Well here it is Wed and still in Yuma, AZ.  I had to hold over till Friday to go back to the dentist in Los Algodones because of a "root canal" so I am staying at the same motel till Saturday morning, ended up having to be at the dentist over a 10 day period because of the root canal and removal of an old crown to do the root canal and then to get a new crown put on and the was the last thing I had done.

I just imported a bunch of pictures from my camera so will post some of them.

This was one of my sleeping spots in Sidell, LA there was a Walmart next door but I liked this parking lot better.

Next day May 13th I was up early and heading for Texas

And this is the welcome station for Texas on I 10 and I think I have been here 4 times on different trips

I'm in Kerrville,TX and stopped at a Walmart this time, Kerrville is a about 65 miles west of San Antonio and it was a mess getting through Houston and San Antonio!

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May 14th, Saturday and heading west and I decided to drive all the way to Arizona so off we go!

I think I'm in AZ here at a rest stop, needed some water!

My newest sleeping area, about 8' to the front so lots of stretching out room.  I was in Benson, AZ at a Walmart and Benson is east about 45 miles on I 10 from Tuscon.

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May 15th Sunday and I'm heading for Yuma, AZ

My cousin Phillip Kelly lives on Ina Rd in Franklin, Indiana so I thought this was funny in Arizona.

I was west of 

Tuscon and spotted this airport with gobs of airliners out there so I just had to stop by and take a look, I think it was some sort of rebuild facility, I had to find a rest room anyway and finally snuck into an army training facility and no one inside so found a Mens room !

This was a big old 747 parked right by the fence but no markings on it.

There were gobs of these big 

Cactus west of 

Tuscon but they fizzled out on farther west toward Yuma?

Typical desert country in southern Arizona.

This is a large solar farm west of  Tuscon I talked with the security guard and she told me it's the largest in the world?

Petrogyplh site north of the solar farm abt 10 miles, they say humans had come by here for at least 12,000 years.

Got to Yuma about noon but couldn't check in till 3:00 so I went to Walmart and bought this Acer that I'm using right now since I forgot and left my Asus laptop at home.

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16th Monday morning I drove to the border to go to Los Algodones, Mexico to have some dental work done, I didn't know exactly what I needed but knew I had Periodontal disease in my gums so I headed for a Dr. Rubio's Clinic where I had an appointment to check in with the Periodontist.  Got stopped on the way by a hustler on the Mexico side wanting me to go to their Clinic so I let him take a couple of Xrays and then he quoted me a price of $3900 to give me new crowns on all of my teeth! They would grind down all my my teeth and glue crowns to them, YUK!  Well since I'm already 86 years old I was only interested in getting my problems fixed and no new teeth.  He told me that Dr. Rubio would hit me for at least twice the price but I told him I was going over there anyway.  I got in to see the Periodontist at Dr. Rubio's and he promptly took a "panoramic Xray" and said I had an infection below one of my lower teeth and would need a "root canal" to take care of that problem and then he quoted me $1200 for every thing, the root canal, laser cleaning of my upper and lower gum plus removing a crown to do the root canal, a new crown and teeth cleaning.  So that's what I decided to do.  They were very professional plus they had a very clean facility and excellent staff members.  The cost to get the work done in Mexico is typically 70 to 75% less than in the states and I had planned a trip out west in May anyway so I just modified my route a little bit to go to Los Algodones, Mexico.

This was in Rubio Clinic reception room., to anyone that is in need of dental work especially Implants etc. that can be $30,000 to $40,000 or more in the states a mouth of Implants here in Los Algodones might be around $10,000.  I would definitely recommend Dr. Rubio.  His prices are fair and he and his staff are very professional and it's clean.  You can save 70 to 75% or so on dental work here in Los Algodones vs the states,  its in Mexico and near Yuma, AZ.  I had laser cleaning of my gums, a crown removed and then a root canal preformed on that tooth then a new porcelain crown put in plus teeth cleaning for $1265 Typically $2000 or more here in the states for a root canal and crown.  For the Laser Gum treatment full mouth I have seen from $2000 to $8000 here in the states.  So I could have spent anywhere from $5000 to $6000 or more for what I had done if I had it done here in Florida!  Yikes! too much for me.

Rubio's building, a nice building compared to some of the places here and there are gobs of dentists in this little town.

I thought this was funny because this couple brought their little Yorkie along with  them, people from all over come to Los Algodones for dental work and the little town was full of people when I finally left in the afternoon.

This parking lot is on the US side of the border and run by the Quechan Indians, they charge $6 to park there all day, you can just walk a block or so to the border station.  When I got here early in the morning there was one other car there besides me but when I left the lot was jammed full.  The Indian's also have a Casio up the road a few miles if you like to gamble, this is in California.

This was my written quote from the clinic and I paid them $300 on this day, so I didn't have to pay for all of it up front, they do take credit cards but add on 2 or 3% so I took cash with me.

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May 17th and I am back in the motel and I have to stay here in Yuma until Friday when I go back to the dentist for a follow-up on the root canal and also get a crown and my top gums lasered.

So needing to kill some time I drove downtown Yuma and took this picture of a place across the Colorado River, the river is the border between Arizona and California as well as Los Algodones.

In Downtown Yuma there is this place right next to the Colorado River and it was established in 1864 and supplied provisions to army post all over Arizona, Colorado, California, Texas etc. and was called the Quartermaster Depot.

This was the Quatermasters home and was made of 2' thick adobe walls, it has been restored to it's original condition. 

A colorful cactus at the quartermasters place.

I have seen a Roadrunner a few times down here and I don't know if they can fly or not but this one just kept running along in front of me.

There were a lot of steamship that came up through the Gulf of California and up the Colorado River which was before dams were built so it was a really big river back in the 1800's.

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May 18th, Wednesday and I decided to take a run up to the Yuma Proving Grounds about 30 miles from Yuma.  It is a huge facility and run by the Army and encompasses about 900,000 acres.  They do all kinds of testing here, guns, missles, vechicles, tanks, trucks, etc. During WWII there were over a million soldiers trained at this facility.

This was out by the entrance.

This was a monster thing and was called an overland railroad train.

This gives you an idea of the size of the tires, probably 10 tall.  inside there were sleeping quarters, a kitchen and everything needed to live in it.  Don't know if it was ever used or not.

Inside the Museum there were a lot of exibits, munitions, clothing, old pictures of soldiers that trained here and a few writings like this from soldiers that were here.  Just a bunch of sand and scrub with a few Rattlesnakes and Scorpions thrown in for good measure!

This was the gate that I went in to get to the museum, I had to show my drivers license and proof of insurance to get in.  

So this was the end of my exploring for today. ________________________________________________________________________________

May 19th Thursday - what will I do today to occupy myself?

On my way north out of Yuma I spotted this neat little church, shoulda stopped and prayed for my Prius!  If I would have know it was going to break down on me later in the week.

My camping spot in the Prescott National Forest, White Spar campground just 3 miles or so south of Prescott, AZ  I decided to camp instead of staying at a motel in Yuma waiting on my dental appointment on the 26th so I'm here for 5 days at $7 a night instead of $43 a night in the motel, it wasn't a bad place for $43 either, free breakfast every morning so that was nice.

Well this morning I took a short drive out north through farm country to a place called "Betty's Kitchen"  just had to go there because it's my wife's name!  It is just a little recreation area with a few picnic tables and camp sites.  No one was there but I did take a picture of the sign to show my wife.

Sign at entrance.

This explains the name.

This whole area out to the north of Yuma is irrigated with water from the Colorado River so lots of these canals out there.  They laser level their fields to be able to properly irrigate the crops.  

I saw fields of wheat, sudan grass and other vegetables that I didn't recognize.  They say that this area supplies 90% of the winter lettuce for the country and many other crops, some 175 different kinds.  

Also the Durum Wheat it exported to Italy because they really like it for making Pasta.  Majool Dates are also grown here and supply some of the Middle East countries.

It is a multi billion industry here in this area.

Field of vegetable that I saw in bloom but I didn't know what it was.

They have 350 days of sunshine here in Yuma, they say more than any place in the world!  And they have some very fertile soil because of millions of years of silt deposited by the Colorado River when it used to flood before being dammed at several places now-a-days.

Found some wood at deserted campsites so made me a fire, I had taken along my butane torch to get a fire going and that worked good!

Bought some hot dogs so that's my supper, hard to see in this picture but I have a hot dog over the fire.

I didn't have any hot dog buns but this worked out okay!

There are a few trails so walked some of time to kill some time, I have to walk slow because I get out of breath pretty quick, it's a little over 5000' altitude here.

Court House in Prescott, not a very large city but pretty place to visit.

We were here several years ago, Betty, Jayne and me and we got us something to eat here in Sept 2006 on the square downtown.

Betty and daughter Jayne in Sedona, AZ Sept. 2006.  This is just a picture of when Betty and I and Jayne were out this way.

Well didn't have anything to do so I decided to drive up to Jerome 25 miles or so north of Prescott, an old Copper mining town turned into a tourist destination now and it sits up on the side of a mountain.

Part of Jerome

Thats actually a big 'J' on the mountain top

Me taking a break in Jerome, I was out of breath from climbing some stairs.

Old hotel in Jerome

There was an old ghost town near Jerome and I saw these little Donkeys.

Left the campground in Prescott and got about 70 miles on the way back to Yuma for my dental appointment on the 26th and the "Red Triangle of Death" in the driver information center came on in the Prius!  This is the nickname that has been given to a warning light by Prius owners.  It usually means that something bad is wrong.  The last time this happened to me it turned out to be a bad module out of the 28 modules in the High Voltage battery which I repaired myself so I figured that was it again, turned out that the battery was okay.   I drove a couple of miles to Aguila, AZ and stopped at a little garage and ask the owner if I could work on my car there and he said that was fine.  Since I had taken some tools along I proceeded to unload the back of the car so I could get to the battery and finally get in there, thank goodness it was nice outside and the battery checked out okay but I couldn't get the car running again so had to call for a tow to the nearest Toyota Dealer which happened to be in Surprise, AZ about 60 miles away, Surprise is a suburb of Phoenix.

This is the little garage I stopped at in Aguila, AZ, the guy here didn't know anything about Prius's.

The battery is in the rear of the Prius and under some of this stuff you see here, I had to unload all of my stuff from the rear to get to the battery.

Here I have the battery cover off and I'm ready to check each of the 28 modules for about 7.8 volts each, the orange plug on the left is a safety plug that you take out before working on the battery since the end voltage is around 220 volts or so.

Well I checked each cell but couldn't find a bad one so I put the covers back on but then the Prius refused to even start, found out later that I might not have got the safety plug in securely?

So here is the result, called for a tow truck out of Phoenix which was 60 some miles away!  He would take me to a Toyota dealer in Surprise, AZ a suburb of Phoenix.

Cost: $277.00 Yikes!  I will check my Progressive policy when I get back home because I thought I had "roadside assistance", I did check it and I had it on the Caddy but not the Prius!

This was the dealership, Surprise Toyota and turned out it was a Penske enterprise and a beautiful facility and pretty new.

This was the customer waiting room where they had Starbucks coffee, donuts, water for you while you waited,  Since I got there late on the 25th I had to get a motel room for the night.

The Dealer's courtesy car took me to this Quality Inn which was very nice for $55 for the night. I had a picture but lost it somewhere.

Next morning on the 26th they came and picked me up and took me back to the dealer, they got the car done about noon for $615.00!!! I had called the dentist in Los Algodones, and canceled my 11:30 appointment and took off down the road for Yuma, AZ, I got about 10 miles and here came the "Red Triangle" warning on the dashboard readout again so turned around and went back to the dealer much to my frustration.

They ran the code checks on it and something new had come up, some kind of inverter pump cooler issue which  had to be replaced,,,another $350.00  so as usually happens when you take your car to a dealer for some work you can usually expect to be out about a Thousand Bucks!

They got me out of there again and I headed for Yuma and this time I made it without any issues and as a matter of fact didn't have any other issues all the way back to Florida.

Tomorrow morning I have my appointment with Dr. Rubio to get my permanent crown put on and then it's north up through Arizona afterwards.

I did get a load of clothes washed last evening at a laundromat close by in Yuma so at least got some clean clothes ready.