I was in Yuma for two days, and, as such, I decided to delay my writing. Going into Yuma I did not expect much. It’s a border town, around 15-45 minutes from the border. It’s quite hot, around 85 degrees when we were there. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there was this reputation surrounding it that was just negative. It’s like the same reputation as Stockton or Bakersfield–that it’s just gross. Did Yuma completely shatter my expectations? No. Was it alright? Yeah. We went to the border before going to our hotel. It’s a fence. Not much more to say.
After that, we had a decent brownie and mousse from a local bakery. It did not deserve the measly three stars it got, it was a good four. Even in Yuma, people are still snobs on Yelp. We went out to dinner at a barbeque place. We had pulled pork, brisket, tri-tip, mashed potatoes, texas toast, fries, chips, and carrot cake, all house-made. I feel like things that are house-made always taste better than store-bought. Maybe it’s the idea that homemade is better or maybe it just is better, the world may never know. After that, we were basically in for the night.
We had the worst breakfast of the trip the next morning. Hampton’s, of course, aren’t known for their stellar cuisine, but it’s usually passable or above passable. This time it was some weird egg thing and ham, which, I’m sorry English people, is not a breakfast thing. The only real saving grace was the Frosted Flakes, which no other place had. We went to a Tunes and Tacos festival. Basically, a bunch of cheap tacos and music. Pretty cool. I think that should be in every good city. There needs to be some sort of local festival where you can see what the town offers. For Montreal, that happens all summer with the music festivals and local food. Same thing with Bozeman. Yuma may not be the greatest town ever, but it is elevated by that festival. There must be some life, some gathering of people to make a town feel alive, or else people won’t want to be there, especially tourists.
Anyway, after that, we went to the prison. It has been decommisioned for the past years, and now open to be visited. There are some great people there. Here’s some pics.
I always like history, so it was interesting for the around a half-hour we were there. The real main event that happened was welding. It was my mom’s birthday, so we went to Yuma to weld. It’s kind of a long story, but basically I took welding at Astrocamp over the summer and the teacher does her own classes in Yuma, which my mom wanted to take. She was super helpful and it was a lot of fun. We got to use a plasma cutter, which is essentially a short range lightsaber.
Essentially what it is is a lantern for our porch that we put solar lights in and the holes that we plasma cutted act as holes for the light to shine through and show the designs. I’m sorry if that sounds confusing, but I don’t know how else to put it. Anyway, we celebrated my mom’s birthday, ate some good burgers and a terrible caesar salad. Nothing much happened after that, and we drove home the following day.
Thus marks the end of this trip. What have I learned? Well, Cal Poly SLO is better than UC Santa Cruz, Prescott isn’t that great, Yuma is better than I thought, and Bakersfield is just as bad, if not worse, than I thought. I went to a fair amount of cities this trip, and I learned that pretty much all cities have hope. Like I said above, there is some good in Bakersfield. Prescott, if a few things were fixed and some life was brought into the town, could be a great second home destination. Flagstaff could be better if they controlled the snow a little more, a bit better than Gatsby controls time. If Santa Cruz fixed their homeless problem and layout, they could be a great beach destination. It’s easily to look at a city and be like, “Well, that’s gross. There’s like homeless people here and it smells. There is no hope and I’m never coming here again.” What I encourage is to give cities a chance. Sure, they might not look the greatest on the surface, but if you look closer, under the surface, some might say you can see the glimmer of hope lurking inside all of them.