Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate

   We left Yuma and drove due north on lonely US 95, through desert mountains, and stopped a few miles past the farm-worker town of Blythe to see the Blythe Intaglios (more formally, “geoglyphs”). These are large-scale designs on the land surface created by removing the rocks and pebbles on top of the soil—called “desert pavement”—to reveal the whitish earth underneath. They are estimated to be anywhere from 200 to 2,000 years old. There are many geoglyphs around the world, but these are the most famous in the United States. They were discovered by a pilot in 1931. The largest, a human figure, is 171 feet long. Some Indian groups say that this represents the creator of the Earth. Karen stood on the fence that surrounds this intaglio and took a picture. We love to find and look at ancient rock art, although we learned in an exhibit at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City that some Indians do not like the term “rock art,” since, as they point out, there is a very good chance that those who made petroglyphs, pictographs, and geoglyphs had practical and not artistic motivations. The striking nature of many of the images, however, might suggest otherwise. Read More

Yuma is one of those iconic towns of the west, like Tombstone. If Tombstone has its OK Corral, Yuma has its 3:10.  Situated along the once mighty Colorado River, baking in the Sonoran desert, it is at the southwest tip of Arizona, just a few feet from the California border. According to Guinness, the area surrounding the city is the sunniest on earth, although NASA scientists say that this distinction is held by a Sahara Desert site in northern Niger. The sun shines in Yuma for 4,050 hours of the 4,456 hours of daylight during a year, or about 90 percent of the time. All that sun and the desert terrain make it hot, with an average daily high in July of 107 degrees Fahrenheit. On July 28, 1995, the temperature reached 124 degrees! Read More