down.









This blog post is so missed up but I have had some real computer problems this evening. Well I guess the computer problems stem from me not being smart enough to figure it out. Hope you can follow thru it and hopefully I will figure it out by my next blog.

Our plan is to go to CA this week for a couple of days and sorta see CA in parts. This week it is San Diego to LA.

My therapy has been slowed because I over did it and now we think I have some inflamation in it (for the last 3 weeks) so when I ride in the car I use my sling again and it feels much better.

This blog goes into the next one. Thanks for stopping by.

OUr day trip to see the fireworks in the mountains

Can you see the green grass in the picture? It is a golf green. They have a tunnel under the road for the golfers. But the amazing thing is that the greens are interspersed among the mountains. You would have to be a good golfer or use brightly colored golf balls.




This is the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City. Uncle Earl and Uncle Wilbert met there during WWII and carved their initials in it, but when they moved it to the US they cleaned it up . This is the "MAINE" light house in the light house park there.

I


OK so I got carried away with the sea gulls. But, it was a challenge to me. My camera is slow so I was snapping a lot of pictures trying to get a good one. I think I got some good ones but, you should see the ones I discarded some were pretty funny.


Loved this huge tree in the park. This was just one of the fireworks in the mountains. See the sunset behind the
mountain. And this ground display reminded me of palm trees. This was for Presidents Day Celebration they did it for 3 nights.

Swastikas on the Colorado

We had to make a U-turn and go back to take this picture. How often do you see a sign like this in Kansas???
This was on the Yuma Proving Ground across from the Yuma Army Base.



ANOTHER HISTORY LESSON--Local lore has it that WWII German POWS put the swastikas on this bridge when they helped renovate this area while being held prisoners in a camp close to Yuma. But, that wasn't true. The US government put them there in 1903. When the crossbars went to the RIGHT it was a symbol of the sun, fire and lightning for the peoples from Scandinavia to India and on to China. Crossbars bent to the LEFT is a bad luck symbol to some nations. These swastika's actually came when our government went to India to find out how to build a dam on this soil. The Hindu god Indra represented thunder, lightening and rain (it's the girl with 4 arms) with the power to control water. It was adopted by the USRS as there symbol. They even had a flag with that symbol on it. Remember this was before Hitler.
The US recommended the dam and bridge, outlet, be built for an irrigation system in this area. This was the first dam built by the government on the Co river. The USRS, United States Reclamation Service, this was before Hitler and the dark side of the swastikas. During WWII people tried to destroy the dam and bridge because of the swastikas so they had to post guards to protect it. Other bridges were being built with swastikas also but are no longer around. This is the only bridge left that people can see them but are not allowed access to them.
When we saw the bridge we couldn't believe what we were seeing and we were upset that it was there. So when we got home we had to look it up. Now we feel better about it and have learned the difference between the crossbars being bent Right or Left. The USRS no longer uses that as a symbol.

Patty we usually know nothing about the sites we see, we have books - but don't have them with us on our day trips- so we ask people around us at the site or look it up when we get home.

The story of the Fruit Offender and pictures

This is the registered fruit offender. We stopped at a fresh fruit stand just a little north of Yuma, AZ we bought grapefruit, tomatoes, and oranges. We decided to take another road home to see different sites and CA was it. We were in line for the border crossing and when we pulled up she asked Phil to open the tail gate she looked in and saw the beets, carrots, cabbage there and then asked to check the back seat where she saw the oranges and grapefruit. The oranges said grown in CA so they were OK the grapefruit just said USA. So she took the bag and said follow me. Phil had to show his drivers license (which they took the # down) and wrote up a "rejection" and we had to go to the next exit and go back into AZ. OH yes, we could have left the fruit there but NO Phil couldn't do that.

These are called ugly oranges. No really that is there name. To me they looked like orange hedge apples. Well let's just say they didn't taste much better than they looked.
We had a garage sale in our park over the weekend. Phil had told me about this before we came to Quartzsite and said we could sale a lot of our junk, so we carried it to Az. We set out a few things on our little table. We sold 1 item. We made $25.00. That is what Phil told me any way I never seen it.
I like to see these Spanish churches
Christmas always in Quartzsite. This tree is in front of a Mexican Cafe they served sauerkraut as a special one day.
This is a dinosaur. Well it is a mountain that looked like one to me.
Phil liked this mountain. I mean it is pretty neat it just comes to an end and then desert.
Broken windmill and well in the desert.
Isn't this just the coolest picture of a cactus!!! The hole is a birds nest.

The Farm North of Yuma, AZ

Found this road side farm just south of McPhaul Bridge and North of Yuma.

We had been seeing fields of cabbage, lettuce, beets, brocoli and carrotts growing.

So we stopped to buy some cabbage. It was cheaper to pick your own so Phil set out to pick.
















Phil had a great time picking the cabbage, probably to much fun we came home with 5 HUGE heads. $1 a head. One HUGE head doesn't fit into our fridge. We gave a couple away and thank goodness it is cooler outside this week, we left the others outside.

The brocoli was to far gone. Carrots hard to dig out but, we got our $1 worth.














This machine was setting over a field of brocoli but it looks to me like it could pick other crops also. The pickers stand behind it and place the crops on the belt and it falls into a box someone is carrying. OK I don't know that is how it is done but that is the way it looks to us.













This is a stump stove. You start a fire in the bottom hole
and it burns up inside the stump. Cool isn't it!





Had a great time seeing things on the way to Yuma so when we got to Yuma we had to turn around and return home. So we will have to see Yuma another day.

More pictures and sites in another blog.

The McPhaul Bridge to nowhere

WOW when I saw this bridge I immediately thought of the Golden Gate Bridge. So we drove up to the road block sign and got out of the car and, of course, climbed over the sign and got close to the bridge.

It was really fascinating to see up close. I mean look at these nuts and bolts holding the suspension cable to the cement structure.


























The bridge was built in 1928 to cross the Gila River so people, mostly miners, who before the bridge had to pay a high price to cross the river by ferry.





It was built before the Golden Gate Bridge (which was built in 1933) as a prototype or inspiration for the Golden Gate.

They were designed by the same designer.

It is so narrow, but, pictures I have seen show travel both ways. Yes the first autos were smaller than todays.



I tried to show the construction of the bridge with the 2 x 4's. Which was also the death of the bridge. Transients are said to have a started a campfire on the bridge which made it unsafe to travel.

The bridge was also used my General Patton when he brought tanks and troops over the bridge.