Mexico Day Trip

Corn rows while you wait

Los Algodones, Mexico, is a short trip from Yuma, Arizona, and only about 55 miles from where we are staying. Most folks park on the US side and walk in. Given its easy access and the number of snowbirds in Yuma, it has become a haven for selling trinkets and certain items that tend to be expensive in the US and Canada, such as medicines, eyeglasses, and dental work.

A lot if the good sold is typical tourist stuff, cut sheet metal birds and butterflies, Mexican hats, and wool rugs, blankets, and serapes.

The new spectacles

On Friday, 1/25, we tripped over there with Rusty and Mary Ann Stuckey. Consuelo had a new eye prescription and wanted to get glasses there. She called ahead and made an appointment for 10:30, for which we would have been late if our friends had not reminded us that they were on Arizona time, one hour ahead of us. As it was, she didn't need an appointment, since we had a prescription with us. She picked progressive lenses in a medium priced frame, with Transitions solar coating for $139, most likely a bargain from prices in the states.

While the lenses were being made, which took 2-1/2 hours, we walked the streets looking at the goods and finding a few things for the grandkids. I picked up a Patriots cap for $10, and Consuelo found a large, colorful bowl to brighten up our kitchen in Maine when we get back there.

A lunch visitor

After that, we found a place to have some mediocre Mexican food in an open air restaurant, where we were swarmed with vendors selling anything they could carry to the table. At one point, Consuelo told me that a young Mexican boy had come up behind me while we were sitting at the table, probably looking for something to slip out of my pocket. I took out the cell phone and got a snapshot of him, which he found amusing.

After lunch, we picked up the glasses, and looked for a particular tequila drink that everybody seems to like, without success. Consuelo found a pretty blue bottle in the liquor store, which we bought, then discovered back home was much like the drink we couldn't find. We should have bought more!

Standing in line to return

The most annoying part of visiting Algodones is the wait to cross back over into the US. Customs had 4 guards on duty checking passports and documents with reasonable rapidity, but Rusty and I still waited in line for an hour and 20 minutes, the ladies waiting on a bench near the gate for us to saunter through the line.

Farm Smart Tour

Touring the fields

We've generally been loafing here in the Yuha Desert in Southern California. Yeah, we've done a few things to maintain the motorhome, kept up our 2-mile-per-day walking average, and Consuelo has knitted up a bunch of slippers for friends and to sell (about 15 pair). As a diversion, we signed up for a farm tour at the University of California Experimental Farm in El Centro.

California has a dozen or so experimental farms throughout the state. Most are in the central valley, an area that produces most of the 350 commodities in the state. Agricultural researchers offer up projects to develop strains of plants, test theories on controlling insects, or to study beneficial catalysts like nematodes. The university reviews the projects, selects appropriate ones for study, and provides infrastructure to implement them.

Siphoning lessons

El Centro is the desert farm, offering the dry hot environment and flood irrigation to each plot to grow plants and run tests. Most studies take place in 4-5 months, after which the ground is plowed under and made ready for the next crop.

Irrigation is an important factor in growing, and since El Centro receives less than 3 inches of rain every year, this farm is a good environment to study effects of varying water on the crop. In the Imperial Valley, irrigation water flows from the Colorado River via the All-American Canal which starts in Yuma, AZ. Farmers place water orders in the morning, and the next day the watermaster delivers the water via gates and locks and a few reservoirs to the little canal on the southwest corner of the farmer's land. The farmer opens his gate and manages it on his farm, routing it through his fields and starting siphon tubes to run it to specific rows. Every irrigated field in the Imperial Valley has drain tile installed under it at 10 foot intervals, which helps collect the runoff that seeps into the field and diverts it to the waste canals, which carry it away to the Alamo River and on to the Salton Sea.

Art picking, Sharon watching

We got a 10 minute overview, then split up into two groups of about 40 people. Our group went off to see the fields, hear about some of the specific experiments, see the weather station that feeds info to the world (changing weather in the Imperial Valley is a concern to the commodities markets in New York), and learn how siphon tubes are started and managed. We then stopped at the farm's vegetable plot, where we picked beets, carrots, and radishes. They took us back, where we had a chef salad for lunch and then switched with the other group. As they left for the fields, we went to the lecture hall where we heard about some of the specifics of agriculture in the valley. We also saw a movie about the management of water in the Colorado River, now a more valuable resource than ever. After that, they drew tickets for door prizes and we went home.

Consuelo picks Dikon Radishes

We ended up with two cabbages, two heads of cauliflower and lettuce, small bunches of carrots and radishes, and a good bunch of beets. We'll be hard pressed to eat it all, but we had fun, learned some things, and are really enjoying the salads and meals we're making from it. It is further inspiration to plant a garden in Maine when we get back there in the spring.

El Centro & Imperial Valley, CA

El Centinala
or Signal Mountain

January brings us to Rio Bend RV Park in El Centro, CA. This is a typical big snowbird park just 10 miles north of the Mexican border. We chose this one because our friends Art and Sharon Bonertz from Pincher Creek, Alberta, Canada were going to be here and we wanted to join them. As it turns out, their friends from Calgary, Rusty and Mary Ann Stuckey, are here too. And since Art & Sharon had an 11 day major breakdown in Utah on their way south, we had a lot of fun with the Stuckey's before Art & Sharon got here. And as it turns even farther out, this park is popular with Canadians, with about 50% of the residents coming from the cold north.

El Centinala (the Sentinel) or Signal Mountain, as it's called in Spanish, is a major landmark in the Valley, and sits on the Mexican border, about 10 miles to the south. DHS and Border Patrol vehicles are a common sight on the road next to the park, and residents have told us stories about illegal immigrants stopping in the park on their way north to use the pay phone.

Rusty in his poncho

Rio Bend has an "old" section and a "new" section. All three of us were booked into the old section, which had cramped, muddy sites. All three of us managed to change sites and we ended up together at the southern end of the park.

El Centro is the county seat of Imperial County, in the heart of the Imperial Valley. This flat valley is watered by the Colorado River by the All American Canal, the largest canal system in the world. The Valley grows alfalfa, is a major producer of winter vegetables. A couple hundred acres of broccoli is growing across the street from the park.

Rio Bend sunrise

While there are some pretty sights here, I am mindful that we are adjacent to the New River, which flows north from Mexico into the Salton Sea. The New River has been reported to be on eof the most polluted rivers in the world. That, plus the agricultural runoff from the Imperial Valley make the Salton Sea a briny mess, nearly unable to support fish. That area was once a thriving resort area, but is no longer.

Rio Bend also boasts a 9 hole executive golf course. Art and I will lose a few golf balls down there later this month. At the moment, he's flown back to Canada for a couple days as part of his official duties on the Insurance Commission in Alberta.


Rio Bend Golf Course