Our Veterans' Day

There’s a big display of military vehicles and equipment on the road to the Yuma Proving Ground entrance gate.  We’ve been meaning to stop and take a look, and decided to do that on Veteran’s Day.  It was a sampling of missiles, tanks, launchers and other equipment all tested at the Yuma Proving Ground.

Then we drove in to Yuma and walked around the historic downtown area. It’s near the Colorado River; a 1916 flood pretty much melted all the then-adobe buildings.  Now historic downtown has a large art center, some second hand shops, a book store, pottery shops, courtyards, sidewalk patios, and lots of restaurants, but unfortunately also many of empty stores.

We had lunch downtown at a place called “The Pint House” where our waitress kept explaining the problems she was having learning her job (Can I see how that’s written on the menu because if I don’t write it down exactly, the cook will yell at me; I just turned 21 so I don’t know anything about the beer). If we’d been in a hurry it might have been a problem, but she was cutely inept.  She'll learn.  And the food was good. 

Back at the Yuma Proving Grounds campground, we met new neighbors from Vancouver, Washington.  We see a lot of Washington State license plates here plus Canadian ones -- a tourist brochure we saw claims about 700,000 Canadians spend the winter in Yuma.

Bev uncomfortably posing in front of a missile launcher not far from the main gate to the Yuma Proving Ground.  Camp Laguna -- now the Yuma Proving Ground -- was the first of several Arizona desert training centers established during World War II.

A wider shot of the equipment display.  In the center is a Sherman tank, aka "Ol War Horse."

This field of kale was right along US 95 on the way into Yuma.   Besides kale we saw red and green leaf lettuce and lots of baled cotton.

This former post office in historic downtown Yuma was built in 1933. It's one of the larger buildings in that part of town. 

A fountain and desert garden grace a traffic roundabout in downtown historic Yuma. The 1950s was the most thriving time for downtown, but then like with many places, shopping moves to the outskirts.  The current  big shopping area is the Yuma Palms Regional Center just of I-8; it has all the usual mall stores along with a Sam’s Club.