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……

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!

Reunion Week in Quartzsite!

This post is titled Reunion Week because that is basically was it was, a lot of our friends we had met over the past 18 months are pulling in almost every day! When we first started this adventure 18 months ago we did not know anyone else who was on the road. Since then we have met dozens of couples who we now consider good friends. But how does one meet people on the road? Do you go from rig to rig knocking on doors saying “Hi, we are Jim and Barb, will you be our friend?” Well, kinda but not quite. We have met some while just walking the dog through the parks and stopping to talk to someone but most of our friends come via some kind of technology.

The two main sources; RV Dreams and blogs. The RV Dreams website is a great resource and connection point for both fulltime and part-time RV’ers.  In addition to their great informational forum, they also host several rallies throughout the year like the boondocking rally we attended in Florida last winter. Many of our “Dreamer” friends are also bloggers so when we find ourselves in the same area we try to connect. In the past two weeks we have created our own little “Dreamer/blogger” community where Steve and Dianne, Pam and Red, Lee and Trace, Al and Donna and Steve and Deb are all within a couple hundred yards of each other! Lee took a great overhead picture of all our rigs with his drone.....

(l-r) Al and Donna's rig, ours, Red and Pam, Steve and Dianne (center back), Lee and Trace, Steve and Deb

In addition we are expecting several more (Greg and Cori, Dino and Lisa, Bill and Kelly and Les and Sue) within the next couple of weeks! Some of us have met before in person but even those that haven’t feel like they have known each other a long time from reading each other’s travel adventures. A side benefit is also meeting their friends that are in the area like Deb and Ray just down the road a bit. Two other RV Dreams couples (Dave and Diane and Mario and Ellen) that are staying in town stopped by for a couple happy hours…. ….oh wait…. I was recently informed that these are not happy hours, they are socializing events. (we wouldn’t want people to get the idea that all we do is drink!)

Dianne and Barb "socializing"

Pam, Diane, Steve and Dave

"The Fergs" Al and Donna married 42 years today!

Ellen and Trace. Looks like Ellen's foot is on fire!

Front: Mario, Lee and Trace
Back: Al, Red Dave and Steve

Another great source to find RV or travel blogs is Hitchitch. We are members of this group and have discovered other bloggers that we have not never met but consider good friends and are hoping to meet sometime in our future travels.

RVillage is a site dedicated to helping RV’ers connect. I think of it as Facebook for RV’ers. When we get to a new area we “check in” on RVillage and you can see who else has checked-in the area. Since we have been here we have received two messages from fellow RVillagers asking to meet up. The first was Jim and Peggy who we had met last winter in Florida. When they checked-in here in Quartzsite, they saw that we were here too and met up for dinner at Silly Al’s one night. Unfortunately we forgot our camera! We also received a message from Kathy and Larry who are just down the road from us asking us if we wanted to meet up. Although we had not met before, we met this afternoon and found that we had a lot in common being somewhat new to the RV lifestyle. I am sure we will connect with them in the near future.

Last but not least, Facebook also has a group for fulltime RV’ers called Full Time RVing. In the past week we met a great couple Jim and Barb (with names like that how could we not meet them?). Jim had sent us a note on Facebook telling us they were in the area and to stop by sometime so we rode over on the 4 wheeler one day. Talk about a solar set up, they have 1600 watts of solar that puts our 640 watts to shame!

So hitting the road as a solo or a couple not knowing a sole may seem intimidating at first but before you know it you will be seeing old friends and meeting new ones at happy hour social events in the desert!

Between all these events we did get out for a couple of 4 wheeler/jeep rides. There are literally hundred of miles of trails out here on the flat land and the hills. On one particular ride we went up a pretty steep grade only to find that the trail ended suddenly, I mean really suddenly at the edge of a cliff. Good thing we did not fly up that hill! After a little maneuvering I got the ranger turned around but Barb and Daisy opted to walk down as it looked a little steeper going down then coming up. After a little sliding everyone made it down, safe and ready for another adventure.

View from the top

Sliding Down!

Until next time..........