Yuma to Dateland March 14 2012

I think that George Carlin expressed it best when he said “Never trust a F**t. Last night after supper I was seriously sick and by bedtime it had turned to dyiahrea. After about the third trip I thought I would move my sleeping mattress into the locker room so that I would be close to the toilet. While it was closer I then had to listen to every one else make a run for the toilet. Bubba didn’t like it one bit when I told him there was something wrong with his taco’s.

In the morning I felt totally drained so I talked to Bob how gave me one of his energy bars which helped a lot. So the plan was to bolt for the camp ground. Don’t mess around just get on the bike and go hard and hopefully have enough reserves to make it. At the first Sag stop Web who was manning the stop gave me a Sprit which helped a bunch. I got to second stop before the Sag vehicle so I went into the gas station an got a huge pail of Coke for $0.99. It was cold and refreshing so I rode on. The directions were totally messed up, and the distances were all way off. Fortunately a lot of it was kind of obvious which way to go, however you were always riding with that doubt about which way to go.

For the first half of the ride we were riding through all these lettuce farms. Something like 90% of the lettuce consumed in North America is grown in and around Yuma. It was fascinating to see these big long conveyers with the workers picking the lettuce and putting it onto the conveyer. The smell of fresh lettuce was so strong that it made your teeth flat.

The second half of the ride was though the desert, with very little to see or even comment on.

I was glad to see the sign for Dateland come up on the highway. We were promised this place which sells date milk shakes across the road, and we would be camped in a date grove. Well there is a place about a mile down the road which sells date milk shakes, but I wouldn’t suggest that they would make very many bucketlists. As far as the date grove part goes it is a burned out RV park in the middle of the desert which has the last of the snow birds who haven’t had the good sense to fly north yet. The weather is a little on the warm side but I am not complaining and with a good nights sleep I will be ready to roll.

There isn’t a lot of stuff to take pictures of here in the desert so one of today’s pictures is a reference to a movie. I will let you guess. Post your guesses in the comment section.

Terry