MY FIRST DUTY HOME.

I love being on the road. And, I had to come home, but my first duty home was to stop by my local grocery and grab a six-pack of Black Butte Porter. I was only out for a short stay but a girl's gotta have access to a decent dark, chewy, hoppy beer once in awhile.  (Jim calls it motor oil.) Even the stores where we shopped didn't have a decent craft beer I could buy.


Another thing they didn't have was an olive bar. Those little French picholines, dark green, spiced Scicilians, Greek, kalamatas,  Spanish sevillanos, luccas, manzanillos,  yummmy.

My trip home was smooth. My cameras was deep in my carry on and I didn't take pictures from the plane, but the rice fields and canals and flooded fields from the air, gave the impression there is no water shortage in California. All the lakes and reservoirs had yellow soil lines showing how low the levels are. We had never heard of a 500 year drought record until this year. Now we know what it is like. Summer in winter. Not good. So little snow.
 Time to deepen my well.  Get ready to pay higher food prices as the drought continues.
A group of Churches and faith healers are up on a nearby  peak as I write to send up prayers for rain today. I'm not a believer in such things, but I don't oppose the effort. Jim's son is quite willing to send some snow our way, but, as we know that doesn't work either. Time to move to Alaska, but they don't have olive bars or BBP there. Whatsa girl to do?

WETLANDS DRIVE AND SUPERBOWL.

Just below the prison, an area known as East Wetlands stretches up to the base of a mountain range along the Colorado River.


Wetlands suggest birds to me, but we didn't see any. I expect we would during the great migration from Mexico and South America.


Much of the water here is provided by the Colorado River and flows through man-made canals.

The terrain changed from low brush to high brush and later to the growing fields under lease or private ownership on what was signed as BLM land.


Now that's green and we saw miles of it.


A group harvesting lettuce are probably not interested in Super Bowl Sunday. The boss of this crew whistled at me and indicated that I should not to take pictures of them.


I got to see all that green I was longing to see.


Various colors of green as in broccoli.


Kale.


Purple lettuce, too.


On our previous stay in Yuma, we had grapefruit just like this hanging over the motor home where we were parked. Oranges, too.


This bougainvillea doesn't compare in size to the one we walked past every morning, but there are many beautiful bushes in bloom to enjoy around town.


After our drive, we returned to town and stopped at the VFW to have a beer and a peek at the Superbowl.


We wore our grubbies, knowing we'd have to wash what we wore and take showers to get rid of the smoke. People are nice. Jim befriended Cathy Shrader in the weeks before I arrived and wanted me to meet her. Nice gal, fun to talk to. A widow like me, hesitant about on-line dating as I was.


The VFW was set up for a party, but the game hadn't started.


I jokingly asked a woman who she was rooting for. Her answer was this. We visited for an hour and left. We never did see anything but pre-game talk on the big screen television. Before going to bed, I called my kids to see who won.