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.

MEMORIES OF YUMA.

Yuma was the first place I stayed with Jim when my kids thought I’d taken up with an ax murderer. Well, not really, but they were very protective and worried about me taking up with a man they didn’t know. Thus the blog for me I started in December of 2008. I have happy memories of the green, green fields of Yuma, biking along the canals, and beautiful Bougainvillea growing like wild in this city. Right after lunch, we went in search and on the way found an Elks Club. We were astonished that they have 1600 members. Many of them are snowbirds. We stopped for a beer but the minute someone lit up a cigarette we hastily left.

This is the Bougainvillea from January, 2009. I’m shocked at what  poor pictures I got from my little camera. When we drove by, the bush had been chopped to practically nothing with no blooms on it.

And, green fields in Yuma are visible everywhere it seems. The big lettuces, cabbages, spinach and kale we didn’t find, except for this already harvested iceberg lettuce.

And, of course, this is what I was expecting to see, also from January 2009.

There is still a lot of green.

What appears to be a small lettuce of some type.

I believe this is alfalfa. No denying the green, but the fields of memory we could not find. Ah, what the wise men say is true. You can’t go home again.

We are parked at the Quechen Indian Casino and each day look up at the Mission Church associated with the Yuma Territorial prison.

Last night, so typical of this part of the country, the scene turned to caramel.

Then it darkened.

And reddened, good night. Probably boring pictures but like a tv screen, the sunsets just attract your eye and we are so happy we get to enjoy them.