Wheres Ray/Wendy yr 2

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Yuma to Mexico

Hi all,
We pulled in to the KOFA KO-OP just a few miles from Yuma. It is an Escapee club park. At this park you set up camp on a members owned site. Availability here is somewhat limited other than a few boonedock sites this is all they have available.
 The 150 site park is pretty nice and has a hot tub and pool centrally located. They also have a good size community building for activities.
 The Yuma area is very popular for snowbirds and boast some of Arizona's warmer temps. As that is it seems some have already started to make their exodus northward. We see final planned activities running just to the end of March.
 Popular with the snowbirds here are the markets or swap meets. On Friday Wendy and I hit a swap meet, an indoor market, and a large multi tent sale. The large tent sale was close to what we had went to at Mesa. They had a lot of newer stuff and many stands with RV related merchandise. We bought a few things trying to find some things to get the kids for Christmas. I know that's thinking early but we want to get them something different and then not have to pay shipping. We will drop it off when we hit Wisconsin.
  Also while here we wanted to venture into Mexico for glasses and dental work. We had heard many snowbirds do this so we figured to give it a go.
 So Saturday we made the drive to a large parking lot just on the US side. Most people park and walk over to Los Algodones, Mexico.

 Once there we were bombarded by the hawkers trying to pull you in for the dental or optometrist. There are literally hundreds to choose from and although we had tried to get ideas from others online we were pretty much confused when we got there.
 The hawkers pulling you in can be persistant and you really have to learn to ignore or say no. We did think one guy was funny as he said "cmon and give me a chance to rip you off ".
 We had figured to get me glasses and return for dental another day. We stepped into a decent looking place and the young gal assisting us was nice and spoke good English. I had a short wait for the eye test and got them to agree putting new lenses in my current frames.
 A two hour wait allowed a little shopping and a fish taco lunch that was pretty good. After lunch at just the 2 hour mark my glasses were ready. Total cost for the progressive tint no line bifocal was $135.00 including eye test, not to bad.
 Sunday we bummed in Yuma first checking out the Quartermaster Depot State Historical Park. It boast five buildings from the post that was used to supply all of Arizonas military posts during the early 1900's. The main house used by the quartermaster was built in 1872 and believed to be Yumas oldest Anglo built homes. The park is now managed by the city of Yuma and is a nice self guided tour.


 Next up we made the trek to check the famous Yuma Territorial Prison. The Prison built in 1875 and was used for 33 years. Now a state park we used our volunteer cards to get free( or$6.00) entry.
 We took a guided tour that led you through a museum and to the cell blocks where each meager block contained 6 cell mates. This also included the famous "Dark Cell" used to hold incorrigible prisoners. The dark cell contained a cage 8x10 and prisoners were chained to the cage for whatever determined time.
 Fun facts the prison was also used as part of Yuma High School for a few years, also the schools sport name has been The Criminals and few efforts to change that over the years have failed.






2 comments:

  1. We've heard lots of RVers go to Mexico for that sort of stuff. Have to try it sometime.

    ReplyDelete