During our full time traveling years – and even a few times after that – we wintered in the south and summered in the north. AZ was our out west winter stopovers and central/southern FL was our eastern winter stopovers.
Our first partial winter in Yuma was caused by what I call a “rain in the desert year”. We were very comfortable in San Diego when the rain started. When the mud slides started we loaded-up and went over the mountains to El Centro, CA. When the flooding got so bad at El Centro - they were using giant tanker trucks to vacuum the water from the parking lots - we took a day trip to Yuma searching for another place to finish-out the rainy year.
We had not thought about senior (55+) RV parks before. Yuma’s RV population increases to about 200,000 in the winter months. When we drove into the Yuma Sands Senior RV Park we were doubtful we would find a Yuma parking place. As luck would have it, a couple of trailers had applied for early departure so they could go further south to the TX gulf coast. There were two of us and we paid the rent for the next few months and went back to El Centro to pack.
The Yuma Sands RV Park is not one of those resort type parks; it’s just very conveniently located on the major east-west rural highway. All sites are FHUs with 50 AMPS. Some of the local bus & van tours pick-up and return there.
And, right across the street on the northern border of the park there is a section of the AZ aqueduct system that just happens to have black bass, stripers and catfish in it for the taking. The average length for all of those fish was somewhere between 8” and 16”, lots of fun with light tackle. Cut anchovies and wild worms were the best baits.
Over the next few years we wintered at the Sands three more times.
Here’s a glimpse of the parking and a couple of pictures taken of the flowering desert on I-8 on our way to the Sands.