After we arrived in Yuma, we noticed that the town is crawling with UTV’s (Ultimate Terrain Vehicles) or side by sides as they are also called. The Sonoran Desert helps make this recreation popular. This desert spans about 100,000 square miles stretching over Arizona, California and Mexico. Many of the units are street legal, so after running around in the desert, people will swing by the store and grab a loaf of bread on their way home. Colleen and I decided this is something we HAVE to do before we leave Yuma.
We foun
d a local company that rents them out. They were pretty thin on stock. The gentleman told us all he has left was one of their smaller 800cc units. I told him that is fine, we will just be tooling around out in the desert for a few hours so we don’t need anything real powerful. The unit that we rented was not street legal so we had to trailer it to the “site”. The “site” is a general area near some railroad tracks. There isn’t a sign that says “park here to drive around this immense desert”. I was hoping to find other parked vehicles to know I was in the right area, but none were to be found. I just unloaded in an area that looked out of the way hoping the Desert Police were not going to tow our truck.
Before we left the rental place I explained I had never driven one of these before and ask about proper trail etiquette. He said there really isn’t any, but you may want to watch your speed going over hills. Once again I assured him I was no speed demon.
There are a couple of riding areas close to choose from, the sand dunes or the foothills. We opted for the foothills. After taking the unit off the trailer, I got Colleen situated and we were on our way a few minutes later. Once on our way we were enjoying the beautiful day and the scenery just puttering along. It was about then I recall reading something in a local paper ( or maybe on a bathroom wall) about it being dangerous running these machines too slow. Well the last thing I wanted to be was unsafe, so I then put the hammer down. Oh boy was that a rush! I love being safe.
We had a blast. A UTV could possibly be in our future. We do have a toy hauler after all. I would hate to under utilize our rig.
Click the link below to catch the footage from our joy ride.
