Kayaking Mittry Lake, AZ

Finally rented a kayak and spent some time on the water. I tried to get one to join Zak and Will on the Yuma portion of their trip, but the rental place was closed.

I decided that rather than do the Colorado river, I would have more fun on a lake. I knew of Mittry Lake because it is near where I go mountain biking. Only a part of the lake was open because of the time of year. Other than just a few fishermen in power boats I had the whole lake to myself. I paddled the whole perimeter of the open portion of the lake. I had the GPS tracking, but the app on my phone stopped uploading. If it ever works I will add the track on here.

Here are the pictures.

Update: gps app finally working map below.

-James

Lele Kawa

Going vertical at Valley of the Moon, CA

My first time to the valley of the moon didn't go so well as far as climbing goes, but that one was just an exploratory trip. This time I headed up with the Yuma Climbing Club, so they knew where we needed to go.

Here is the road in looking back from the main climbing areas.

Mostly we spent our time on Tech 9. This was my first outdoor climbing since Saudi Arabia, almost two years ago. This was a fun route. It was about 3 times as tall as the routes in Saudi. It was tiring but I didn't have to hang at all.

After we all took a few runs at Tech 9, we moved over to a mixed route. There were three bolts on the bottom, then it was a trad climb up a crack. None of us could move past the bolts on the bottom. We need some beta to make that transition from sport to trad.

Multiple gas free rides on the dunes

For a change of pace,the Lele Kawa crew came to join me in Yuma, rather and meeting up in San Diego.

We pulled out all the toys for this one. We had surf boards, snadboards, mountain boards, power kites and our imaginations.

The surf boards worked better on sliding down the sand than expected, and they made for some good photos. The sand was a bit wet and sticky for the sand board, this made it better for the mountain board. You could make it pretty far down the dunes if weren't too steep because the wet sand was packed pretty well. You did end up finding some loose patches to wipe out in.

 We also had fun just trying to jump down the steeper dunes as far as we could. The picture doesn't really due it justice, but it was lots of fun.

-James

Lele Kawa

Imperial Sand dunes, CA

The family joined me in town for the Xmass holiday. Rather than spend the whole weekend in Yuma, we headed for the left coast.

On the way to the left coast we made an early Christmas morning stop at the Imperial dunes. This was my first stop there that I actually left my car. As soon as I parked I just ran up the nearest dune. The dunes weren't like the ones I played on in Saudi Arabia. These dunes had much deeper bowls

Other than the sand sprints all I did was take the pictures below.

Pretty epic photo if I do say so myself

March in Pensacola disappoints

I was given the opportunity to spend a bit under 3 weeks in Pensacola, FL. I was excited about this because I had lived down here for about a year about 8 years ago. I didn't have a way to get around back then, so I couldn't take advantage of any of the things Pensacola had to offer.

My biggest goal was to dive the USS Oriskany, the largest ship ever sank as an artificial reef. I missed it 8 years ago by about 2 months. Hurricanes delayed the sinking until after I left. Sadly the March stormy weather stood in my way this time. Both weekends I was here, they weren't scheduling any boats, even though 2 of the days turned out to be pretty nice.

The dive shop told me about some springs I could dive at. I was unaware of these springs. They are about 2 hours away, but I found out too late and didn't have anyone to go up there and dive with. I wasn't prepared to make the trip up there with hopes of being able to join into a dive group. Maybe next time.

Spring break was going on when I was here so, but the weather was keeping people off the beach, and the water was still cold.

I tried to rent a paddle board, kayak or canoe to explore the bay. But the rental place refused many times for bogus reasons to include light wind. They wouldn't even let me take a short trip, because it was close, 2 hours, before they closed. I am still holding out for a rental during a lunch break this week.

The only redeeming part of the trip was getting to hit up some disk golf courses. I bought a cheap set of disk at sports authority and I went to two course and they were both pretty fun. Much better than what I have been stuck with in Yuma.

One of the courses had this little rope swing.

That is until things turned around a bit right at the end. The weather turned nice and in my last three days I squeezed in two paddle board session, 9 holes of golf, 64 holes of disk golf and a sandbar run.

Lunch time paddle

After work golf

After work paddle