Waking up this morning, I thought something was wrong.  It was not dark out, but not light either.  Then I realized that we haven’t had a cloudy day in weeks around here.

We unhitched this morning and headed to the Yuma Proving Ground museum.  After a surprisingly long delay at the security checkpoint, we made our way to the museum parking lot.  There, on display is the control car for the longest land vehicle ever made, the overland train:

The control car is the foremost segment of the train, shown here during testing:

The museum was quite well done, covering all of the equipment and weapon systems testing that occurred at the proving grounds, and continue to this day:

We returned to our campsite a bit after noon.  Yesterday I had parked the RV sideways to give us a nice view of the lake as well as to provide privacy from the road:

Not a bad front yard view:

I went for a 30 minute kayak ride around the neighborhood:

Good Shabbos from Mittry Lake, AZ!

This morning we returned our library books and stopped in at Gem World to pick up some findings:

The wind sock was getting quite a workout this morning:

I removed the wind sock from the RV as we prepared to leave.  Our son decided to see how fast he could make the wind sock spin:

We hitched up and headed South towards Yuma.  For us, Quartzsite was not all that exciting.  I can imagine it would be fun if one were part of a group, but alas there isn’t yet a get-together for observant Jews in Quartzsite.

We’re camping for the next couple of days at Mittry Lake, so we turned in at the access road that goes through the Yuma Proving Grounds, a military test area.  At the entrance, a pair of guns are on display.  The larger of the two, below, is an M65, capable of throwing a 600 pound projectile at a speed of 1,800 miles an hour for a distance of nearly 18 miles:

The smaller gun, pictured below in the foreground, fires a 200 pound projectile and has a maximum range of seven miles:

The Proving Grounds have an extensive display of missiles and vehicles tested here:

The proving grounds have a museum we hope to visit tomorrow.  Leaving the display, we drove on another 6 miles to our dispersed camping location on the shore of Mittry Lake.  The WiFi antenna continues to amaze us, as we’re able to pull 250kbps of WiFi from the Yuma Proving Grounds Army base, which is 3.8 miles away!  See the trip map for the route.

After the kids and I finished breakfast, we decided to head back to the big shows before Trish woke up.  The kids wanted these $15 miniature samurai swords they had seen at one of the booths.  I purchased an awning shade that attaches to the awning track and hangs down to provide a shaded seating area in the winter when the sun is so low that the awning shades only the RV, not the area in front of the RV.

Pictured below is the installed awning shade, as well as a 16 foot wind sock pole and wind sock that Trish was eyeing yesterday.  We installed it without her knowledge and called her outside.  We all love the bit of whimsy it adds to our RV:

We decided to do home school outside to test the awning shade. It does cut down the sun quite a bit, though I think I’d like a shade that cuts out even more:

It’s not Manhattan at rush hour, but it’s amazing what happens on the road when a 3,000 person town swells to a population of 500,000 for one month a year:

Today we visited the library to check out a couple books for the kids.  We also looked at 5th wheel “bunk house” RVs.  We’ve been toying with the idea of transitioning to a larger RV for some time now.  We really liked the Coachmen Chaparral 345BHS and the Heartland Gateway 3650.

We visited the rest of the Quartzsite shows.  For most of them, we didn’t even stop the car, as they are much smaller than the two big shows we saw yesterday.

Back at the RV, we were treated to another wonderful Arizona sunset, during which the kids and I played Frisbee until dinner:

This morning we did homeschool.  Our son is playing a game that was programmed by our daughter in Scratch:

After school, we drove into the show area.  We first visited the giant tent that housed the lifestyle and RV show.  This is one of three isles that extended the length of the tent.  The tent was something like 100 feet wide and 1000 feet long:

We wandered amongst the hundreds of RVs for sale.  In addition to this location, seven regional dealerships set up temporary local branches for the month or so that Quartzsite is the most busy:

This week is the “sell-o-rama” show in the Tyson Wells area.  We walked past hundreds of booths selling everything from RV parts to apparel:

After the show, we went back to the RV.  Here I’m looking towards the crowd of RVs that extends for about a mile to highway 95:

Tomorrow, we will visit the other shows in Quartzsite.