A little of this, a little of that - Yuma

Last week we had high winds and dust storms followed by an odd occurance for Yuma - rain. Being past camp hosts in Oregon and hence considered experts in the quality of rain, I must say we were impressed. For almost a full 24 hours we had a steady albeit light rain fall; some say it seemed like the yearly rainfall for Yuma all wrapped into one day. After the 3 days of strong winds and dust storms it was a welcome relief and an air cleanser for sure. Now to dispose of the sand dunes inside the motorhome.

One of the questions we got this past month is “What neat things have you seen?” and that brings us to a confession of sorts. For the most part, we have tended to stay close to the motorhome and not really do the tourist thing. We work on our hobbies, read, do maintenance and basically just kick back. It boils down to what we are doing and full-timing is a lifestyle, not just a never ending vacation. Shoot, if we stayed in vacation mode every day we would quickly become totally exhausted and definitely pennyless. So, we do what most people do in a home, ours just has wheels and okay, yea, we go vacation mode alot more often.

Case in point, my sister and brother-in-law will be arriving down here in about a week and in anticipation of their vacation, we have put off visiting some of the more popular sights so we have something we can experience together. I figure this coming month will be our vacation too. Of course that doesn't mean we haven't already done some neat stuff on our own.

As you might have gathered in our last entry “Observations” we do spend a good deal of time people watching and in order to do so, we have had to visit those places where people tend to congregate. While Walmart can be an outstanding place to observe the human condition, another more realistic one is a venue called The Arizona Marketplace. This outdoor flea market initially had us envisioning something like the massive market we found in Quartzsite last year. Sadly, that wasn't the case during our first visit with vendors outnumbering the shoppers probably 2 to 1. At first I was a bit confused, here we were in a relatively warm, sheltered marketplace with all sorts of things to see and yet there weren't very many people. Okay, I'm just a tad slow – the reason there were so few people was they were all at the show in Quartzsite! Since the RV show concluded things have picked up in earnest and our weekly visit to the marketplace is now often met crowds that make it difficult to walk the aisles without bumping into someone.

On the bright side, the large number of people make for excellent people watching conditions and unlike Walmart we get the added bonus of the occasional people with pets. Interesting side note here: things can get really fun if you happen to have a squeaky toy. Not that I would ever carry a squeaky toy – out in the open. We'll leave it at that.

Tonight we'll be cooking outdoors. Nothing special since we usually do so when the weather allows. I only mention it because we will be dining with the sunset.