Not All That Glitters is….. (01-31-14)

….Gold….or crystal, for that matter.

Some of the people in our group enjoy panning for gold and spent a fair amount of time panning through the mud, looking for the stuff that glitters.  Unfortunately, as far as I know, they didn’t find any, but I’m sure they had fun looking and teaching other people how to do it.

Meanwhile, Paul and I made two trips to Crystal Mountain, looking for…crystals.  The first day we went it was pretty cloudy so we decided we needed to go back a second time, in case it was the cloud cover that was causing us to not find anything.

The views from Crystal Hill are pretty nice and the weather was perfect.

Searching for crystals reminds me of searching for sea glass- You are constantly looking down, checking for anything that glints in the sunshine. At Crystal Hill, you’re not allowed to dig for them, you can only take what you can see sitting on the surface.

In the end, we did find a few nice pieces- two that are pretty good size.

In addition to all the fun, of course we have the usual chores to do.

  It was time to move to a new spot when it was time to empty our tanks.  The line can be quite long so we kept an eye on it and timed it so we had a short wait.  Exciting, eh? We did have a little excitement though.

While we were putting fresh water in our tank a woman told us she had just lost her little dog, who had jumped out of her rig.  I got out the binoculars to start searching, and called our friends who were still nearby and they came out to help search.  About 40 minutes later the dog was found and everyone was happy again.

 

The laundry piled up to the point where we made a trip into town to get it done.  It was a large Laundromat, with about 50 dryers, so several women got the brilliant idea of writing down which dryers their clothes were in.  Apparently they had no paper, because they all wrote the numbers on their hands.  Too funny. (Hey, we’re easily entertained)

With not much TV available, Paul was running out of reading material, so we went on the hunt for more books by one of our favorite authors.  We went to several book stores, then ended up at this place.  This is a famous bookstore, but we’ve never been here before, nor did we realize what it was until we got out of the truck.  See, the man who runs this bookstore is a nudist- and he wears only what the town requires of him, which apparently, is a sock.

I say apparently because we happened to show up on a day when the store was closed.  Oh well.

More Desert Fun (01-27-14)

Part of the attraction of Quartzsite Arizona in January is what they call the “Big Tent” RV Show.  It’s a huge temporary RV market place. We like meandering through all the vendors, although we never buy very much.

  This year the big “score” was a small but versatile table. It’s very light weight and when you take the top off, it becomes a foot rest.  I think about 8 of us in the group bought one of these tables.

Life in the desert is never boring.  A few days ago we had a pot luck/spaghetti dinner for about 40 people. 

Although it seems like lots of our fun revolves around food, it’s not always the case.  This time the meal was special because we were honoring Lee, one of our friends who had been full timing for many years, by himself. He’s now in his late 80s and still going strong.  Jeri read a proclamation declaring it “Lee” or “IYQ” (his name on the forum) Day.  It was a great opportunity for us to let him know we respect and appreciate him and his sense of humor!

Since we had everyone together, we decided it would be a good night to get a group picture. Well, tons of fun was had while waiting for the sun to dip below the horizon. It seems we lined up for the picture way too early so we had to sit for quite a while.

What a difference a professional makes! This was taken with my camera while we were still waiting for the correct sun configuration.

 

Eventually the sun was in the right spot and the official picture was taken by Carol Dwyer, one of several professional photographers in our group.








Once the sun had set Dave and Paul lit the Chinese lantern that Paul and I have been carrying around for two years.  Its kind of like a mini hot air balloon.


We all watched it fade off into the distance. 

The First Few Days of Quartzsite (01-21-14)

Quartzsite Arizona is a unique place to visit.  It’s a small desert town in Arizona, known for its quartz deposits.  In the RVing world, its known for something else though.  Its a gathering place for RVers from all over the country.  We come here in January by the hundreds of thousands.  Why? Well, pretty much to just hang out with friends, and if we’re lucky,  meet some new ones!

A lot of times when I explain Quartzsite to non-Rvers, I get a skeptical look.

That’s because when we come to the desert, we have no hook ups- that means no electricity, other than what we make when we run our generators, and no sewer- just our water tank and holding tanks.  Paul and I are on a mission to see how long we can last.  We’ve never tested it before. About a half mile away is a place we can refresh our tanks, so its not a big deal.

 

 

Its easy to do this in Quartzsite in January because it’s a balmy 70-75 degrees during the day, and cools off into the 40s at night.  No need for air conditioning. I wouldn’t want to be here in April though!


So, here are the kinds of things we’ve been doing while hanging out with our friends:


We build pathways.
I don’t claim credit for building this but because there are about 15 rigs or so in our group, someone connected the two sections with a lighted pathway.  There’s a reason that it isn’t straight, but lets just say it makes it easy to find our way back to our rig in the dark, late at night, after being at the campfire.

Speaking of campfires, we have a communal campfire available for whenever anyone feels social.  We also respect each other’s occasional desire for “down time” at our own rig.

Paul and I are sort of known for our Margaritas, so we hosted a Margarita and Quesadilla night.








 

We had a lot of help, with some people providing ingredients and other people helping to build the quesadillas.  A fun time was had by all.

Entertainment is cheap in the desert, and most evenings we are lucky enough to have a beautiful sunset to watch.

The other night was “bring your hotdog to the fire” night.  Many of us brought hotdogs to cook over the open fire. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, there are always projects to work on, as well.  Unfortunately, the day we arrived, we found that something had put a hole in our roof.  Luckily we had friends who had the patch kit we needed, and Paul was able to fix it right away.  We have absolutely no idea how it happened though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also knew that the guest bed was getting pretty uncomfortable to sleep on, so we picked up the materials to add some support  under the mattress.  Hopefully this helps, since the next people to sleep on that bed will be us!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And now I need to get ready for the party we are having today, so I’ll post more another day.