2017 Quartzsite: day 5 - still at Quartzsite, AZ

Day 5: Friday, 1/27/17
Quartzsite, AZ
miles traveled:  165 miles
time: all day!

Today is very, very windy - and cold.  If you are in a protected area, it's nice but out in the elements? BRRRR.  Because of the wind and the potential for scouring the paint on our Jeep and trailer,   We returned to the RV park where all the big rigs around us would help blunt the wind. :-)  Because of the massive influx of snowbirds for the RV show, our place for tonight is in their overflow area.  That's fine with us ... we just need a tiny space.

*SOME* of the vendor tents

We have decided that Quartzsite has no reason to exist.  It's rather like Virginia City, NV but without the charm.  We've seen everything that interests us here (we aren't interested in being rock hounds or going off-road or going through the vendor tents again) and we needed something to do for today.  (We can't leave for our next destination, as that is to a friend's house ... can't arrive an entire day early!!)

Via the internet, I "found" 2 fabric stores and an embroidery store.  If nothing else, today would be a road trip. One of the fabric stores was here in town but the address was the paid parking lot for the RV show!  We figured out that this is a generic address for all the vendors.  Alas, the fabric vendor wasn't here this year.  Strike 1.

Traveling north on I95 towards the town of Parker, our next destination was a fabric store.  That address was a store front in a strip mall ... but it was vacant.  When I called them, the phone number was disconnected.   Strike 2.

The next place was the embroidery store.  But that address was for a single family home ... empty and for sale.  When I called them, they were still in business ... under a different name ... but was a commercial/professional business ... no retail at all.  Strike 3 - yer OUT!!!    Drats.  A complete bust.

Because it was so close, we went to the Bluewater Casino on the Colorado River Indian Reservation.  As is our tradition, we left a monetary deposit.

Interestingly, the hotel attached to the casino has an interior water slide, although no one was using it.

view of the Colorado River from inside the casino

We usually don't frequent casinos, so we were very surprised to find out that the slot machines here to NOT accept coins.  They show penny, nickel, dime machines but you can only insert bills.

There was still some daylight left and since we had nothing better to do, we kept driving northwards to Lake Havasu.  It was "just up the road a piece".  The landscape towards Lake Havasu is absolutely desolate.  Barely anything grows here, the hills are virtually bare dirt.  It is stark.

Freezing at Lake Havasu

Of course, we crossed over their London Bridge (no, not *the* Tower Bridge of London).  We took a selfie of us with the London Bridge in the background.  The first time we were here, in August 2011, it was hotter than blazes and we died from the heat.  (We got better).  This time, in January, there was a frigid hurricane blowing and we froze.  (We got better).

There is a restaurant at one of the bases of the bridge that offers a view of the water.  Since it was Friday night, they have a promotional deal ,,, all you can eat fish & chips for $11.  As a result, the place was packed and the wait was about an hour.  We really didn't want to stick around that long (we had eaten there the last time we were here), so we went elsewhere.

After dinner, it was the long drive back to the RV park and bed.

2017 Quartzsite: day 4 - at Quartzsite, AZ

Day 4: Thursday, 1/26/17
Quartzsite, AZ
miles traveled:  0 miles
time: all day!

view from our door at the BLM site

Today we moved out from the RV park we had been staying at and relocated to Hi Jolly campground, which is BLM land (Bureau of Land Management).

This is public land (no fee for staying there) but there is a 14 day limit and there are no amenities.  After that time, you must leave for a certain number of days, then you can return.  So what people do is, if they want to boondock so they don't have to pay at an RV park, they just flip-flop between BLM land campgrounds.

view from our door, the other side

Every so often, they go into town and pay a nominal fee to dump their tanks and fill up on fresh water.  Alternatively, some people will pay for one night at an RV park to do the same plus use the park's shower facilities.  We are just here on BLM land for the one night, then back to the RV park .... for the use of their amenities!

We had a shopping list of items to get ... groceries, "household" stuff.  Then we wandered on over to the vendor tents.  We were told there is a hierarchy of vendors.  The big bucks vendors are inside the RV show tent.  The next tier are the vendors that have their own tents just outside the RV tent, kinda like houses backing up against the castle wall.  The third tier are the tented and non-tented vendors directly across the street from the RV tent.  And the low men on the totem pole are the vendors on the other side of the freeway.  That's the low-rent district. :-)

Since we were in that vicinity, we started in the low-rent district.  My *goodness*.  Honest to goodness, this is genuine junk.  Rusted junk. Disreputable junk.  Stuff you really wouldn't pay to haul away.  I am *amazed* that the vendors make any sort of money there at all.  You want to feel good about the state of your garage?  Come see these tables.  These have got to be full time vendors because their merchandise is spread out on many, many tables.  They couldn't possibly move all of their merchandise every night; perhaps they just tarp it.  I must say that they *are* very well organized.  There is just SO MUCH STUFF that your eyes tend to glaze over.

There is the saying that one man's junk is another man's treasure and there is something true about that.  But I would venture to say that 99% of the stuff out here is 100% junk.

One vendor made very attractive metal "yard art"

In an interesting segue, one of the vendors here had a Singer Featherweight, complete with case and some accessories.  Her merchandise was very nicely laid out and was of a higher class of junk than the others.  :-)   The price tag on the Featherweight was $450, so she absolutely knew what she had and what it was worth.  I didn't buy it. :-)

Then we wandered over to the second tier vendors.  Do you remember the tacky and useless stuff sold at state fairs?   That's the sort of stuff that is being sold.  Occassionally, there is a vendor that is catering to the specific RV crowd; there was one vendor that was HUGE and had just about everything you could think you need for maintenance purposed for your Rv, trailer or camper.  Now *that* place was useful.

Another vendor had a computerized router to make custom wood signs for you.  You chose the graphic, the words, the font ... he'd put them into his software to arrange the elements then the complete cut file was sent to the router ... which accurately cut the wood sign for you.  It was mesmerizing to watch.

We didn't stay out too long into the afternoon ... although it was sunny, a breeze was also blowing.  DANG, that made it COLD.

Tom was chatting with one of the RVers here ... he has a 5th wheel stored full time in Quartzsite, where he lives for 6 months.  The other 6 months, he travels (sans 5th wheel) back up to Idaho.  Tom wasn't sure if he had a house up there or another mobile home, but he switched back and forth between the two places.

Most of the year, Quartzsite is a sleepy little town.  The streets, stores and services are geared for that.  But come January, with the RV show, this place explodes.  The traffic is awful; parking is luck of the draw.  All the RV parks raise their rates because this is the time when they make their money ... not that I blame them at all.  When we come back through Quartzsite in early February, the RV rate will be almost half of what we paid for one night now.

Honestly, we've seen everything there is to see in Quartzsite.  We not interested in rock hunting or geocaching or off-roading.  I did visit a craft & bead store here ... and I must say that it has a LOT of beading supplies!  Small amounts of knitting/crocheting and counted cross-stitch supplies and very little scrapbooking/card making supplies.  What dies and template they did have were on the expensive side.  But they did have a LOT of classes offered.

Since we are here for one more day, perhaps I can persuade Tom to go on a road trip up northwards.  There are 2 fabric stores in 2 adjacent towns.  The road trip will give us something to do and see those towns that we wouldn't otherwise visit.

2017 Quartzsite: day 3 - to Quartzsite, AZ

Day 3: Wednesday, 1/25/17
Beaumont, CA to Quartzsite, AZ
miles traveled:  162 miles
time: 4.5 hours

The day dawned so clear and bright and sunny.  This was the view from our front door in Beaumont.

9:45am  No breakfast in the trailer this morning, as Tom was antsy to get on the road.  So, it was a granola bar in the car.  At the mini-mart at the gas station, we got coffee ... and that was breakfast.  One additional short stop at a post office to mail my postcards and we were away on I-10.   This will get us directly and eventually to Quartzsite.

However, by 11:30 Tom was hungry (HA!) and we stopped for a burger.  The scenery now is all pure desert: sand, rocks, sage brush.  Bright sunny skies without a cloud in sight.  However, it isn't warm ... temps are in the low 50's.  It's warm enough in a protected sunny spot but the minute you get in a breeze, it's chilly.

A cactus!  An honest to goodness cactus!  In the wild!

By 2 or 3pm (I didn't note it down), we pulled into Quartzsite.  We found the RV park we are staying at tonight, got checked in and settled into our site.  This particular place came highly recommended but, Lordy ... everyone is CRAMMED in here.  It is absolutely claustrophobic.  However, we do have a full hook-up, so we have electricity to charge our electronics and run our heater and lights.  We also have water .. hot water!! woo hoo!

But as for ambiance?  Nope, just not there.

So, why Quartzsite?  Well, ever since Tom got us our new-to-us trailer, he's been scouring internet sites, You Tube channels and forum on all things RV-ing.  Apparently, Quartzsite is THE place to go if you're a snowbird.  It hosts the "country's largest" RV show and sales.  It's also widely known for it's rocks, gems and minerals.  There are on-going shows for those items.

From that description, I rather anticipated lots of vendor tents, rather like county & state fairs or Expos.  We arrived at Quartzsite coming from California (i.e from the west) and when we crested the hill .... there it was.  RVs and trailers and campers as far as the eye could see, spread out like a carpet on the desert.    See all those little white "things" in the picture to the right?  All those are RVs, campers and trailers.

Pulling into town along the main street, there are vendor tents EVERYWHERE.  When I say "everywhere" that's exactly what I mean.  It's exactly as I imagined ... on STEROIDS.

By the time everything was all hooked up and settled, it was close to 4pm ... that is significant, we discovered, because the RV show and all the vendors everywhere shut down at 5pm.  That was OK because most everyone had cleared out and we were able to quickly walk through the main tent without obstructions.  This is a HUGE tent, think circus big, that is filled with vendors of all sorts.  Naturally, there was a preponderance of RV sellers ... hawking every item under the sun that you  could imagine and many things that you never knew existed ... and trying their very best to convince you that you DO need it and want to buy it from them!  All the other vendors are everything else ... just like at the county fairs.  Lordy ... skin care products, health aids, food prep and storage, cell phone accessories, clothing, hats ... you name it, it's there.

We weren't interested in any of the RV stuff, as we have what we need right now.  But it's interesting to see what's available.  As for the other non-RV vendors, I was even less interested them.  But again, it was at least interesting to see what was there.

Oh .. the one vendor that DID tempt me mightily was the home made brittle and caramel lady.  Boy, her goodies sure looked good.  However, I resisted and moved away.  I did look back though ... I think they were waving at me.

Back at the RV park, we tried .. and I mean we TRIED ... to get access to the wifi provided.  Our experience with RV park wifi is dismal.  Typically, the more people that sign on, the more the signal degrades until it is slower than molasses in January.  Hey ...  it IS January!   The office staff assured us that this was not the case in their park so I was hopeful.

But ... it was even worse than that.  I could connect to their connection .. hooray!  But then .. nothing.  I was expecting a login page because I had a user ID & password to enter.  But there was nothing.  I fiddled around with my wifi settings and think I might have messed up something on my laptop but fortunately, Tom was able to fix whatever I did.  It took us 45 minutes and FINALLY a login page appeared.  After entering the required information, it stalled again.  I went down to the RV park office to see if someone could offer advise only to find they had closed for the evening.  Back in our trailer, I disconnected in disgust and we fired up Tom's hotspot.  Wow .. instant access and throughput.   I just need to make sure, when we check out, that we weren't charge anything EXTRA for the wifi.

Tomorrow, the plan is to explore and see what the rest of the town ... and vendors .. are like.  We certainly did see, on the drive in, lots and lots and lots of rock, gem and mineral vendors.  All these other vendors are as crammed together, cheek by jowl, as those in the big RV tent ... they are just outdoors.

Sadly, there are no fabric or quilting stores in Quartzsite.  Apparently, there are a couple in nearby towns, but they aren't on our way and aren't on our agenda for a day trip.  That's OK ... I don't need any NOW.  In a few weeks, I will be going to attend my annual quilting Retreat and will get my fill then. :-)

2017 Quartzsite: day 2 - to Beaumont, CA

Day 2: Tuesday, 1/24/17
Buttonwillow, CA to Beaumont, CA
miles traveled:  202 miles
time: 5.5 hours

We got off to an earlier start: 10:30 am on the road.  Our goal today is to over the Tehachipi summit before noon because we have about 3 hours more traveling beyond that.  Our final destination today is a super Walmart in Beaumont, CA where we will boondock in their parking lot.

The weather is incredibly BRIGHT and sunny!  A complete change from yesterday.  The sky is a virtually cloudless blue.  It's just so pretty!

Tom noticed that the right front tire was low on pressure.  He has these nifty valve stems that indicate when the air pressure inside the pressure is low.  We found out where the T/A air hose was but there was no connector on it.  The staff inside the truck maintenance building said that people steal the connectors and that we should drive on inside the maintenance building.  We did so and topped up the air in the tire.  Tom then got a spritz bottle and sprayed the tire valve and discovered that the tire didn't have a leak .. .the *valve* did!  It was faulty.  So, he replaced it with another one that didn't leak.  And we were on our way.

First stop: the actual town of Buttonwillow to drop my post cards at the post office.  I was surprised to see that Buttonwillow was founded in 1895 but with the demise of all the agriculture, the population is virtually non-existent today.  It looked very sad.

We topped up the gas tank at the Grapevine, which is at the base of the Tehachipi mountains on the Central Valley side.  I was absolutely astonished to see that the ladies' bathroom at the nearby collection of stores was beautifully decorated in stone, wire wall art and silk flowers in vases.  And it was clean. :-).

Although there was a dusting of snow on the tops of the mountains and on the shady north side of the hills, the road up to and over the summit was clear and dry.  We were very grateful for that.

Since I'm the passenger, I like to occupy myself with something constructive during the drive.  For me, this is sewing handwork.  This a partial construction of the project I'm working on.




Sooooo .. I'm happily stitching along when I notice out of the periphery of my vision a small "something" moving on the front of my shirt.  This not normal.  Shifting my focus from my sewing to the "something", I discovered the moving black spot was a small spider.  Instinctively and immediately, I slapped it dead and swept it off my shirt.  I was VERY VERY VERY glad I was able to kill it on the first attempt, as otherwise there would have been massive hysterics.  As it was, I was so quiet that Tom never even realized what had happened.  However, I kept a lookout for any buddies.  I never found any but remained suspicious the rest of the ride.   There are no pictures of the dead spider.

We crested the summit and descended into the Los Angeles basin.  Every time we need to do this, I am struck by how many PEOPLE there are ... too many.  And the utter maze of highways to accommodate all the vehicles ... too many. There is too much development and it's all spread out like an octopus. It's all very urban and metropolitan.  I don't care for it.  I don't find any socially redeeming factor about the area.  There's just TOO MUCH.  Of course, I can say that about where I live too ... the San Francisco bay area is waaaay too crowded also.  Even at 2pm there was traffic congestion along some of the highways and in some places the metering lights were on.  :-(

Eventually, we travelled out of the concrete jungle and emerged in a somewhat more spacious area ... Beaumont ... at 4pm.  The super Walmart here allows for boondocking in their less used parking areas and it's certainly wonderful to be able to do that.  We thanked them by buying a roasted chicken and Kings Hawaiian rolls for dinner.  YUM! The roasted chicken will provide for another night's dinner  I also picked up a quilting magazine (that I honestly do not need but it was interesting) and Tom bought a pair of athletic shoes.  Apparently, he forgot to pack extra shoes for himself!

I needed to use Walmart's facilities and was very pleasantly surprised to find fresh flowers on the counter.  Wowsers ... Walmart is one up on the ladies' restroom at the Grapevine!








Beaumont is snuggled right up against the base of the Tehachipi Mountains.  There is a railroad line between us and them.  Tom likes hearing the sound of the train going by ... it reminds him of his (misspent) childhood.  Here is the view we have tonight.    Yep, that's snow on the mountain tops.  And we are NOT there!  :-)

2017 Quartzsite, AZ: starting out - to Buttonwillow, CA

2017 Quartzsite AZ road trip  January/February 2017


Day 1: Monday, 1/23/17
Walnut Creek, CA to Buttonwillow, CA
miles traveled: 245 miles
time: 6 hours

Got off to a reasonable start at 11am.   We've been driving down I5 (the major north/south freeway in California) through micro-bursts of very hard rain.  This was concerning to use because we had previously detected a leak in the front window of the trailer.  Tom has spent an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to trace where the leak originates.  As you know, where the water comes out is NOT necessarily where the source IS.  He thought he had fixed it ... finally.

A positive test was to tuck paper towels into the frame and see if they became wet ... if so, then the leak was still there.  At various stops, we found that the paper towels we had stuck into the trailer's front window to detect water leaks were,in fact, soaked.  That means that all of Tom's hard work over the past weeks was for naught.  He will need to resort to taking the entire window out, replacing the seals and re-installing the window.  But, that will need to wait until it's no longer raining at home.  Until then, as long as there is a chance of rain pelting the front window, we'll continue to tuck paper towels into the frame.  Sigh.

Tom has planned stops every 90 miles or so.  Some are for gas, pit stops, food, or stretch our legs.  It's a little tiresome to stop so often, as it lengthens our trip, but Tom likes to do so and we aren't in a hurry.  It also gives Tom a break from driving.  Since we are doing one night stands until we get to Quartzsite, it's not as if we are going to be *missing* anything at the destination by arriving later in the afternoon.  As long as we get there before dark, it's all good.

We have the camp chairs & lounge attached to the carrier at the back of the trailer.  A tarp is lashed to them for protection from the weather.  Unfortunately, the tarp wasn't tied down securely enough and it came loose on the freeway - scratch one tarp.

We're seeing a lot of orchards being pulled up and shredded along I5.  Drought and lack of irrigation (allegedly due to restrictions so the fish have enough water to live) have finally taken their toll.  It's really a shame to see such rich farmland go idle.  When the land is allowed to go fallow, it reverts to its natural form .... sagebrush and desert.  Our Central Valley was once an inland sea, as such there is salt and other minerals in the soil that is detrimental to plants.  The farmland needs to be irrigated, not only for the crops but to help dilute and "rinse" the detrimental stuff out of the soil.  No water = no irrigation = no crops = higher prices for everyone.  Thanks EPA.

Because of the intermittant rain, we've seen some very pretty rainbows along I5.

We even saw an *end of a rainbow*!  No pot of gold was visible though .. such a pity. :-)

WHOA!  We just saw a car, traveling northbound on I5 FLIP A U-TURN across the center divide and then continue traveling on the southbound side!!  Dang, there was crossroad that he must have known about ahead of time since by the time you actually see it, you've passed it.   Hmmm... maybe he was a plainclothes cop in a regular car, which would explain the foreknowledge.

Holy moley ... there are SO MANY speeding cars!  And tailgating, to boot!  I can see a potential multi-car pile-up happening.  Do we typically drive that fast also?  Bearing in mind that our speed with the trailer is about 55mph, so anything seems pretty fast. :-)

OH!!  Lightening!  We can see several different rain squalls in the distance but they are too far away for us to hear any thunder.  It is really weird to see the very dark rain clouds and veils of "dark stuff" descending from them ... those "veils" is the rain coming down.  You know it's gotta be intense.  We are very glad we are not in it.

Buttonwillow, CA - our destination for the night

While Buttonwillow is a real (very small) town about 3 miles off the freeway, the T/A where we are boondocking tonight is just a convenient bump in the freeway.  We are very grateful that T/A allows boondocking for us small time travelers.

Tom has been watching the weather and temperatures at the nearby Tehachipi Mountains, which separate the Central Valley from the Los Angeles basin.  Predictions have been for snow, ice, winds - none of which we want to drive in.  We've already seen freeway signs at Buttonwillow that say the summit is not recommended for trailers or RVs due to gusty winds. We'll see what the weather report is on Tuesday morning, as that will determine whether or not we stay or continue.

As of 6:30pm, Google says that it is actually SNOWING at Tehachipi. Ack.  But that is supposed to stop by 9pm.  Temperatures rise above freezing by 9am.  It will take us a while to drive there, so as long as we make the summit by 2pm (when the temperatures are supposed to start dropping), we'll be OK.  Our destination tomorrow is another 3 hours further on, so we don't want to make the summit too late otherwise it'll be dark when we arrive.  Since we'll still be boondocking, arriving at dark would only be an annoyance ... but it's still gonna be cold and I'd just rather arrive during sunlight hours.

Geocaching the PNW quilt stores: intro

It all started in 2015, when I mentioned to Tom that there was such a thing as a nation-wide, themed shop hop, named Row by Row.  The premise is that the participating stores would design a horizontal or vertical quilt row in the theme.  Customers would visit the store, pick up the row pattern (for free!) and hopefully do some shopping at the store.  As the customers accumulated the rows, there was a challenge: use 8 or more rows in one quilt .. pieced/appliqued, quilted and bound ... and bring the finished quilt back to a participating store for a prize.  If you used that particular store's row in the quilt, you got some additional prize.

I've never done one of the shop hops because it's a day long ... or multi day long ... affair.  I didn't want to drive myself to all the stores.  But Tom was intrigued by the prospect of using his GPS to find unknown stores ... kinda like geocaching!  So, we plotted 2 shop hops ... one from Auburn, CA back down I-80 to Fairfield  and another (on a different day) from Walnut Creek south to Santa Cruz, CA.   It was delightful and Tom didn't even harass me about the time (or money!!) I spent in the stores!

On a totally unrelated but relevent topic, this past February, Tom bought a new-to-us, small (17') travel trailer.  He was like a little kid in a toy store!  He spend every waking moment working on bringing the 1986-era trailer into modern times.  When it became travel-worthy, we began to take overnight trips to "anywhere", just to try it out.  He began to think of a longer trip.  He became antsy for a longer trip!

So, that leads us to THIS adventure ... Geocaching the PNW (Pacific North West) quilt stores!  We have two daughters who live in Seattle, WA, who have been urging us to visit them.  This was the perfect excuse  reason to do so!  Tom proposed .. and *yes*, this absolutely, positively, 100% WAS Tom's idea ... that we do a shop hop of our own on the way to Seattle.  On the way north, we'd visit all the shops within 5 miles of the east side of I5; on the return trip, we'd hit all the shops within 5 miles of the west side of the freeway.  It sounded so outrageous that I agreed immediately!

Y'all remember the saying, "the best laid plans of mice and men ... "?  Well, our plan was altered slightly over time.  I have a cousin who lives in the San Juan Islands.  He has been encouraging us to visit him and his wife for some time.  This was a perfect opportunity to do so.  So, our plans changed from simply going to Seattle, to visiting Lopez Island.  And then heck, as long as we were there .... let's take another ferry and visit Victoria, British Columbia!  and yet another ferry to Vancouver, Britsh Columbia and THEN take the return trip back home ... but instead of using I5, which is INCREDIBLY boring, we'd take the coastal highway down Washington, Oregon and California.

Tom has a program that lists all the quilt stores in the US; from that he printed out all the shops along I5 within 5 miles on either side.  I researched them, removed the stores that we had already gone to previously, the stores that had since closed, stores that weren't quilting stores (but were listed anyway) and chain stores.  That whittled the list down to ... wait for it ... 81 stores.  Goodness Gracious.  Tom thought that was wonderful.  Just look at all that geocaching he would get to do! 

While the idea of visiting all these stores should have sent me into paroxysms of ecstacy, honestly, I don't NEED anything right now.  I have everything necessary for the projects I am working on.  I have more fabric in my stash than is decent to talk about.  I just don't NEED any particular thing.  I can't tell you how depressing it is to go into a quilt store and KNOW that you just don't want to buy anything at that time.  Such a doggone waste.  But, I would buy a nominal "something" anyway, since I *was* at the store.

My *intent* is to blog about it on this alternative blog.  This blog is non-published, which means that it can't be "found" by a search engine ... which means that the only way anyone will find it is if they know the exact URL ... highly unlikely for a random person to accomplish.   So, if my good intentions remain  ::ahem:: good, I'll type up my notes of the day into a blog entry.  And you'll have something to read.  If I become a complete lamer, you won't. :-)


-Shelley

Arizona Trip: announcement.


It appears that I was overly optimistic about wanting to have a daily, on-going monologue about the trip.  What I discovered is that getting the verbage and the pictures ready for upload to the blog was taking *inordinate* amounts of time.  Time that I would really rather be spending with Tom.





I *could* just make shorter entries and fewer pictures, but that kinda defeats the entire point of the blog, doesn't it?


Therefore, I will continue to write down my thoughts as the trip continues, but I won't be updating the blog until after we return home.  At that time, I'll do a daily upload, just as though we were still on the trip .. but it'll be days after the fact.  :-)