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NW Iowa. / SW Arizona | Went out to the Barry Goldwater Range West by Yuma last week with 4 other local snowbird RZR riders. We put on about 40 miles round trip. This is federally controlled land that you have to have a free permit to access and have to go online and tell them when you’re going and check out when you leave. You also have to stay on approved roads and is against the law to go off of them. So it makes it pretty easy riding.
This area has been used for military training for decades and is still being used now for training. You see old discarded tanks, bomb shells and etc throughout the area. They say there are decades old live bombs throughout the area which could still go off which is why you have to stay on the designated roads.
As we stopped at a restricted area a couple of guys drove up in their military vehicle and stopped to talk to us. They thanked us for not entering the restricted area and said if we had time we could follow them into the grounds and he would give us a brief explanation of what that site was and we eagerly agreed :-).
The guy in the white shirt was the head commander for the whole region. He a retired marine pilot who says he’s flown every plane the Marines have. He said there is 750,000 acres of area in the Barry Goldwater region and it is all accesssble to the public but 40,000 acres scattered throughout the area. Where we were standing was part of that restricted area. Where we were was what they call the “Combat Zone”. They are mocked up buildings to display foreign buildings. There was going to be 300 Marines coming in later in the day to that site to do night time training.You see blank rifle shells all over the area, pretty cool area. Was really hoping to go through the buildings but he said they were to dangerous.
He talked about the illegals crossing in the Yuma area. Said they have 300 illegals in a place that’s supposed to hold 75 people. They were complaining about the poor food so our government is paying McDondalds to bring in food for them every day. They can only hold them for 30 days and after that they are released. He said the Catholic Charities picks up the released illegals and hauls them in luxury buses to Phoenix where they are released. He talked to us for 45 minutes. We all walked away in aw in how sharp that commander was. The guy standing to his right arrived here not to long ago from Iraq he is here to help with the designing of the border wall. We felt very fortunate to have them take the time to talk to us.
The beacon my wife and I are standing next to us in the middle of the dessert within the Range. You see them scattered throughout the area. If you push the button you will have the border patrol there in less then an hour. If you step on the pad in front of it will trigger a alert also so we’re careful not to step on it.
There was only one of the guys in the group who served in the military but he was a dentist so he spent his 4 years stateside during the Vietnam war and he didn’t have a clue what era these tanks would’ve been from. Anybody on here know what ere they are from?
Didn’t get a lot of RZR shots but had a great time in the dessert.
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Dessert riding near Yuma.
