We escaped the cold of Massachusetts and flew to Yuma, Arizona for two weeks of sunshine and visiting with our winter friends at Westwind and Araby Acres.
We floated in the pool every day, sipped piña coladas, and soaked up much-needed Vitamin D. We spent a day in Mexico, shopping in Los Algodones, where Joe visited his dentist and we enjoyed lunch, live music, and beers before heading home. We read, Sarah painted, and we grew a few new freckles.
Can you spot sun-safe Sarah in the pool?
We found a new caretaker for Cornelia and said our goodbyes to our faithful RV home. She kept us safe and comfortable for four winters and we will miss her, but she is going to be well-loved by her new owner and will continue to live in the desert.
Tuesday dawned sunny but smoggy in El Paso. The local geography causes air pressure inversions that trap pollution from cars, trucks, trains, etc. along with emissions from local industries.
As we pointed ourselves northeast, we noticed a drastic improvement in Mike’s performance. We spent the day driving through west Texas, dominated by oil and gas fields. Sarah read that the Texas Department of Highway spreads 30,000 pounds (!) of wildflower seeds each year along the ditches. The Texas state flower, bluebonnet, is a regional species of spring-flowering lupin. There are a few different legends about how this blue-purple wildflower got to Texas. One 18th century story claims a Spanish nun appeared to indigenous people to teach them about Jesus. She was wearing a blue cloak over her brown habit and appeared several times to two different groups. On the morning after her last appearance, the fields were covered in a new flower the same color as the nun’s cloak. Even more miraculous is that the nun in this story never actually left her convent in Spain. It is said that she projected herself to North America through deep contemplation and prayer.
We spent the night in Seymour, Texas at the HH Creek Inn. We split a delicious 16 oz ribeye dinner at the Rusty Spur Saloon and thoroughly enjoyed watching the Breakaway Roping competition from the Lazy E Arena on the newly launched Cowgirl channel.
We bade farewell to sunny Yuma on Saturday and struck east for Deming, New Mexico. Crossing the Continental Divide at more than 4, 000 feet, Mike was struggling with the winds and the long, slow inclines. We made it into town at 7:57 pm local time; Si Senor (highly recommended to us by friends) closes at 8:00 pm, so we tried Cactus Cafe, instead. Delicious tacos, a homemade mushroom swiss burger and cold beer filled us up!
On Sunday morning, Mike just did not want to start. We were stuck until garages would open on Monday. There is not much to do in Deming, New Mexico. Joe made two trips to Walmart on foot and we settled in for an afternoon of Netflix and naps. PBJ for dinner!
No one in Deming could work on Mike, but the VanAlert app pointed us to Fox Land Auto in El Paso, Texas – 82 miles away. Gerry from AAA re-arranged his morning plans and safely towed us to Rico’s garage. Journey was a champ riding alone in the van being towed backwards for an hour and a half, while we sat in the tow truck cab with Gerry. it was about this time last year that Mike broke down on our way to Vegas. I think he’s trying to tell us he wants to stay in Yuma.
Rico conferred with our Vegas mechanic who rebuilt the engine last summer. After running some compression tests, we all agreed a leaky valve was probably the culprit. Rico also installed an electrical starter component, giving us more power and reliability.
We took an Uber to the Travelodge and checked in for the afternoon. Rico and his father had Mike fixed by the end of the day!
Rico, Sr. trained in Germany – worked on VWs for his whole career!
We celebrated with dinner at Carlos & Mickey’s Cantina. Sarah reacquainted herself with melon margaritas!
This winter we were kept busy with puppy training, in addition to our usual schedule of fun in the sun with our snowbird pals. Most days, we would head to the pool around lunchtime for a floating visit with friends. Stories were spun and jokes were shared and we all had a good time not shoveling snow.
Joe golfed on a few occasions and thought about joining the pickleball craze, but they start playing at 8:00 a.m. which is way too early to be bouncing around competitively!
Sarah quilted, joined a crafty card-making group, and painted a bit. We both read a lot of books and on colder evenings, watched Arizona PBS Check, Please and Finding Your Roots.
We flew back east for a long weekend visit with our grandchild to watch the Super Bowl. A quick road trip to Newport Beach for Joe to attend his Football Dinner gave Journey a chance to stick her paws in the Pacific Ocean.
We are grateful for another winter in the southwest desert. Thanks to all who came to visit us this season!
Adopting another dog, after Molly, was not a sure thing for us. In our marriage, we have been blessed with three extraordinary dogs, all adopted as adults/seniors. Shasta taught us the benefits of living with a retired service dog and Molly eventually completed training to work as Sarah’s service dog. When we started to look for a new dog, we were daunted by how the rescue/foster system has devolved into a money-making cottage industry. Folks are adopting the best-behaved dogs from the shelters and then re-packaging them as available for adoption for huge “re-homing” fees, rivaling the cost of purchasing a pure-bred puppy.
We continued our research and met several candidates in shelters in different states. None of them passed all of the tests we had set; a potential service dog must be calm and relaxed, responsive when approached, and accept boundaries and training readily. A dog that is clearly frustrated, reactive to people or other dogs, has issues with resource guarding, or is overly sensitive to touch cannot easily be trained to work as a service companion. Hip health is also important. It has been more than thirty years since Sarah last raised a puppy and Joe has only lived with adult dogs. Puppies are a big commitment and require a huge investment of time and patience. But as our search for an adult rescue dog with potential for service training continued with no definite results, we started to consider the benefits of puppy-raising.
This youngster was born in Indiana last June at Foxwood K-9. This extraordinary kennel is powered by solar and geothermal systems and the dogs are raised with love. She was ready to come home to us at the end of November. Because we were getting ready to leave Cape Cod for the winter, it was tricky to figure out the best way for our new pup to get to us. Delivery options were compromised by airline restrictions so we landed on the idea of picking her up directly from the kennel in Shipshewana.
We flew to Detroit on a Tuesday morning, picked up a one-way rental car, and drove to Indiana. We picked up puppy supplies and the puppy and headed out west. Thank goodness she adapted to car travel without incident! Mornings were spent bonding with Sarah in the front seat and the rest of the afternoon was spent sleeping in her crate. The three nights in hotels were relatively easy as she slept in her crate without complaint.
On our second day, we passed a sign that said we were 90 degrees west of Greenwich – one-quarter of the way around the world! An hour later we saw Mark Twain’s boyhood home before crossing the Mississippi River into Missouri. Chillicothe, MO is the Home of Sliced Bread and Sarah was stoked to stop at Missouri Star Quilts. After lunch, we passed by the birthplace of Jesse James. And in Kansas City, we met Boon and his human who works at Bar K Dog Park. We slept in Hays, KS.
Thursday’s adventures included meeting a flock of chickadees in a pre-dawn cold walk before loading up the car and heading into Colorado where we gained another hour due to entering Mountain Standard Time. The temperature was a bit warmer (56 F) as we cruised through Denver and headed up into the Rocky Mountains. When Journey woke up after lunch we were at ten thousand feet elevation in Vail and found Bighorn Park to introduce her to the snow. We stopped in Green River, UT (pop. 847) for the night – known for watermelons and its annual Melon Fest.
Friday morning was a bit tense as we got caught in a blizzard coming over the summit to Salina, UT. While Journey slept blissfully unaware, Joe did a great job navigating the un-plowed road and we made it to Mom’s Cafe for breakfast by mid-morning. We time-traveled to Mesquite Dog Park (Pacific Time Zone) before steering into the megalopolis called Vegas.
Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona
We saw a lot of sights and experienced a range of weather conditions (sun, rain, sleet, snow, winds, hail) on our journey cross-country. We returned the rental car in Las Vegas, picked up Mike (with his refurbished engine!) and after visiting our friends Friday night, we turned south to Yuma on Saturday morning.
We will be staying here in Arizona for the winter and plan to drive cross-country back home to Cape Cod in March. In these first weeks living together, we have set new routines, started training classes, and adapted to sharing our RV with our growing four-legged goofball. Her antics as she explores and learns about the world are keeping us smiling and we made more friends at the RV park in one week than the entire winter season last year. Everyone wants to pet the white, friendly puppy.
Joe proposed registering her as “Journey” because it was a journey to find her, we trekked cross-country on a literal road trip to pick her up, and we look forward to sharing many travel adventures together. She has the perfect name!
Historians and biblical scholars now believe that the honey referenced in the Book of Exodus refers not to bees’ honey but to the syrup prepared from dates. Turns out that the best way to preserve this highly nutritious fruit is to soak, cook, extract and reduce its syrup. As one of the oldest foods cultivated in the Mediterranean region, it makes complete sense that a reference to abundance would include good date production.
Medjool (Arabic majhūl) dates are known as the king’s fruit, once reserved only for royalty. These dates are large and sweet. Almost a century ago, California growers imported eleven medjool date palms from Morocco and nine survived, spawning the spread of date farming in the southwest United States.
Why are dates so expensive? It is a labor-intensive commercial crop, with farmers devoting most of their land to female date palms (which produce the edible fruit) and keeping just a few males or even purchasing the pollen when it is time to pollinate the female flowers. After the fruit buds form, each strand is thinned to allow better air circulation and bigger fruit. By August, the fruit bundles are bagged to protect from birds, insects, and dust. Dates are harvested by hand in the fall, sorted, graded, and sent to cold storage.
We learned all about date farming with a visit to Martha’s Gardens, here in Yuma. After sharing a delicious date shake by the courtyard fountain, we headed home taking the road less traveled.
After 1.5 miles of sketchy sandy trails, we determined the large CAT bulldozer parked on the trail was a good indicator that we were not on a sanctioned road! We carefully re-traced our tracks in the dust and made it back out to the secure pavement. Watch the video below of this adventure for Mike the van!
Joe visited Los Algodones, B.C., Mexico as a “dental tourist.” Joe was impressed with his new dentist and especially appreciated being asked about medication options; for example, he opted out of a local anesthetic for a simple front tooth side filling which saved money. His American dentists would have injected him as a matter of routine (and charged accordingly!). His extraction, crowns, and fillings cost about half of what we would pay in the U.S., even with our supplemental dental insurance, and the thousands of Canadian and American patients who flock to this small Mexican town prove that the care provided is safe and effective.
The town serves mainly retirees who are wintering here in the southwest desert. Formerly a small border town with a few bars, Los Algodones now boasts about 600 dentists and several major pharmacies offering generic prescription drugs at a fraction of the American and Canadian price tags. Josef Woodman, of Patients Beyond Borders, suggests that 65% of medical tourism is for dental care.
Why is dental care for seniors so expensive in the United States? According to the Medicare website, Medicare doesn’t cover most dental care, dental procedures, or supplies, like cleanings, fillings, tooth extractions, dentures, dental plates, or other dental devices. Supplemental premiums may be purchased, but the out-of-pocket expenses are prohibitive to most American retirees, and the policies mostly cover only routine checkups and cleanings. Most major procedures, such as root canals and crowns, are not covered.
Running a dental clinic in the U.S. is expensive largely due to malpractice insurance premiums and high rents for offices. Most American dentists also graduate with huge loads of student debt which gets passed on to their future patients. For the same education, using the same materials, laboratory equipment, and protocol as any dental school in the U.S., Mexican dentists pay less than ten percent of the college fees of American dental schools ($6K vs $70K in annual tuition). Joe’s Mexican dentist’s clinic is small (he rents space to one other dentist) and most new patients have been referred by a former patient. He has an excellent reputation for being thorough and friendly. Even dental-phobic folks have found this dentist to be reassuring and calming.
Everyone we met who has visited a Los Algodones dentist raves about the professionalism, the English-speaking staff, and the ease of making appointments by phone or online. Some of our Westwind RV friends from Canada have been using the same Mexican dentist since first retiring more than a decade ago. Some clinics offer shuttle service between the Yuma, AZ airport and Los Algodones. Most people park in the large lot on the U.S. side and walk across the border.
Daytrip tourists queuing to return to the United States.
While Joe was at the dentist, I and our friends visiting from Colorado, amused ourselves wandering the shopping alleys and enjoyed shrimp tacos for lunch. We’ll be back next year.
Warm clothes donned for 2700+ mile journey to the Northeast in January
Totally worth every snowflake to visit with this cutie for ten days!
If you know Sarah, you know that cold, winter air is not a friend to her lungs. While Grampaw bundled up and ventured outside with our grandchild a few times, Nana remained indoors organizing toddler activities for our ten-day adventure in babysitting. We graduated from playdough to bread dough. We danced a billion times to “Baby Shark” and “Wheels On The Bus.” And we snuggled with lots of books!
We welcomed 2022 in Yuma, Arizona. Santa brought us some bikes and a new portable propane firepit for us to enjoy outdoor living in the desert. We got our porch set up (photo above) with twinkly lights so we can read outside in the evenings. Sarah will likely add some more artistic touches as the winter goes on!
new-to-us bicycles
Mike and Cornelia waiting for Santa
Trainspotting
Wetlands restoration project at Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area
Great Egret is just one of many birds rehabilitating the wetlands
Where in the world are the Gills? 