Quartzsite.....The Big Show has gone to the Dogs!

The big show was this week! We watched throughout the week as the big white tent went up, the retail RV lots filled up as did every nook and cranny that would fit the rigs of the people who stayed in town. Out here in La Posa South it did get much more crowded but not horrible. Here is what it looks like now.....

North (we are in the middle)

West

South

 

East

 We were warned not to go to the big tent on the first day but we are here for “the Quartzsite experience” so we just had to go. Well, the people who warned us were not wrong. It was crowded, like little lemmings we went up and down every aisle looking at what each of the vendors had to offer. RV wares, resorts, clubs and workcamper recruiters were there in abundance. What we did not expect were the number of vendors selling cookware, pain relief and other non-RV related items were there in even a bigger force. Lot’s of……”if you buy today, I will throw in…..” It did not look like there was a shortage of people who were interested in almost everything they were peddling as it was elbow to elbow the entire time we were there. People stopping in the middle of the aisles to chat with their friends and, the dogs! Dogs everywhere, dogs in leashes, dogs in pouches, dogs in strollers......dogs everywhere! We at least had the good sense to leave Daisy at home, it seems everyone else.....did not.  Between the people and the dogs it was  gridlock!

Wall to wall people

 

and dogs......Pretty dogs.....

Side by side dogs.......

Double decker dogs.......

and dogs in hats........

 

We walked through 4 times during the week and talked to a few workcamper recruiters. There were a couple that looked interesting, some only wanted you to commit to a couple weeks while others wanted a several month commitment. We were interested in a couple as it would be a great way to explore an area, make a few bucks and have your site paid for while you are in the area. We ended up buying a couple of items….some LED lights and a small kitchen grinder that grinders anything you put in it! And we were in luck, it just so happened the day we bought it he not only threw in an extra grinder disc but an entire extra grinder!!!!! (I think we heard the same pitch the day before as well). As luck would have it our friends Steve and Joan drove down from Lake Mead and split the purchase with us!

Need a stove top grill?

How about a mop?

A job at Amazon or a beet farm?

How about a rig with the toilet open to the bedroom!?!

 

I think the non-RV related booths outnumbered the RV related booths 2:1. Personally I think they could do a much better job marketing to today's RV'er.

Speaking of Steve and Joan, we had a happy hour/fish fry in our little community that night that they were able to attend and meet a lot of fellow “Dreamers”. Red cooked up some Texas crappies while Trace went crazy with the onion rings!

Red, Pam and Tracey cooking up the fish and rings!

The Gang! (photo compliments of Alan)

The next day we followed Steve and Joan down to El Centro, California for a produce farm tour at the University of California Davis Research Center. We also met Ginny and Don who drove down from Lake Mead as well. We had heard about this tour from Pam (Oh, the Places They Go!) who had attended it last year. The cost was $20/person for the tour, lunch and all the produce you could fit into a gunny sack. Well worth the price of admission with a lot of interesting information on the research program. I learned things ……. I really don’t like Swiss chard and don’t mind daikon radishes. We also got beets, broccoli, roman lettuce, iceberg lettuce, turnips and cilantro.

It's a little chilly but I think we will make it!

Ginny volunteered for a demonstration

Barb, Joan, Steve, Ginny and Don



Picking broccoli

Barb with her bounty!

On the way back we stopped by Imperial Sand Dunes, it looked like a 4 wheeler/dune buggy haven!

We made a couple other purchases over the past week; the first was an inversion table. Barb’s back has been really bothering her over the last few months. She visited a surgeon recently who recommended (short of surgery) that she hang suspended in a pool 30 minutes a day for a month and see if that helps decompress her spine. Easier said than done with this lifestyle. While walking Daisy here in the desert she noticed several trailers with inversion tables outside them. She stopped and talked to several of the owners who said it really helps decompress their vertebrae’s so we thought we would give it a try. The second purchase was a new GPS for our truck. Several of our friends purchased the Garmin RV 760lmt, it is designed specifically for the RV’er as you can enter specific details related to your rig (length, weight…..) and will route you accordingly. Luckily we had sold over $800 of items on eBay over the past few weeks so we just this money for these purchases over the past few weeks.

We also managed to get out on 4 wheeler rides several times over the past week testing our new Gamin Montana GPS while geocaching. Over the past week we found over 100 caches and really enjoy searching for them out in the desert and surrounding mountains.

The group at a remote desert resort



Daisy hot on the trail of a geocache

Found one!

And another!

I know there is one in there somewhere!

The sunsets in the desert continue to be spectacular! Thanks for stopping by……