A busy week 3 in Quartzsite

Week 3 in Quartzsite is in the books…… The “Big Show” starts on Saturday and the desert is getting crowded! We had some more friends show up this week. Greg and Cori who we met in Florida last winter arrived on Thursday. They own a solar business (RV Solar Solutions) and travel the country installing units as they go. As a matter of fact they are going to install an additional panel on our rig while they are here to bring us to 800 watts.

We got out on a couple of 4 wheeler rides one of which Steve and Diane guided us on showing us more of the sights in the area. First we went to Dripping Springs, an area with a very slow dripping water source, a cave and some really cool petroglyphs. We visited several abandoned mines and stone houses and Guadeloupe Mountain.  The history that lies out in the middle of these remote deserts is amazing!

Headed down a wash

Dripping Springs....only about the size of a cereal bowl

Steve and Dianne at the mouth of the cave

Inside you could stand up!

Petroglyphs

Looking straight down a mine shaft

Another shaft going straight into a hill

Exploring!

Apache Chief Cabin with some modern amenities

Someone left their underwear on the line!

Gold Nugget Mine Cabin

View of Guadeloupe Mountain from Gold Nugget

View from the top of Guadeloupe Mountain

Barrel Cactus

Happy hours continue to occur throughout the week. With all the people rolling in they are actually getting quite large, sometimes too large to really have conversations and catch up with people. One highlight included Daisy…….Trace has been wanting a dog, while her husband Lee is not quite on board. Daisy has attended a few happy hours and we have been slowly wearing away Lee’s anti-dog mentality. We were making really good strides, Lee was actually holding and playing with Daisy until …….”The Incident”…We are all sitting around a fire while Daisy and Lee were playing “fetch the rock” over by his rig. Lee would throw a rock, Daisy would retrieve it, Lee would throw, Daisy would retrieve. You could see him slowly but surely becoming a dog lover until….Daisy retrieves the rock, runs back, drops the rock, squats and pees on their entry mat! And just like that we are starting from ground zero again! Oh well, we have several weeks to continue to work on him.

Last Saturday a group of us went to the iconic Desert Bar outside of Parker. If you are in the area, the Desert Bar is a must see. It is an old mine out in the middle of nowhere and I mean nowhere that the owner has converted into a bar. Totally off the grid, this bar has solar galore, seating for hundreds, several bars and food stands. It is amazing what they built out there.

Check out all those solar panels!

One of the bars

Steve, Barb, Steve, Dianne, Ellen and Deb

Barb and Deb climbed a hill to get some shots

We used Quiet Times to have a couple of packages delivered this week. It worked pretty good…. They mislabeled one of our package which delayed our delivery but overall it worked good and we will use them again. Purchase number one was a California Duster which is a must have for wiping the dust off the rig. Our second purchase was a Garmin Montana 610T GPS for geocaching. After talking to some fellow geocachers, we found that this unit is one of the better ones for geocachers as it has many features designed specifically for that. Barb and I each listed and sold our current GPS’s on ebay last week and bought this one. Now we just have to learn how to use it!

We try to plan something each day to get us out and about, one day we drove to Parker to mail our eBay packages, do laundry, grocery shopping and went to the movie Reverant. For those of you who are regular readers, you know how Barb terrified of bears and has reoccurring dreams about getting attacked by one so when she asked me what the movie was about before we went I was not exactly forthcoming. Well first let me tell you, we were the youngest ones in the theater and if you go to a matinee movie in Parker get there early. We arrived about 1:20 for the 1:30 movie and were told there were only 20 tickets left. Whew, we got tickets! What we did not think of was when there are only 20 seats left, they are all in the front row! We have not sat in the front row since we were teenagers. Back to the movie itself……the main plot of the movie is about a mountain man who gets attacked by a grizzly bear and his struggle to survive. Well the attack scene was pretty realistic and you should have seen Barb’s eye! I don’t think she has forgiven me yet…..

Last but not least we went on an awesome hike with Kathy and Larry who we had met last week. We went to the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge where we hiked Palm Canyon, home of the only native palm tree to Arizona.

The scenery and views were incredible

On the way up Barb did some exploring and found a really cool ledge where the Desert Bighorns spend their time resting.

Can you see her??????

How about now?

The trail to the point where you can see the palms is fairly easy, the trail to where you are actually at the palms I would call extreme. Larry and I went up to see if we could get to the palms while Barb and Kathy stayed below and watched.

Kathy and Larry

The climb itself is pretty steep with some scrambling over some large rocks. Where it gets dicey is several walls that are virtually straight up that you have to scale. We made it to the lower area where there were some small trees, Then we came to a 10' wall. Larry was able to make it up after several attempts. I tried a couple different routes but the foot and handholds were only about an inch deep. While I think I could have made it up there, getting down without being able to see your foot holds would have been almost impossible. As it was when Larry came down I have to physically put his feet on the ledges as he came down. I will be back with gloves, water, my climbing boots and maybe a rope !!!!!

Larry at one of the smaller palms

The girls are way down there.....

Larry coming down a wall

Saw this posted on Facebook and just had to include it. Barb thought people would be confused by it. I thought not......

Thanks for stopping by!