The Desert Bar

Today, the members of the 'Class of 2008' took a field trip. We went out to The Desert Bar. To get to this place, we drove to Parker, Arizona. We then turned and drove about 5 miles on this very narrow dirt road to get to this bar. But it was well worth the trip. This bar is only opened on Saturday and Sunday and only from noon til sundown because it is totally solar powered. The bar is built on an old copper mine site.


The tall structure is a cooling tower. They work similar to swamp coolers without the fan. When you wet the pads on top, the cool air falls and creates cool airflow.

Hot water tank!!


Another use of horse shoes. Desert sculpture!!



Our crazy group!!



It was a fun day. You can read more about this unique place on their web page..thedesertbar.com.

More info on Yuma

Yuma is known as the 'Lettuce Capital of the World'. All around Yuma there are plots of land, in what seems like one acre squares, in various stages of growth.





When the fields are ready for harvest, they bring the workers in a bus that is towing a trailer with porta potties. I'm not sure, but it seems that they do this so that there are not a lot of cars on the side of the road. Some of these fields are only accessable by a very narrow dirt road. The produce is wrapped and boxed right in the field. There seems to be every varity of lettuce or cabbage. And they work 7 days a week! We have watched this for the past 2 weeks. It's been fun trying to guess which fields are really for harvest!!

Another intersting thing to see in Yuma is called the 'Ocean to Ocean Highway Bridge'. This bridge was completed in 1915 and provided a continuous automobile route across the United States.



Here you see the railroad portion of the bridge and just behind it is the road. Before the bridge was completed there was a ferry that ran accross the Colorado River.

We have enjoyed our stay in Yuma. Tomorrow we will start getting ready to move to Quartzsite on Thursday.

Yuma Territorial Prison State Park

Today we went out to Yuma Territorial Prison State Park. They were having a "Gathering of the Gunfighters" competition today. There were 10 groups each putting on a re-enactment of the old west.

The groups were judged on content and costumes. Unfortunately, we were in the back of the crowd and the sound system there was almost non existent so we couldn't hear some of the dialog.








Here is a picture of Ed with the town drunk!!
He was very funny walking around in the crowd all day.



The history of the prison was also interesting. It was built in 1876 and only operated as a prison for about 30 years. The cells were made of strap iron that came from California and granite rock, that was quarried right next to the prison, and then plastered and whitewashed.

Each cell was a 9 by 12 room that held 6 prisoners. Originally, they had wooden bunks with straw mattresses, but an infestation of bed bugs caused them to burn the wooden bunks and re-made then out of iron. Boy were they hard!!

The "Dark Cell" above was for prisoners who were being punished for various reasons. The room was really dark. You went down a short hall to get to the opening where they were chained to the grid.

In 1900, they expanded the prison by adding an exersice yard and a hospital. The cells that were built around the yard were used to house prisoners who had tuberculosis.

After the prison was closed it became home to the Yuma High School students from 1910 to 1914. To this day, the Yuma High Schools athletic teams are called "The Criminals"! The empty cells provided free lodging for hobos riding the rails in the 20's and home to several families during the depression.

This last picture is of the guardhouse. They built it over the water tank to keep the water from evaporating during the hot summers.


What an interesting day!!