Happy Thanksgiving from Yuma, Arizona

Last year we celebrated Thanksgiving in Junction, Texas.  This year we’re in Yuma, Arizona; we arrived Tuesday from San Diego.  I love the Southern California climate -- the air actually feels soft.  And there are so many things to see/do.  But there are too many people and too much traffic.  And so we are back in Arizona.

As I write, I am sitting outside our motor home in the sun at the Yuma Proving Ground “Desert Breeze” campground (a misnomer today because the wind must be a zero miles per hour).  I’m watching a gaggle of ruby-throated hummingbirds dive bomb each other as they fly back and forth between feeders attached to two nearby rigs. I’m also looking at brown mountains with a view of a single saguaro cactus, shrubby bushes, a lot of beige rocks and sand and -- because we are on a military base, after all -- a chain link fence.

Last Thanksgiving I quasi cooked a holiday dinner (main dish:  turkey sandwiches) but this year we had a full blown TDay meal at the Yuma Proving Ground base restaurant, the “Cactus Cafe,” for $14.95 each. Jim wasn’t sure he wanted to “eat out” -- he said he didn’t think he couldn’t eat $14.95 worth of food. My position was that I couldn’t make ham, turkey and all the fixings for $14.95 times two. Besides the fact that while Jim is a great cleaner upper, he is not a cooker.  We ate out. Like they say, happy wife, happy life.  And Jim liked his dinner.

We sat with a couple from New Hampshire who for the last three years have lived year round in Welton -- about 30 miles east of Yuma -- in their 34-foot fifth wheel with three slides.  Before that they'd done a lot of traveling and even spent 14 winters living in their rig on BLM land near here and returning to New Hampshire each summer.  Now they are having health problems and can't drive much (the man recently had a defibrillator and a pacemaker put in.  Jim said something along the lines of "how's that working for you?" to which the man replied "I'm alive." That's a taciturn New England thumbs up, I think.)  They advised us to do as much as we could while we were "still young." And whenever we are in a motor home park, I do feel young comparatively speaking. 

Bev's Thanksgiving dinner is on the right.  I made up for less food on my plate by later adding  pumpkin pie AND carrot cake. It was good, but not near as good as I'm sure Bev's Ohio family had today in Brecksville.  Nor was it as good as the huge friends and family dinners we have in Salt Lake City.  I bought a turkey breast I'll do in the crock pot tomorrow so we can still have "leftovers."

Bev and Jim inside the Cactus Cafe. To the left is the buffet line and behind us are maybe left over Halloween decorations?  Photo was taken by hostess Ana Rosa, whose usual job is working in the base gymnasium.

Bev in front of the Yuma Proving Ground's Cactus Cafe.  I told Jim we need action shots and not just "Here's Bev/Jim standing in front of [insert name of object here]."  I'll work on that. But most of what we do is hike/walk/read/look/repeat.  Not alot of fast action.