Quad ride / Veterans Day

We and two other couples rented Quad Runners for a guided trip into the California desert.
Here you can see the four Quads. (some of them even ran) They had to push them onto the trailer to load them. They were gutless. The trip was $225 a couple including lunch and beverages. ( I brought our own beverage).

Mary dressed like a "desert rat" for this outing. Turned out we were under dressed.

She wanted the purple one as it matched her "toe nails" it also had tires that were over inflated and for the first hour we were constantly getting stuck in the sand.

The couple in the far Quad were very experienced at this as he had raced Quads and worked on them in another life.

One of our rest stops. We stopped several times on the trip for water brakes.

This is an active bee hive in the desert. One of our guides said that it was here when he was a kid. You can see the Honey cones and where Honey has drained into the cliff.

This side canyon leaves the main canyon at the bee hive. The ladies walked up it quite a ways. The men weren't invited.

This little cave is also near the bee hive. We had a long stay at this location. We had discussed what lunch would be like. I didn't hold much hope for it. Some one said it would be "Wall-Mart" Sandwich and water. They were half right. It was half a Wall-Mart sandwich and water. We had beer.

Here we are after they let air out of our tires and we could keep up with the rest of the group.

This is the engine of our Quad after it blew a head gasket and left Mary and I afoot in the California desert. We were tail gunners and with all the dust we weren't missed for a half hour.

You can see how desolate it was out there. They did come and get us and we were able to push the wreck onto the trailer and get out of there.

The owner of the company wouldn't compensate us for all the trouble we had as "These things always break down". WE had a good time but we told him not to expect any more business from our park. There are 2000 spaces filled with fun loving seniors.

YUMA VETERANS DAY PARADE

As there is a Marine base in Yuma the Marine Color Guard led the parade.

There were many small floats, this one reminded me of a float my kids had in a parade in Salem . Theirs had a pet skunk in the wagon and they took first place.

One lonely Mountie stepping it out.

There was a lot of equipment from both the Marines and the Army proving grounds out side of Yuma.

There were only two mascots in the parade. This Eagle? and Sparky the fire dog. Sparky is on the cutting room floor.

I was very surprised that there were so few horses in the parade. This group of rodeo queens and the Sheriffs posse.

The end of the parade was a obligatory group of belly dancers. They perform at weddings, christenings, Bar mitzvahs and all other functions in the area. Even at Mexican folk dances no kidding.