Back In Yuma (For Awhile At least)

We thought last winter was going to simply be a time for us to kick back and relax after a very active travel year in 2019. We did have time to relax, but the winter had a lot more in store for us. In the next 4 months we would be faced with not having a place to park our rig with the pending national pandemic, health issues that would keep us in the summer Yuma heat along with unforeseen financial challenges. I will talk about how we approached these issues in following posts, but first things first. I would like to share how we became Yumans (for part of the year at least).

Before we left Yuma last year we decided to rent a private lot this winter. Our new friends Ralph and Diane found a place for us to share with them. So we arrived the first week in January. After we settled in and rested a bit, I started making our plans for the upcoming summer. We intended on staying in Yuma until the end of March then we would hit the road again. Just about the time I buttoned up our plans, things got interesting. We fell in love with the neighborhood. We loved it so much, we thought one day we might want to put stakes down here. Well the universe must have been listening. As Ralph was canvassing the neighborhood looking for a lot of us to stay the following winter, he heard that one lot was going to possibly come up for sale. This was a lot that was particularly attractive to us for a few different reasons. There is a very nice view of the foothills, separate gates making it easy to get in and out, and and east/west orientation (this is of particular interest when it gets hot to avoid broadside sun). When we thought SOMEDAY we would buy a lot here, we were not thinking within weeks. But as Ralph and I discussed it, I thought to myself that we could swing this property financially. So Ralph passed my number on. I didn’t get too amped up about it. I figured that it was probably just a passing thought on the owners end, but would not actually want to sell. Sure enough I received a call 2 days later. At that time he wasn’t sure he wanted to sell and we were not sure if we wanted to buy. Colleens parents were coming onto town the following week so we decided to talk again after their visit. After much thought and weighing the pros and cons, we decided we would move on it if the owner was willing to sell. Sure enough when we spoke the following week we agreed on a price which put things in motion. A week later we were land barons. Actually just property owners, but our friend Ralph likes to use the land baron title and we find it humorous.

As it turns out, this came just a few weeks before our rental contract was up and the country shutdown due to Covid-19. What a blessing this purchase was at this very time in our lives and in the history of the country. This was a time that was challenging for obvious reasons, but it added an additional challenge for full-time RV’ers. According to various sources, there are about one million full-time RV’ers. Many people simple wander from place to place throughout the year without a home base to go back to. In any other year, this is not a problem. The shutdown affected campgrounds and RV Parks in many states. Full-timers were scrambling to find places to hunker down until the situation stabilized. With us now having a home base, we could stay in Yuma as long as we needed, given that we could handle the heat. This really plays into the matrix of the other issues I mentioned at the beginning of this post. We will tackle the other issues in coming posts.