What’s a Desert Visit Without a Visit to the Desert Bar? (02-12-14)

{You know you’re getting old when you write a blog post and then completely forget to post it. Or, Maybe I am just having too much fun? Anyway, this is from last week}

In the desolate outlying area of Parker Arizona lies Nellie E. Saloon, more commonly known as The Desert Bar. The road to get to the bar is not for sissies.

   It’s a long, five mile journey on a dirt road, with nothing between you and the bar but more desert.  In fact, there aren’t even telephone lines, because the bar runs completely on solar power.

So, why go?  The easy answer is…because it’s there.  

This trip to the bar is our third or 4th visit.  Every time we go, we have a “newbie” with us- someone who’s never been before- so that makes it more fun for us. Brad and Marilyn were the newbies on this trip.

The bar is situated on an old gold mine camp- the claim was named the Nellie E., hence the name of the bar. The original bar opened in the 1980s and has been added on to substantially since then.

It’s a mish mash of indoor and outdoor spaces- some covered and some not.

Even the ladies room is unique.  There are no windows here, the doors are heavy metal, and the wall is the side of a hill. Oh, and more often than not, there are men peeking in to get a look at this unique structure. 

The bar features live music in the afternoons.  Sometimes its even pretty good!  Due to the summer heat, the bar is only open in the winter months, and it’s only open on the weekend.  At about 11:30 am, there is a steady stream of cars heading down the dirt road to the bar.  Why so early?  The whole place closes at sunset, due to the nature of the location.

While we were there, my friend Carol Dwyer took some pretty awesome pictures of my cowboy for me!

Earp, CA/Parker, AZ (02-10-14)

We say we are staying in Parker Arizona, even though technically we are in Earp California, across the Colorado River from Parker.  There’s not much in the town of Earp, so even the RV park uses Parker TIme.  The problem is that there’s a time difference between the two towns. CA is in the  Pacific time zone and Arizona is Mountain TIme.  To complicate matters, I really have to use my watch to tell time, because our cell phones keep bouncing back between the two time zones, so we never know if they are accurate for what we need.


The town of Parker is a small desert town of about 3000 people.  There is one Wal-Mart and one grocery store that we could find.   Although the average temperature right now is a wonderful 74 degrees, I’d hate to be here in July, when that number skyrockets to 110. Once you leave the downtown area, the view quickly becomes a desert landscape, with blowing dust a daily occurrence.





What Parker does have, is the Colorado River.  The river water is crystal clear, beautiful, and unfortunately…frigid.  The temperature right now is somewhere in the 50s- definitely not warm enough for swimming!

As soon as we got here, Paul and I put the boat together, just to make sure we’d take advantage of the river.

 Our friends Carol and Steve also have a dinghy similar to ours, so the 4 of us took off down the river in search of adventure and….lunch.

There are several restaurants on the water-we chose the Roadrunner Bar, where we ate lunch on the dock overlooking the water.

There was enough activity on the water to keep our interest while we munched on lunch.  Whoever was towing this Para sailor kept teasing her by bringing her down close to the water. 

The scenery along the river is beautiful.  Strange to see the desert and the river meet.

The Colorado has several dams along its length, and the area we are in is about 15-18 miles long, from one dam to the next.  Our goal the first day was to see the dam upriver.

We came close, but had to “pull over” so Paul could do  some urgent automobile diagnosis for our daughter.  She’s having coolant issues with her car, so Paul checked it out with her on the phone. Aren't cell phones wonderful?!! 

The Last of Quartzsite (02-05-14)

There’s a billboard in town that says if you haven’t been to Silly Al’s Pizza, you haven’t been to Quartzsite.  I really have to agree, because Silly Al’s has some of the best pizza I have ever had.  Therefore, we ate there- not once, but twice- and I had to talk myself out of going a third time.  That’s impressive for me, since I only eat pizza a few times a year.







Once we left the La Posa South camping area, we went to the other side of town, in the desert off of Plomosa Rd., where we stayed for about a week, hanging out with Julie and Mike.

In between the beautiful nightly sunsets, we found time to do……well, honestly, not much.  We had several campfires and some great meals together.

We managed to make some trips back into town in between the campfires and desert walks.  While there we picked up a few groceries and ate lunch listening to some live music.








Finally though, having been to Silly Al’s twice, it was time to leave Quartzsite behind.  Doing that is more work than you would think, because the desert dust and dirt gets into everything. Once we had better electricity in Parker, I ran the vacuum for what seemed like hours. While I did that, Paul washed the outside of the rig.  Oh wait, no he didn’t.  He paid someone else to wash the rig.


Naturally, Mike followed suit. Here’s Mike’s rig getting washed.  See Paul and Mike on the right side of the picture? 







Here’s a close up:

I can’t blame them- it’s so cheap to get the trailer washed here that it would be tough to find a reason to do it yourself.

Several of our friends from Quartzsite are also here in Parker for the week, and a few of us will head up to Lake Havasu next week for the Fireworks competition.  In the meantime, we are hoping to put the boat in the water, since we are 100 feet from the Colorado River.