Friday – November 21, 2014
Martha’s Gardens
Yuma, Arizona
We are enjoying beautiful weather here at the Imperial Dam, BLM LTVA Camping Area. The days are sunny with the temperature in the low to middle seventies. The sunny days are perfect to enable our solar panels to charge our trailer’s deep-cycle battery every day. Oops… spoke too soon. Today, I noticed the solar panels were not providing a charge to the battery. After a few minutes of investigation, I discovered the inline 10-amp fuse holder was the guilty culprit. The plastic housing of the fuse holder had deteriorated and was not providing a firm connection to the 10-amp fuse.
Fortunately, we are located 25 miles north of Yuma, a city with a population of 90,000 people. We located a Radio Shack store there on our smartphone, plugged in the coordinates on our GPS, and off we go! They had all of the items I needed: fuse holder, crimp connectors, and 10-amp fuses. I’ll splice in the new fuse holder on Saturday and our solar panel will be providing power to our battery once again. I’m a happy camper!
On our return to the Imperial Dam, on U.S. 95, I spotted a billboard at the Fortuna Road intersection, advertising the best date shakes in Arizona at Martha’s Gardens. I was anticipating the adventure of having my first date shake. Sharon… not so much!
We followed the Martha’s Gardens signs posted along Fortuna Road. If it had not been for those signs, we would have never found the place. After about three miles, the signs took us off the paved highway onto a graded, dirt road, with some segments having a fairly bad washboard surface. After traveling about two miles on this road we reached Martha’s Gardens. It is a retail store surrounded by a farm of date palms. The store’s supply of dates are fresh from this date farm. It was amazing to see the variety of products they produce from dates.
Originally, I was going to order a date shake, Sharon would taste it, and then decide if she wanted one too. That plan got trashed quickly as we perused all of the products on display in the store. We both ordered a date shake. OMG! They were delicious! We plan to make several return visits to Martha's Gardens during our stay in Yuma.
While we were waiting for our date shakes to be prepared, we sampled a few of their date samples. Dates were cut in half and then filled with different fillings: peanut butter or an assortment of different jams. Absolutely delicious!
Tomorrow another adventure begins.
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