Quartzsite Continued

It is the the 19th of January and at the moment I am sitting in my motorhome out in the desert with the wind blowing the coach all over the place and the rain is coming down.  It is supposed to be bad for the rest of the week, but it just seems to rain at night.

I hung out with the SOLOS singles group for the past week and between Hugs and Mugs in the morning and Happy Hour in the afternoon we did fun things during the day.  After I got back from Blythe with a new roof, it deadens the rain now which is nice.  Before it used to be so loud that I couldn't hear the TV.  Every group has happy hour so we visit them all.  One had great entertainment with one of the singer with the Sons of the Pioneers.  Of course they had finger foods, I did resist this time.  We checked out a couple of other places and stopped at the famous Reader's Oasis Book Store.  This guy, Paul Winer, has been around it seems forever, a really nice guy that doesn't like cloths.  He seems to be the only one that can get away with it.  The last time I was out here I didn't get a picture so here it is.  Only in Quartzsite.  He owns this bookstore and has every book and tapes you could think of.  Just ask him and he will find it.  He is a poet and has had his poetry published, boogie and blues piano player and singer.  He performed all over the northeast U.S. and coast to coast in Canada.  He was the naked boogiwoogie piano player.  He is a nudist and has been all his life.  If you are ever in Quartzsite stop buy and say hi.

They have almost everything you want in this little town, lots of restaurants with very reasonable prices.  A place where you can get breakfast all day.  Thursday was a veg out day, but that didn't happen a friend called so we walked around one of the flea markets along with the wind and dust.  We tried to find the Pipe Museum and thinking it was a building looked for awhile.  It was in one of the tents in the market.  This museum houses over 1,500 smoking pipes and stands from as early as 1600's.  For the $2.00 admission it was well worth it. Pipes have been made of everything from corncobs to silver and gold and other prescious metals.  One popular material is meerschaum (meaning Sea Foam in German) was the superior material.  They receive these pipes from all over the world.  There are also metal advertisements all over the walls.  Ashtrays  that brought back memories of my childhood.  When a lot of people smoked one thing or another.  They are trying to raise money to buy a truck to house the collection so they can travel around showing people the history.  Quartzsite had a bad wind storm come through in December and it did destroy a few of the display cases.  Tents are used and the wind can destroy them very fast.  There is also a gum museum, but I didn't have time to check it out, always next time.
Friday was dancing day, a group of us went to a place called "Somewhere" in Bouce.  We stopped and had supper then went to this bar.  It is very small with very little dance floor, but it was packed.  They had a live band and I danced almost every dance.  The group I was with has a policy that a guy has to dance with all the women and the women can ask the guys to dance.  Another late night.

Saturday we took about 8 cars and went to the Desert Bar.  This is north of Parker and about 5 miles off the main road and is dirt it winds through valleys and up into the mountains.  This place was an old mining town and this guy bought it in 1975and turned it into a bar.  It is only open for the winter and only on Saturday and Sunday from 1.00pm till dusk.  They have no electricity only solar.  They serve hot dogs and hamburgers (not very good) didn't have any.  A band plays all afternoon and you can dance.  The water was trucked in for years and now has a well that only goes down 367 ft.  There is a church there but it is only a wall that is built like a church, weddings are held there, but no services.  The windows in the bar are old refrigerator window doors and the bar stools are made of steel and they sway from side to side.  The top of the bar is brass and the ceiling is made of stamped tin purchased from a factory in Missouri.  The womens washrooms have stalls of thick steel and the sinks are overlooking the hills, a beautiful view.

After we left there we headed

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to the Blue Water Casino in Parker.  We stopped and picked up their players card and received $10.00 in cash. While waiting for the card we had a late lunch out on the patio right beside the Colorado river, what a view.  There is a marina there, no boats too cold, but lots of ducks. When we picked up the $10.00 I was just going to put it in my pocket, but decided to put $5.00 in.  Well I played three times and the machine started dinging. $59.95 later I quit and cashed it in.  So I came out with $66.00.  

The RV show started on Saturday, but I waited until Monday to try and avoid the crowds.  I go over early like 8 am to get a parking spot.  You can't move in there most of the day and forget getting a parking spot.  I met a friend and went for lunch and the rest of the day I tried not to spend any money.  That was a lost cause.  I needed water filters 2/9.95 so bought four, they are that for one in Canada.  I almost bought a flag pole, but talked myself out of it.  They now have lights that are brighter for your RV and use less wattage, picked one up, but my coach is too old and it wouldn't work. I also got some orthotics for $200, in Canada over $400.  So back I went today to pick them up and take the light back.  Oh then I bought an external hard drive and a flash drive. 

I got to talking to the lady that was helping her son with the orthotics and they host camp up in Utah right where I want to go so she invited me up to camp with them free.  She is going to take me to all the great places I want to see.  Its amazing who you will meet and what they do, that is what is so nice about RVing.

 I am glad I am heading back to Yuma tomorrow if the rain and the wind dies down enough to drive. I have had enough of dry camping for awhile. Have a great week everyone.

Quartzsite

In my blog I have been trying to catch up to where I am now, but the last few days have been so great I wanted to fill you in.

I left Yuma last Thursday and arrive in Quartzsite mid morning.  It is only 68 miles so it was a leisurely drive, with very little traffic.  The scenery as usual was magnificant with the mountains in the background against the blue sky and the desert.  Just north of Yuma they have a border patrol where you have to stop and check in.  They have sniffer dogs that check for every thing.  The guy asked me if I was an American citizen and when I said Canadian he said have a nice day.

Quartzsite is a small town of about 2,000 people during the "off" season but swells to over 100,000 RVers in the winter time.  You can park for 14 days in the desert for free, then you can move to another part and start again.  You can also get two week passes for $80.00 or 6 months for $180.00.  You can go where ever you want on these passes.  I joined a group called the WINs Wandering Individual Networks, a group that is very active Kayaking, hiking and biking. I am not a member, but my friends are. They only dry camp and live off solar panels and wind generators and know where all the free camping is.  My friends were there and Bob was replacing my old TV with a flat screen.  He put the frame on a hinge so I can open it up and I am now able to store things behind it.  I can also access my audio and video plugs (Wii coming up shortly to play with).

What is so much fun is when you wake up in the morning and you look out at the mountains with the sun coming up and a coyote wanders right by your window, sniffs around and moves on.  Grabbed my camera, didn't get a good shot, there is always another morning. A knock on the door and my friend Donna is going to Parker did I want to go.  It is the only town that has a Wal Mart Supercenter and it is 24 miles away so got a few things that I needed.  I was looking for walking sticks and they had them for $18.00 a lot cheaper than Canada. All RVers work around Wal Marts they are one stop shopping. When we got home someone mentioned All You Can Eat Fish Fry so a car load went to a little town called Bouce 23 miles away.  I could have gone dancing that night, but ran out of steam.  When I came in I bottomed out and it broke my connection to my brakes on the car.  Well at happy hour I asked if someone could fix it and it was fixed in 5 minutes, got to love the networking.

In Quartzsite everyone works around whatever hours you want to work it seems. Information was closed at 3 and didn't open until 10.  Sally Ann open at 9 closed at 1.  Forget going to the post office the line up is a mile long outside in the sun.  Can you imagine 100,000 people waiting to get their mail, Well not all in one day, I know a few drive all the way out to Bouce for theirs.  Left for Blythe, Ca at 9 the next morning, was only a 40 minute drive.  While I was waiting for the roof guy I parked by a part of the desert across from his house.  While having lunch I see about 15 Quail running past my window and hiding in the bush beside me.  Out comes the camera, they are so cute the way they try to run fast with little legs.

There are a lot of these pretty birds in the desert and are fed very well in some areas.  I am having the roof on my RV redone in Acrylic at half the price I would pay in Canada and it has a 10 year warranty.Scott Christian arrived so I backed into his driveway and he set up.  He owns two beautiful homes on the Colorado River with decks at the back.  They have three garages that house their pontoon boats and their four wheelers.  The family comes and plays when school is out for the summer.  Scott has been doing this for about 5 years and is a guy that has had his hands into almost everything.  When he retired he got bored so now he works all over the U.S. fixing roofs.  What was nice about it was we went into Blythe to shop and ended up at Sizzler Steak House for dinner.  What a great way to spend an evening talking to someone interesting.  I usually have dinner by myself.  Today is another beautiful day up to 28 in the shade with a nice cool breeze. Sun deck here I come.  I will be here for three days then I will go back to Quartzsite for the RV show and a rally with the singles.

As you can see every day is a present you never know who you will meet, what you will do and where you will go.  I wonder what is next..........................

DEATH VALLEY

After Shoshone we headed to the China Ranch Date Farm.  I am glad someone else was driving I would never have found it.  You have to go through very narrow canyons with only rocks looking back at you.  It took us about 15 minutes to arrive.  It is found in a beautiful piece of the Mojave Desert.  It was beautiful with its date palm trees, cottonwoods and willows by a stream. The Old Spanish Trail is within walking distance and the historic Tonopah & Tidewater railroad bed. They have a store where you can buy everything made of dates.  Everyone loves the date shakes, but I find them super sweet so I filled up on the samples of the breads they make.  I have come to learn that I don't buy sweets because I will go home and eat them in one day.  They had a   very small motel where you could stay overnight. As you can see in the picture they cover the date seeds so the birds don't eat them.

They had these old cars and I what I would call a shack, you wonder how they lived in them.  Of course it doesn't get cold down in this valley.

Next was off to see Badwater, the name comes from the salt that is in the water then dries in the heat, you can't drink it. It is the lowest elevation in the U.S. 282 ft. below sea level.  You can walk out onto the flats where it is wet.  There was a hole dug so you could see the water just under the surface.  The sand was as fine and hard as some of the beaches in Florida.  You could walk for miles if you wanted to.  There was actually water in a little pond by the walkway.  As you can see by the picture that says sea level way up the cliff just how far below sea level it is and where I was standing. You will have to make it bigger to see it.

It was quite warm there as you can see.  I felt the salt and it, of course, was very sharp and gritty. We were trying to fit a few things in so we didn't have time to walk out on the flats.  When you go by yourself you can take the time to check it all out. Next stop was back to the Sunset Campground in Furnace Creek where the singles group was parked for the Death Valley Days.  I had Happy Hour with them and then drove back to my motorhome.  We did meet the wagon train on our travels that day and got to talk to them and find out how they survived.  It didn't look like they were suffering, they told us they trailered most of their things to the next stop.   One day we went to Titus Canyon three cars with four people in each, plus 3 dogs. We went up over 3,500 ft. We stopped at a Mexican restaurant in Beatty for a breakfast Buretto before we started.  There was far too much so it was lunch that day.  This canyon was a one way drive and after going through it you wouldn't want to meet someone on the way.  It is a very rough and narrow road, sometimes so narrow you could touch the rocks. It winds up to the top of the mountain and then down so four wheel drive is a must.

Our driver stopped a lot along the way and I took so many pictures it is hard to pick what ones to put on here.  The road to the left is what we traveled on up the mountain and you can see what beauty you find in the middle of nowhere
There were mines all along the road and you found them by looking for the tailings in front of the mine.

About half way along the canyon there was an old ghost town called Leadfield with mines all around. A couple of tin buildings and as you can see by the picture a little hovel that someone lived in.  Again it is warm there so they didn't need much.  It is hard to believe that it would take them  days to get supplies in, it took us over four hours.

There were Petroglyphs along the way and you had to watch closely. I loved the rocks that were in waves, it is hard to believe that over millions of years the rocks formed that way from pressure they look bent. Near the end of the Canyon the road was so narrow that you had to be careful not to take your mirrors off.  As we went we had to let people pass us they seemed to be in a hurray.  The last picture was eroded by the rain washing down the canyon and wearing away the rock over millions of years.  You wouldn't want to be caught in any canyon if there is rain in the mountains.  I was going to go up to Death Valley for the 49ers days, but was not feeling very well so hopefully will catch it in 2010.

Please bare with me regarding the pictures they won't go where I want them.  Any questions let me know and I will answer them.  I was going to do Scotty's Castle on this one but ran out of time and space.  Enjoy