WETLANDS AND SUPERBOWL SUNDAY.

Just below the prison, an area known as East Wetlands stretches up to the base of a mountain range along the Colorado River.

Wetlands suggest birds to me, but we didn’t see any. I expect we would during the great migration from Mexico and South America.

Much of the water here is provided by the Colorado River and flows through man-made canals.

The terrain changed from low brush to high brush and later to the growing fields under lease or private ownership on what was signed as BLM land.

Now that’s green and we saw miles of it.

A group harvesting lettuce are probably not interested in Super Bowl Sunday. The boss of this crew whistled at me and indicated that I should not to take pictures of them.

I got to see all that green I was longing to see.

Various colors of green as in broccoli.

Kale.

Purple lettuce, too.

On our previous stay in Yuma, we had grapefruit just like this hanging over the motor home where we were parked. Oranges, too.

This bougainvillea doesn’t compare in size to the one we walked past every morning, but there are many beautiful bushes in bloom to enjoy around town.

After our drive, we returned to town and stopped at the VFW to have a beer and a peek at the Superbowl.

We wore our grubbies, knowing we’d have to wash what we wore and take showers to get rid of the smoke. People are nice. Jim befriended Cathy Shrader in the weeks before I arrived and wanted me to meet her. Nice gal, fun to talk to. A widow like me, hesitant about on-line dating as I was.

The VFW was set up for a party, but the game hadn’t started.

I jokingly asked a woman who she was rooting for. Her answer was this. We visited for an hour and left. We never did see anything but pre-game talk on the big screen television. Before going to bed, I called my kids to see who won.

 

 

 

A GOOD CORPORATE CITIZEN

I knew there was a reason I like to use Southwest Airlines when I fly. In fact, I always attempt to put my money where I sense corporate responsibility. Many companies, especially small companies encourage their employees to do community service, often giving them company time to do it.  But how does a huge corporation that does business in so many communities involve itself with people projects?

Several months ago, the Student Conservation Association, which coordinates young adult volunteers on conservation projects across the country, approached Southwest about a collaboration tied to Southwest’s 40th anniversary. Southwest was enthusiastic about the idea and both groups met and came up with  “Conservation in Action Tour: 40 Projects for 40 Years.”

On the ground, that translates as  a circuitous nationwide trip in a painted Southwest RV, moving from city to city  to work on conservation projects.

Prior to each stop, Southwest organizes a group of its employees to participate in the day’s project and the Student Conservation Association mobilizes its own volunteers. They were spotted in Las Vegas last week at McCarran Airport.

The Las Vegas conservation project was scheduled for the Springs Preserve, a 180-acre center-of-town cultural center dedicated to the desert ecosystem. Organizers at the preserve and the SCA planned a morning of tree planting, mulching, weeding and general garden cleanup. But the night before the event, Mother Nature intervened with a flash flood.  The clean-up became a recovery project that included replacing some downed trees.

The 60 volunteers worked through the heat to get the place back in order in one day, a project that probably would’ve taken the area Springs Preserve volunteers many days to complete.

“They didn’t even want to take water breaks,” claimed Tyler Lau, an SCA project leader for the Tour 40 team.

A  midsummer outdoor project in the sizzling heat of Las Vegas probably had as much appeal as skunk grease, but  the  volunteers pitched right in. They have done invasive plant removals, habitat restorations and wetland and riverbed cleanups, but fixing up a desert garden after a storm was something new.

Southwest spokeswoman Michelle Agnew said the Tour 40 project was something new for the airline, but giving back to communities is something it has done for years. Last week, VEGAS INC chronicled the importance of corporate philanthropy, but imagine how tough that is for an airline that flies into 72 cities?

The company initiated a program called Tickets for Time in which for every 40 hours a Southwest employee volunteers for a nonprofit organization, the benefiting organization is eligible for a complimentary roundtrip flight for fund-raising or transportation needs. Southwest employees logged 45,000 hours of volunteer work in 2009, according to the company website.

On last week’s visit, the SCA crew got a day off from RV living to spend a free night at Bally’s on the Strip.

“I never thought  I’d ever spend a night in Las Vegas,” Lau says.

I’ve  blogged a number of times about bad corporate citizens so it gives me great pleasure to illuminate what happens when tourism, business and conservation work together for the benefit of all.

We’re Camped Near A Very Famous Spot…

We are camped at Thousand Trails RV Resort in Seaview, Washington…about one mile from where Captain William Clark (of Lewis and Clark) stepped upon the sand beach of Beards Hollow on the shore of the Pacific Ocean on November 19, 1805. Here’s a Lewis and Clark route map showing our proximity to that site…(Left click to enlarge)…

The above map is found in this excellent link about the local Lewis and Clark Discovery Trail…
http://funbeach.com/local-attractions/discovery-trail/

Here’s a Google Earth view of the same area which you can left click to enlarge…

You can also click to enlarge this view looking north up the Washington Coast to Canada…

The beach was reached through Beards Hollow which you can read about by clicking this link…

http://www.columbiariverimages.com/Regions/Places/beards_hollow.html

Yesterday Mary and I walked Clark’s trail through Beards Hollow to the beach. It was neat to have a feel for what Clark and his men likely saw and felt on that day. Here are some photos…

First Beards Hollow as seen from the road (just an Indian path back then) overlook…

From the parking area, it was a path about 1/2 mile through some beautiful wetlands…

This is the view they would have seen as they emerged from the thicket…

Clark and his men walked about five miles north on this beach looking for a spot to set up for their winter camp…

About 1/2 mile up this beach, a path to the right leads to our campground. Not finding anything suitable they returned south, crossed the Columbia River into what is now Oregon and established Fort Clatsop.

To see the other 14 photos I took, Click this link…
https://picasaweb.google.com/110455945462646142273/LewisClarkDiscoveryTrailSeaviewWA#

Exploring historical locations is one of our primary enjoyments of our RVing life!

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2011
For more information about my three books, click this link:
http://lulu.com/panamaorbust