Well after a few days of getting our bearings here in Yuma we decided to some of the touristy things here. We visited the Yuma Territorial Prison which was built in the late 1800's, by the very prisoners that it housed. Now, if I was 1 of those guys I certainly would have mixed a lot more sand into the cement mix, but that's just me. Part of the place was dug out of the landscape and it is a mixture of rock, pebbles and sandstone that requires heavy machinery to excavate so no tunnelling ops for escape here! The prison was only in use until the early 1900's and then it was abandoned. Over the years it was shelter to many homeless during the depression and was also used as the local school when the schoolhouse was destroyed. It is now a museum which is cared for and operated by volunteers.

We also took a trip to a local Medjool date plantation and got a chance to try a date shake and buy an 11 lb. box of dates. The history of date production in the area goes black to the early 1900's when a few trees were brought to the US in order to protect the species from a disease plague that had hit their native home, Morocco. From those few trees there are now thousands of date plans in Arizona and California with exports going all over the world.

Our last stop for the day was the Imperial Sand Dunes, just over the border in California. It's weird because you go from desert landscape to all of a sudden, DUNES! We're talking Lawrence of Arabia type dunes, though not nearly as extensive. You may recognize them from the first Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back. Apparently they filmed some desert scenes here although I'm sure the droid prints have long since vanished.