A Weekend in Yuma

Lil' Red had her first road trip of 2015 this past weekend when she headed to Yuma for the S*W*A*G #12 Mega Event, as in geocaching. This was our 3rd Yuma Mega Event and each one is more fun than the last. A mega event means more than 500 people pre-registered, planning to attend.

We got to Yuma on Friday planning to collect some caches along the way and in Yuma before attending the first of 7 weekend events or gatherings of geocachers. The first event was a flash mob. This year our instructions were to arrive at the shopping mall, near the theater just before 5:30 pm with our cell phone and a banana. We were to set the alarm on our phones to go off at 5:30. When all the alarms went off, we were to pull out the bananas and yell, "Can you hear me now?", changing positions and continuing to shout. Then music would play and we were to begin dancing (and stop shouting), waving our cell phone and banana through the playing of 'Shout.' When the music stopped, we were to hide our phones & bananas and disperse quickly.

some of the cachers who attend my hosted events

gathering nonchalantly near ground zero

ground zero, near the theater

dancing with the bananas

CV friends

Hubby and I ate our bananas; we were hungry!

We got in our vehicles and traveled about a half mile to the next event. Most people did not stick around, but the 4 of us had some refreshment and food, after the crowd thinned.

Saturday, day 2 of the weekend Mega Event, had us heading to the Barry M. Goldwater Range, with our permits, to find hidden 'treasurers' in the desert. The 1.05 million acres of range is controlled and managed by the Air Force, the Marines, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Fish and Wildlife Services, each having it's own region. The BMGR is east and south of Yuma. The permits are free and give specific guidelines for using the government controlled land. Besides staying on the designated roads and leaving nothing behind (common sense), this is also listed in our reading material: 

"A portion of the Sonoran Desert National Monument contains the danger of property damage and permanent, painful, disabling and disfiguring injury or death due to high explosive detonations from falling objects such as aircraft, aerial targets, live ammunition, missiles, bombs, etc. There are also physical injury and health dangers from ground and aerial LASER and other electromagnetic emissions. ...injury or death due to the presence of expended, but still live bombs, rockets, cannon rounds, flares, and other types of warheads lying on the ground partially or completely buried. There are also old mine shafts and other openings or weaknesses in the earth, natural or man-made  which are too numerous to recite therein." In other words: STAY ON THE MARKED ROADS.

this is a marked road

this part of the Sonoran Desert was an ocotillo forest

with other desert shrubs and grasses

a few of the ocotillo were in bloom (tipped red flowers)

The temperature was in the mid 80s last weekend. We walked and drove and walked and walked and were quite pooped after about two hours. We attempted to grab some lunch as did the other thousands of snow birds that descend on Yuma this time of year, and headed back to the hotel to rest before the evening's event.

We made plans to meet Sherry, our Black Hills caching friend and now CV winter resident, and her friend at ground zero. While waiting for them to arrive, we met some other CV geocachers and joined them at their little table.

Nothing like a cold drink with good friends and 'war' stories to make the day complete. Lute's is a fun, Yuma experience. We remembered eating at the casino with our 'back home' neighbors, Donna & Maynard, when we visited them in Yuma in 2007.

I think Lute's is a Yuma icon

yah, we have no necks

We chose not to eat there and instead went across the street to a fabulous Italian restaurant, wonderful food with good company. The perfect ending to Day 2. 

We arrive back at CV, Monday evening. We unpacked and hit our recliners. More weekend fun to come...