Subj:     183. Where are we?
Date:     Saturday, January 6, 2007

We've done a lot of traveling since our last Where are we? but we are now settled in for the Winter. We are in a city known for sunshine. According to the Guinness Book of World Records this is the sunniest place on earth. This place so popular during the winter that the population at more than doubles during the winter with an estimated 85,000 "snow birds." For the uninitiated a snow bird is a person, usually with some type of RV, that migrates south for the winter and north for the summer. This town is also known for a territorial prison which housed many outlaws in the 19th century, and as the primary outpost for supplying army posts in the southwest in the 19th century.

We also have jobs for the winter. We will be working four days a week for about 7 hours a day, much less than we were working at Manchester Beach KOA. Some people have asked us how difficult is it to find workamping jobs. The answer is, it's easy. We pounded the pavement for two days. After the first day we had a job offer at a very beautiful RV park with a very nice golf course. We turned that job down because they wanted us to work 40 hours a week and we didn't want to work that much. The second day we had another job offer which we took. We were not sure when we would start so we took off in the RV to visit some family. The day after we accepted the job, as we were driving, we received a phone call from our new boss asking us if we could come to work. Well, since we were on the road we explained that we wouldn't be able to work until the following week, which is what we had agreed to. That was OK.

Since our last email on Christmas, we drove from Phoenix to Yuma, then back to Phoenix, then to Ridgecrest, and then back to our current location. Finding a reasonably priced place to park our motorhome for three months wasn't easy. Most of the places we called were either too expensive or didn't have any sites available for three months. However, we were able to find a nice place, at a reasonable price.

Now, where are we? We are back in Yuma Arizona for the winter. We are working at the food concessions at the Arizona Market Place. The Arizona Market  Place is a flea market that is huge. It really looks like the job will be fun (having fun is very important).

The Brauers
Havin' fun
Working in Yuma

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Subj:     184. Where are we?
Date:     Monday, January 22, 2007

Here we are in Yuma Arizona trying to enjoy the weather. Unfortunately, it has been unseasonably cool, but it should get better.

We are working at the Arizona Market Place four days a week. The Arizona Market Place is a huge flea market. Just to give you an idea of just how large it is, it would take you a least one hour to walk by all the booths, not to buy anything but just walk by them. You can find almost anything you want there.

We are now running one of the food booths. It's a combination Hot Dog and Ice Cream Booth. We have a different philosophy from some of the other food booths. Instead of pre-wrapping hot dogs, we put the dogs in the bun after it is ordered. Also, things that are supposed to be hot (sauerkraut and chili) are served hot, right on the dog. So far that seems to be very popular. We may not be selling as many hot dogs as the other hot dog stand but our customers are very happy and don't seem to mind standing in line for a few minutes to get something hot. We are only open four days a week for four to five hours a day (although with set up and clean up we typically work 6 to 7 hours a day). It's is fun and our biggest day in the last two weeks was well over $1,000. Believe me, that is a lot of hot dogs.

Yuma is one of the many snowbird destinations. We noticed that there are a lot of out of state license plates here. That got our curiosity up. So we started keeping a list of all the different state license plates we see. So far, and we have only been doing this for four days, we have seen 37 states represented (that includes Hawaii!). We haven't kept track of the Canadian license plates but we know that we have seen most of the Canadian Provinces represented, including Quebec.

We've also had several job offers for the summer and, today, we decided which one we would take. So, in May, we will be heading to Montana to work at the West Yellowstone KOA.

The Brauers
Havin' fun in Yuma