How we Survived a Week Without the Internet (well kinda)

You don’t realize how much you will miss the ones you love until you lose them. Sometimes you don’t even realize how much love you have given until you experience such a loss. This week I experienced a loss that pretty much turned our world upside down. Before I go on, let me say Daisy is fine and as far as we know our friends and family are doing well. That said, we were in mourning and were left lost despondent and wandered the streets of Quartzsite totally out of touch with the rest of the world. The loss I am referring to is our Verizon Jet Pack!

Wednesday started like any other Wednesday…… Barb and the girls went to line dancing followed by a lazy afternoon, happy hour and dinner. That night Barb was working on our Alaska trip, I watched a little TV and we checked the internet to see what was going on in the outside world before we turned in. Everything was going well, nothing too exciting going on…..we turn off the computers, turn off the Jet Pack and go to bed. Our morning routine is breakfast, news on the TV and turn on the internet to see what we missed overnight (really pathetic when you think about it). When I went to turn on the Jet Pack…..nothing, would not even turn on. Well, that’s weird I thought it was fully charged. Well, I will just plug it in and turn it on….still nothing. It must really be dead, I will let it charge for a few minutes and try again. 30 minutes later, still nothing. Now I am starting to panic! I take out the battery, look it at (actually I did this twice), put it back in….nothing. OMG, we have a crisis on our hands! How can we even start to think we will make it through the day? What if someone emails us, someone messages us on Facebook or heaven forbid, we miss a really inspirational quote someone posts! The world as we know it has changed in an instant!

Luckily we had a full day planned and we were able to put it out of our minds. Our friends Dave and Maxine were stopping by on their way through the area to their BLM mapping job just east of here. We had not seen them since last spring and it was great seeing them. Of course we had to have a neighborhood happy hour to greet them!

Dave and Maxine along with Vicky and Harry

The next day, Kevin and Cathy from Wisconsin flew into Phoenix and were coming to visit! They arrived shortly after noon, Kevin got out of his car and said “I want to go Jeeping!”. Kevin had sold me his jeep shortly before we hit the road and he has been jeep-less ever since. So we took the top off the jeep, I tossed Kevin the keys, and the four of us piled in.

We had a great ride through the foothills of the mountains and even saw several Desert Bighorns!

That night we went to dinner at Heaven’s Kitchen, a BBQ rib place in Quartzsite. The food was very good and I would highly recommend this place. Afterward we went to Dino and Lisa’s and had a nice fire before we turned in. We gave Kevin and Cathy our bed while Barb and I slept on the blowup mattress in the couch. We were actually quite impressed at how comfortable that mattress is. After some visiting and 4 wheeling that morning, Kevin and Cathy left to visit other friends and family in Phoenix and Tucson.

That evening Dino and Lisa hosted happy hour!

Daisy and Moose were the center of attention!

So far we were surviving life without internet….we had missed a couple of messages from our desert neighborhood friends but the world was still turning. We were planning on a road trip to the Yuma Verizon store early next week. After a lazy Saturday morning we headed over to McDonald’s for…. their free wifi! So there we sat absorbed electronics, eating our lunch with the rest of the “disconnected”. Two hours later we were all caught up with the world (emails, Facebook, blogs…..) and ready to continue with our lives. One thing we forgot to do was look up how to get a new Jet Pack! Later that afternoon we found out that is a Verizon store in Blythe and would could have gotten a new on that afternoon!!!!!

Sunday…..Verizon closed. We stayed home most of the day and read, totally oblivious to what may be going on in the internet world. 

Monday we had a day trip planned to Joshua Tree National Park with Dino and Lisa. So leaving Daisy in the care of Auntie Dianne, we headed west for the 90 mile drive to Joshua Tree. High winds were forecasted for the day and they forecasted right….. there was a “brown out” from all the dust in one area and the wind was so strong it blew over a semi-truck along the way!



The winds really blew up a dust storm.....

.......and blew over this truck!

We had no idea what to expect of Joshua Tree so we set our expectations pretty low. Well, let me tell you Joshua Tree is very cool! We entered the south entrance and went directly to the Visitors Center where Barb picked up a National Parks Passport book. This small book is a guide to the national parks with maps, information and a listing of all National Parks in America. Each park has rubber ink stamps indicating the date and park location so you can stamp each park on the appropriate page recording the date you visited. We would love to visit all 58 Nation Parks but there are a few that would really be a challenge….Hawaii and U.S. Virgin Islands would be tough.

Our first passport stamp!

 

Passport in hand, we set off to see the park! The southern end is rather arid with a lot of desert features. As we progressed north and climbed elevation we really started to notice the changes in the rock formations from jagged rocks to smooth, rounded rocks which made for some excellent photo ops.

Many of the Cholla had buds on them

Do'in a little rock climbing!

Great example of a Joshua Tree

 

 

Barb captured a picture of this lizard......

 

....and this rabbit.

Lisa sitt'in on a rock!

 

Lots of Joshua Trees

 

 

We spent most of the day driving through the area with the promise to be back when we can spend more time and do some hiking amongst the hills and rocks. That night was a full moon and I had been working on my moon photos over the past week so we went out later that night for a few shots.

Tuesday morning I woke up just as the sun was coming over the horizon. It was going to be a glorious day, it was Verizon day! After breakfast and Daisy’s morning walk we head off to Blythe to see about a new Jet Pack. We arrived at the Verizon store, gave them our information and guess what? We qualified for an upgrade!!!! For only $20 more dollars a month we can get a new iPhone. That would also require a new contract which would end our $15 a month credit on our existing device. So this “upgrade” would cost us $35 more a month. No thanks, we just want to replace the Jet Pack and be on our way. No problem the clerk says, then Barb asks “Can we get more gigs and pay the same amount?” The clerk plays with the computer and says that she can give us 3 more gigs per month and lower our bill by $5 per month. Ya, we will go with that deal, more gigs, less money. A few minutes later we were on the road with our new Jet Pack…..Thus ending my week from hell without the internet.