Solo life on 30 amps - Living full time in an RV: January 23rd through 30th - Week four

Destination number: 81/161/19

Our fourth week of this road trip finds us in Quartzsite Arizona. After a week in the Los Angeles area working and visiting family, Remi and I now continued our trek, now eastward along the I-10 out of Los Angeles. This stop in Quartzsite is a location that I've been to a couple times earlier in life. The first time I was here I remember being full of wonder at all the RV's here and all of the interesting things to be found at the "Big Tent" event here in town.

Quartzsite is one of those places that I think everyone should visit once, but for me, I am not reminded why the first time was probably enough. The second time we were here was with my Sister Karen and Brother-in-law Mike, and anytime we get to hang with them is wonderful, even here at Quartzsite. But, I remember the last time I was here, I thought to myself, they are selling the same stuff they were a couple years ago, and this time was no different. Like I said though, this is definitely a great place to visit. And though I didn't go to them this time, a couple places you want to be sure to visit are the Naked bookseller, and the "Desert Bar". You can only reach the Desert bar by 4-wheel drive vehicle and has no services, though they do have pit toilets, well water and power from solar panels.

This is a great place to test your dry camping skills, and if you don't have quite the supplies you need, you can probably get them at the "Big Tent". I remember that in Ione, when I was dry camping at Lake Comanche that I ran out of water about a day before I was supposed to leave. Well, I must not have had the freshwater tank full, because this week, I'm doing great on my Freshwater. Also, for the most part, my solar is working out well. It probably wouldn't hurt to have at least one ground-based panel, to move around with the sun, but I don't have any other dry camping planned for the rest of the trip, so I'll hold off on that purchase until I get back to California.

There are more RV's out here than you could ever imagine. The town typically has a population of about 4,000 people. But, in January when they have the Geod show and the RV show, the population swells to well in excess of 100,000 people. So, if you come here during that time of year, be sure to come with all your provisions. Because while the good community of Quartzsite does it's best to meet the needs of the traveling public, it has been stretched beyond its capacity each of the three times I've been here.

There is one cell tower in the area and with thousands of rigs here in Quartzsite, the bandwidth of the tower was depleted with everyone streaming video these days. So, I had to drive back on the I-10 towards Blythe California in order to gain access to internet access so that I could telework each day.

I had a chance to sit by the fire with some other single RV'ers out here (you know there is a Facebook group for anything these days) and we shared a number of different dishes, potluck style, and I brought a dish called Onion Bombs. They were pretty freaking good! :-)

The area out here is truly beautiful. The sunrises and sunsets have been magnificent.

Recipe for Onion Bombs

On Saturday, Remi and I went and hooked up with a fellow Disaster Response volunteer, my brother-from-another-mother: Rick Anderson. We had a wonderful visit and he showed me some of the results of his "Rock Hounding" efforts in the Quartzsite area. It was wonderful to catch up with him, I just wish I had thought to grab a Selfie with him.

Also on Saturday, Remi and I went and hiked around Dome Rock, a great site that is just south and west of Quartzsite a little bit. Lots of great hiking around this huge protrusion from the ground, and we even found a cave where obviously a lot of Quartz mining has been done in the past. I thought briefly about Remi and I going in and checking it out, but I didn't have any flashlight or headlight gear with me. Also, no one knew we would be in there, so I decided it was best not to go in, because if I got stuck for some reason, no one would know to come find me.