La Paz Golf Course

La Paz is a little community (two RV parks and a scattering of private dwellings) five miles south.

In this shot to the right of the tree you can just make out a bench and flag.

 

And here to the left of the bush way off in the distance are some people actually playing.

Here in the desert you just make do with what you are given.

 

Stormy Weather and News

We had a few days of high winds and rain.

This was at one of the RV dealers in town.  My guess is the camper was taken in as a trade for trailer.  The dealer set it up visible from the highway.  His mistake was leaving it with the corner hydraulic jacks extended and the winds did the rest.  Campers when unloaded should be resting at ground level.  

Those jack mounts are now ruined and most likely the legs are bent.

A costly mistake.

I other news, it has now been ten days since I have disconnected myself from all news notifications.

I am amazed at how much better I feel.  I haven watched TV in four and a half years.  I have lost track how many years it has been regarding radio but at least twice that long.

Here is Beans enjoying a brief moment of glorious sunshine.

Her feet are against the windshield.

  

 

A Friend Sent Me This

I love it.

 This is not me, that isn’t Beans in his lap and I didn’t get a second cat.  Beans is all I can manage in the RV although I have met people with more than one cat traveling with them.  The winner for me was a woman, Alicia was her name, who had three cats with her in a minivan.  She did have two cheap Walmart tents for them to “hang out” in but the van was their home. 

 

I’m Bored!

 

That’s Beans talking, not me.

We have had a few days of weather change, cold, wind and rain.  So we have been confined indoors a lot of the time.  I can read so I’m fine.  Beans doesn’t know how to read.

On a related note I am running low on data on my cell service plan.  I only have 25% left until I get a new allowance on the sixth.  This made me wonder: does an iPad use more data than a iPhone?  I thought it a silly question but Googled it anyway.  What else do I have to do inside most of the day?  Well I was shocked to learn than it does indeed, as much as 400% more in a month!

I will be changing some of my Internet browsing habits.

The Joys of RVing

My camp neighbor and I were out for a walk along the main dirt road in front of where we are camped. This large motorhome passed by us as we were walking.  They had just arrived, had purchased their two week permit (that is an option here versus the season long seven month permit) and were cruising by us looking for a spot.  When we got back to our place my friend pointed out in the distance “Looks like they found spot”.  A couple hours later a tow truck came by and turned in onto the road across from us.  Turns out they found a spot alright, a spot to get stuck.  So imagine you just arrive at Quartzsite, purchase your permit, drive off down the road, turn in to go across the desert and promptly get stuck because of, well lets just say inexperience.  Everything they had looked new including the ATV they unloaded from the trailer to go get assistance in town with.  Really they looked like RV park people rather than out in the middle of the desert with no hookups people.  So the above photo is after they were pulled free and had driven back out on the main dirt road once again where he immediately parked it and he left on the ATV. My friend joked about him deciding to camp there.  “Where did he go? In town to get some alcohol?” she asked.  I said “Back to the check-in station to get a refund. They’re going back home.”  Well he actually went looking for another spot to camp.  They found one, very close to the main road.  No off-roading required.

“See honey, I told you RVing would be fun and adventurous.”

Most definitely should never have driven off the well traveled track.

What I Learned on Inauguration Day

My life just got a whole lot better due to the inauguration and it is not because of what you may think.

 

My iPhone and iPad was constantly dinging away with new stories about the impending inauguration and then on the day itself it just got beyond annoying.  “ding...ding...ding”  There’s got to be some way to put a stop to this I thought.  Well finally I discovered in settings under notifications I could slide the little button over and stop the harassment.  Peace and quiet ensued.  

Oh how I wish I had known I could do this years ago.  

You may laugh but I just didn’t know I had control over this.

Everyday I would be notified of another act of violence and bloodshed, a shooting here, more murders there, a kidnapping, rape, assaults, and too, celebrity so and so just died.  I rarely ever opened any of these notifications.  The headline already told me more than I wanted to know.  I don’t want to read about this and be dragged down in dreadful thoughts all day long.  And I certainly don’t want to hear about some celebrity dying being told his or her age is very close to my age!

So with that here is some good news.  The rains have stopped and the sun is shining.

Yes Beans, we can go outside today.

 

No More Hiking Sticks

I had the two sticks on the right to do, and touched up the redwood one on the left.  These and two or three more finished ones inside I have been carrying around for over a year now.  With this darn COVID business I cannot give them away.  If you are unable to meet and interact with people how can one offer them a free hiking stick?  I’m done.  Not making them anymore. 

 

Digging a Grave

I never know what I will come across while walking through the desert.

 Most likely these are the final resting places for someone’s beloved pet,

although would a dog or cat be named Tim Dolan?  Maybe.

Or perhaps it is a memorial?

Now here is a grave ready for a body.

No place better to dispose of a body than in the desert.

This one got me to thinking.  How long does it take to dig a grave?  I looked it up for you.  I found it to be on the average six hours in “optimum soil”.  Optimum soil?  Is there such a thing?  Certainly not when having to dig a grave.  Ever dig a hole to plant a rose bush or small tree?  That is hard work, and “optimum soil” is a rare commodity.  The article said in frozen ground or dense clay it could take up to two or three days to dig a grave.  If I had to work that hard for that long a second grave would be needed.  Sorry, if we are in the wild and you die, you’re staying right where you are.  

And I wouldn’t expect you to put out that much effort on me either.  I’m dead.  

Just leave me there and get on with the journey.

Personally I like how some Native Americans, particularly the plains Indians performed sky burials by placing the deceased upon an elevated scaffold.  They believed the soul of the departed lingered in the air and watched over the tribe.  Probably the fact of digging a grave was too much work played into their beliefs also.

Tough Women

This lady is from Nevada and in her 40’s I’d guess.  This all she has except for her little red car which is too small to sleep in.  This tent is too short to stand up in.  It gets down to the mid-thirties (1.7 C) every night.  I am cold every morning in my RV and run my heater for an hour or so.

 She is here for the entire winter.  How does she do it?

This woman is from Maine and probably the same age as the lady above.  Only she has her daughter with here, I’d guess 11 or 12 years old.  They have a larger car, an SUV and she told me they sleep in it when it is cold like it is.  They have been living like this for five years.

 Last year I met a lady from Georgia and this is all she had, a Nissan Cube.  No tent.  No shade.  Just a camp chair.  She had her little dog and a ginger cat with her.  Last winter we stayed in Quartzsite until the end of April when it got too hot and we finally moved on.  I had to drive down and see if she was still camped.  Yep, out in the desert all by herself and it had been in the 90’s (32.2 C) most of the month.

I wondered how she could do it being so hot as it was.

There are many more like that (men too) out here living with very little shelter which is especially noticeable with all the big RV’s all around them.  Think how tough the pioneer women were to follow their crazy husbands on a six month long journey westward into the unknown relying on rumors and poor advice as to the route to travel to some destination that rarely lived up to what they had been told.

The Not-So-Really-Big RV Show

Quartzsite is the place to come in January to get really good deals on new and used RV’s,

that’s if you believe the dealer’s hype.

 Above and this photo is the show ground for RV Country sales.  

They drive these units in from wherever just for the month of January. 

The other big dealer is La Mesa RV.  This is their lot.  Empty.  

They didn’t bother bringing any units in this year, probably due to COVID.

That can be a good thing for the other dealers.  Less competition.  More sales?

This is a used unit.  I wonder what they traded it in for as it appears to have had custom graphics  

applied and this style or model is a relative new type of RV.

Oregon plates.

The Big Tent is Up

In spite of the pandemic and Arizona competing for the most new COVID-19 cases per day,

 the show must go on.  As I had read somewhere awhile back they have decided to widen the aisles and have one-way traffic flow.  That should make everyone safe.  

The one and only time I went in the tent was back in 2019.  Well make that two times I went in.  The first time it was so packed we were shuffling along at cat speed and I just wanted to get of there, and in doing so I forgot to take any pictures.  So I went back a couple days later for you folks and the blog photo.  Fortunately that day wasn’t like being in a cattle chute at the Chicago stockyards.

In this photo from 2019 you can clearly see how widening the aisle and having everyone walk the same direction will solve any problem of an infected one spewing COVID cooties on others.

Trust me, my first visit was so packed I couldn’t see any vendor on either side.  I was hemmed in tightly stuck behind an old lady with a walker.  I was pushed along for a quarter of the way through before a hole opened up and I made a dash for a side exit.

Never again.

 

We Are in First Place!

I picked up this paper while in town yesterday.  The Coronavirus article reported that on Monday, Jan. 4, Arizona jumped to the worst in the world in 7-day average for new virus cases, normalized by population. It was around a year ago I posted on the blog how where we were in La Paz county had the fewest reported cases and deaths of anywhere.  “It is all desert.  No one is here.  Safest place to be.”  Hmm...  

The town of Quartzsite has no mandated mask wearing policy except on town properties such as the library and community center which are both closed.  Otherwise business is as usual.  Seems the Senior Center hosted a Christmas Day Dinner followed by a Saturday night Bingo and multiple positive cases resulted from this little soiree.  Those old people!  What can we do with them?

 I made my way down to Family Dollar for a few items.  Always an adventure.  See the dark haired lady at the far end of the checkout?  She was coughing and hacking the entire time there.  She probably had a cold or maybe the flu (what I fear more contracting than the coronavirus).  Maybe she was just a smoker.  Let’s hope.  At least she had a mask on.  At least I was twenty feet away from her.  I saw a sweet looking old couple in there shopping with me.  They were hi risk and not wearing masks.  To wear or not to wear, that is your choice here in Quartzsite.  But you really need to exercise caution and be careful in places like Family Dollar with all the coughers and hackers and Bingo night at the Senior Center and those irresponsible gambling old farts. 

Oh yeah, another article in the paper reported that La Paz County Health Services had on hand 400 vaccines.  Remember now, we’re in first place in the world.    

Propane For the Heater

There are several places in town to buy propane.  I like to go to Patties RV Park for it has easy access and I can pay right there at the fill station.  At the Union service station I have to go inside and stand in line waiting on people buying gas, snacks, beer, cigarettes and lottery tickets.

Prices are about the same at all locations, $2.30 a gallon.

 This little one gallon tank I bought last year replacing the standard large five gallon tanks typically you have with your bar-b-que.  This I can carry on the bike.  The large one I could not.

The tank goes in the back hanging off the ladder.

The line goes inside through a hole I cut in the back.

It then comes out from under the bed and hooks up to the Mr. Heater.  That is all the tank is used for.  Now you are probably wondering “Doesn’t the RV have a heater?”  Yes it does but it is very inefficient.  Mainly it is the fan that blows the air in through all the ducts.  It uses a lot of energy and runs down the battery.  I suspect the heater part uses more propane also.  This little heater warms things up fast and that is just using the low setting.

The little green propane bottles will connect to this heater also and if I run out from the one gallon tank I can screw one of them on.  The one gallon tank lasts about two weeks and that was using the heater a lot when we first returned since it was cold.  

Beans Here

The days are beginning to warm up some.  I heard lizards today in the brush for the first time since we returned.  Yippee!  It will be in the 70’s (21.1 C) everyday in a week or so.  I am so excited.  After today’s hunt I had to get up in my loft and relax some.  I think I might be out of shape.

Another plus with the warm weather is that Dad doesn’t whine as much.

Really, he needs to get a grip when it gets a little bit cold.

 

 

 

The Kitchen Gadget Vendor

This guy is here in Quartzsite on vendor’s row every year.  If he doesn’t have what you need in the line of kitchen items then you don’t need it.  I was hoping he had a taco holder, a rack to hold the tortillas in place while you fill them up.  Well he did but it was metal and I don’t need a fireworks show when I put my filled tacos into the microwave to melt the cheese. 

 I did get this pan scraper made of hard plastic.  It works great in cleaning my cast iron skillet.

The curved corners fit perfectly the curve of the skillet bottom.

I looked online for a taco holder but they come in packs of more than one. 

I may end up making something.