We are still at Hi Jolly, a free 14 day, camping area about 3 miles north of Quartzsite. We have an appointment for service work on the motor home on Tuesday at 7am. We will go to the shop tomorrow afternoon and hook up and be ready for service early the next morning.

We will attend the HTC luncheon on Tuesday while they are working on the coach. We had not planned on being in town for the luncheon, but service work is a must.

We went into town this afternoon for dinner at the Mountain Quail Cafe. This is a little mom and pop type eatery that puts out quite good food at a reasonable price. It will seat about 50 or so and it is always full, at least every time we have been there.

Not a lot going on in the big town of Quartzsite, other than an election the first week of March. It seems, by the editorials in the local free paper, that the city council are all crooks and out to bankrupt the town, so it seems. They want to throw the bums out of office and put some real people in there that will do the work of the people. Sounds like the same old thing everywhere. You wonder how those bums got in there in the first place, or did they become bums after they got into office. So it goes all over the country. Here, they can vote all 8 of them out at the same time. I only wish that the country could do the same in Washington.

So, it is back on the road tomorrow and burn up some more of that expensive fuel. We filled up here in Quartzsite for $3.55 a gallon. Who knows where it will end up.

The rally was over last evening with a great group, the Breeze. It was 4 fellows and 1 gal and they were from San Diego. They played and sang music from the 60's and 70's that we all remembered well. Many were moved to dancing, some quite well.

The music was held inside the building on the stage which made it a lot better for them as they were out of the cool wind and we were much warmer as well.

Overall the rally was not very good. Some of the things they had planned did not come to pass. For one, a horseshoe pitching contest did not happen as there were no horseshoe pits on the grounds. You might think that someone would have checked that out before the rally.

So it went with other things. They had a golf outing and they got the scores mixed up and therefore the prizes were awarded to the wrong guys????

The rally was headed up by a nice guy, but he was a professional DJ. This was clearly out of his realm. He admitted that this was his first rally to head up or even attend, so what would you expect.

Our photos are of a dairy we passed coming in to Yuma. They raise alfalfa for the cows to eat and bale it and store it in huge stacks. In the Yuma valley there is hundreds of acres of all type of veggies growing.

We saw cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, head lettuce, red lettuce and maybe radishes. All growing in rows with irrigation for water and nutrients. Probably not much nutrition left in the soil as it is cultivated year round.

We are currently back in Quartzsite for a few days before returning to Mesa and then back to Yuma for the Gypsy Journal Rally.

This is day two of the Passport America Rally. They served breakfast and there was a golf outing for those interested as well as a couple of seminars and a Western Hamburger dinner with onion rings, etc. The hamburgers were half pounders with onions, pickles, and other condiments. All quite tasty as well as filling.

Our entertainment was a Country & Western band that had just returned from New Zealand on tour. Afterwards they retired to the big building to play bingo again tonight.

As I indicated earlier, it is not very well organized or coordinated as there are two or three things going on at the same time and you can not be in that many places at the same time. And since they are not duplicated you just have to miss out on some of them.

The weather is getting warmer during the day but it really cools off after the sun goes down and you have to put on two or three layers of clothes to keep even a little bit warm. More comfortable to just go to the motor home and enjoy the heater.

Tomorrow, it is donuts at 8am and then we will see what else is going on.

This was the first full day of the Passport America rally. We had the opening ceremonies and a nice dinner last evening and a drawing for some door prizes.

This morning they had coffee and donuts with the vendors being open at 9am. We went in and visited the vendors, many we had seen at previous rallies. The couple manning the NOMAD booth was a couple from Cherokee Village and Evelyn had known them for years thru their affiliation with the Methodist Church. They had a long visit, catching up on things. They spend the winter months here in Yuma, away from the cold and ice in Arkansas. They still maintain a home there and travel during the winter months.

Entertainment was a nice Country & Western band out on the outside stage. It was too cool for us, after the sun went down, so we came home. Afterwards they were to play Bingo and Texas Holdem poker witch neither interested us so we stayed home where it was warm.

Evelyn attended a seminar on traveling to Alaska and found it interesting and some places we did not visit on our trip in 04. Tomorrow there will be a golf outing for those interested and seminars, etc. for the others and a cook out tomorrow evening along with more entertainment. We will see what the weather does and maybe we will brave it ourselves.

Well, the Yuma hamfest is over. It started yesterday from noon to 5pm. We had a pretty good afternoon, being Friday. They had predicted rain for the night and today so things were a bit iffy as far as the crowd was concerned.

We got up early to get ready to go in and it started to rain about 6:30am and it rained harder and harder until it was just pouring. There was lightning and thunder and all that goes with a good old mid western storm. It finally stopped about 7:15 and we went into the building to open up and start business when the public was let in at 8am. Guess what, at about 8:05 am the power went out. Fortunately the building has sky lights in it so we could see pretty well, but without power, we were dead in the water, so to speak.

They checked and found out that the complete grid we were in was out from a lightning strike and they did not know when it would be back on. There were people coming in that stayed in hotels on the north side of I8 and they had power but as soon as they got on the south side of the interstate, everything was out, traffic signals, etc. Traffic was difficult at least.

The locals said that when something like this happens, it is usually hours to a few days before things are back on. Sometimes they have to drive to Phoenix to get transformers, etc. to fix the problem as these things seldom, if ever happen in this area. Yuma gets less than 3 inches of rain a year and a storm like this happens very seldom.

Alas, about 10:30 the power came back on and things soon got under way and the sky cleared and the sun came out and it was a nice, but cool day. They even went so far as to bring in a couple of generators from RV's that were here to power lights and projectors for a couple of buildings where they were holding seminars.

After all was said and done, we had a pretty good weekend and made some gas money so we can get on down the road. Fuel is getting higher out here, in the $3.25 range per gallon.

We are supposed to be out of the fairgrounds by noon, but they mentioned that the Passport America group is coming in tomorrow for a rally next week. Evelyn will check and see if we can stay and join them as we are Passport members as well. Time will tell. If not, we may go back to Quartzsite for a few days and wait on a call about our springs that are supposed to be on order.

It has been cold and damp here and we are trying to get warmed up so we can go to bed and really get warmed up with the electric blanket.

We are finally back on the road. We had been suffering from a case of "hitch itch" for several days.

You may know we have had a problem towing the van since we put new tires on the back of the motor home. It was very difficult to keep the two on the road. It seemed that the tail was wagging the dog. We had the front end of the van aligned and it was all ok. We went back to the tire people and had them rotate the front tires to the left rear as the right front tire was wearing on the outside and the left front tire was wearing on the inside. Not thinking that that would really help the situation we made arrangements to have the front suspension on the motor home aligned.

As usual, they could not get to it until this morning, 7am. We needed to be in Yuma this evening to set up for a hamfest in the morning. When I described the problem with the shop foreman, he immediately said it was not an alignment problem as the tires would either wear on the outside or the inside of both tires alike. Bud he assured me he would figure it out.

When they checked it out, it was a tracking problem. The center bold in the left rear leaf spring had broken and the leaves in the spring slipped and the left side of the rear axle moved forward causing the motor home to "dog track". The main leaf spring on the left side was worn almost 50% thru and the right rear spring was wearing as well due to the broken center bolt. He is trying to find a new set of springs for us, none are available on the west coast. He did replace the center bolt and align the rear axle, but the springs still need to be replaced. $$$$ Hopefully he can find something in the next few days.

Otherwise, we are here in Yuma at the County Fairgrounds, across from the air field where the Harrier jets and the tankers are practicing landings and they fly directly over us and are they noisy.

The hamfest runs from noon to 5pm on Friday and 8 to 5 on Saturday, so hopefully we will be busy.