Fortuna Pond – Little Bitty Living

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This was the sunset on our last night at Fortuna Pond ….pretty amazing! Arizona certainly knows how to do sunsets.

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And this next one is one of the lettuce fields. I love The contrasting bands of color!

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I bought a bag of Minneola Tangelos and they are really good! But I don’t really have space for them in the camper, and it gets too hot in the car during the day. So……I am sleeping with oranges. Yes, I’m sharing my narrow 34″ wide bed with a bag of oranges!! They’re down at my feet and at least they don’t move around or step on me in the night, so I guess it could be worse.

Our neighbor Fern went gleaning in the veggie fields after they were harvested and gave Linda some cauliflower and broccoli. The farmers just plow it under!

Linda treated me to pizza for dinner our last night. We checked on line and this was supposed to be Yuma’s best; Bernardo’s. If that’s Yuma’s best, I’d sure hate to taste the worst because that was definitely NOT good pizza. It tasted like a really cheap frozen pizza from the grocery store. But…good try, Linda; I sure appreciate it!

So yesterday Linda headed to Phoenix to pick Roger up at the airport and I headed west to Anza-Borrego State Park. Gas in California is $1 more a gallon than Arizona; I paid $3.29 today, gulp! My GPS couldn’t find any campgrounds in Anza-Borrego and the Visitor’s Center was 900′ from the parking lot, that’s too far for me to walk there & back for a map. They could use some better signage! I drove a little bit past the entrance to the campsites I wanted and then did the stupidest move ever. I looked in the side mirror and no one was coming, so I backed up. Without turning around. Trailer, what trailer? I never gave it a thought until I heard the “crunch” of it jacknifing. I couldn’t bear to get out and look for damage just then so I turned in and just kept on. The road was all sand, and it was not a campground, it’s just some turnouts where you can park & camp. I thought I saw a good pull-through spot and turned in, only to find it was not a pull-through and not a good site, either. Lots of loose sand and I had to turn the trailer around in it…got stuck several times but I managed to rock it out. My mood was getting darker by the minute!

I finally found a little back-in site and got parked, and calmed down. I checked and the plastic trim on the corner of the camper is broken and there’s a pretty good-sized dent in the rear of the car. Now I have dents on both sides of the car!! I felt like my coffee mug:

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There were a million stars in the sky last night and several coyotes howling; that was nice. I feel like a mom with a 4 year old kid when walking Roxie; I keep telling her “Don’t touch anything!” There are quite a few cholla cactus around and they have horrible barbed spines. She’s on a very short leash at the campsite! I’m SO glad I decided to have Linda come to Fortuna Pond instead of meeting her at Anza-Borrego; that would not have been a good place for Rascal, and I wouldn’t want to spend a week there either.

Today I went to Galleta Meadows. It’s the coolest thing; Dennis Avery (of Avery Labels fame) commissioned over 100 metal sculptures in the desert near Borrego Springs. They’re spread out over a dozen miles or so.

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Tomorrow I head to Lake Elsinore,CA to visit with my cousins Patty and April.

Last night we stayed at Casino del Sol near Tucson. Everyone raves about the RV parking there but I didn’t really see anything special about it, just another huge parking lot. I had read that there were electrical outlets on the light poles but that was not true. I accidentally parked right next to one of the main thorofares in and out of the casino, so it was a bit noisy, especially when the guy with a big diesel truck stalled and couldn’t get it started again, right next to me! I heard the hood open and slam shut 3 times before he finally got it going and went away. Other than that though, it was a real OK place to park. It got down to 25 degrees last night but we kept warm enough with the small heater. It’s supposed to be 35 tonight here and then going up to lows in the 40’s; that’ll be great!

I decided to move on to Yuma today. Tomorrow I will see about getting a dental appointment over the border in Los Algodones. I found the name of a good dentist on another blog, so I’ll try her.

We are at Fortuna Pond (or Fortuna Lake) BLM land. http://www.blm.gov/az/st/en/prog/recreation/camping/dev_camps/fortuna-pond.html

It’s really a pond. But quite a pretty place to camp for 14 days free! It’s only about 8 miles from Yuma and I’m getting 4 bars on ATT and 3 bars on Verizon, so that’s great! The rigs are parked fairly close together here, all lined up along the edge of the lake. My neighbors on both sides have dogs too and they’re noisier than Roxie so all will be well, we won’t be offending anyone. It’s all very loose sand here and I probably parked wrong; my door is facing the road where it could get pretty dusty. And the road is less than 10′ away! Oh well. I do have a great view out my big side window though, so that’s nice. I’ll deal with the dust if and when it happens. Seems like people drive pretty slowly along here.

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I see a lot of people fishing but I don’t see anyone catching anything. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to buy an AZ fishing license, but since it costs $55, probably not. I’d have to catch an awful lot of fish to justify that expense.

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Those are two little duckies just landing (above). I don’t know what kind they are but maybe I can get a decent close-up of them later and someone can tell me.