bobanddenisewanderlust

Saturday- The glass guys arrived at around 8AM to finish the other two windows. They did a total of six windows, so we expected the price to be high, but it turned out to be almost half what we expected!

Bob discovered that the Hydro-hot, which was just repaired and serviced, is leaking water. He called the Hydro-hot guy, but he was too busy to return. We are going to catch up with him in Quartzsite.

At 8:30, we rode our bikes over to the main building for the coffee and doughnuts. We ended up talking to Mary, then Arnie and Jack, our two Wagon Masters from the pre-rally, who joined us. The Frustrated Maestros played patriotic music this morning, so twice during out doughnuts, we stood up out of respect for the songs.

We ran into the vendor area and spoke with the window shade guys. Since they had not been out to measure the windows, we thought something was wrong. It was! The guy who wrote down our info had listed us as being at the Thousand Trails. No, we are here and want them measured. We need them installed at the Thousand Trails the week of the 27th. So we are now on for 8:30 tomorrow morning.

I stopped by the lady who did the seminar on the t-shirts yesterday and had her put on an application, to a sweat shirt I already had.

I have a second one, but I have not washed that sweat shirt and I need to get the sizing out. The glue does not absorb into the sizing. So if you every buy one of these, you need the shirt washed and they also should iron it from the front and back if using a regular iron!

I went to the t-shirt application craft seminar this morning and made this shirt.

Bob met me for the ice cream social. They made a lot of fun last night about someone forgetting to order the ice cream yesterday. The guy’s name is actually listed in the program as having that duty! So we waited in line. The ice cream truck (Schwans) got lost and did not arrive until 12:20. We rec’d a rock hard ice cream sandwich, so we rode back to the  motor home and put them in the freezer and ate lunch.

The guys had finished the windows, so I put everything back where it belongs, dusted, and we took a nap.

At 3:30, we walked across the blue lot for the parade that had been cancelled on Thursday. The theme for the Rally is “Under the Big Top”. So the parade was a circus theme.

This car actually honked “ ah uga”!

Look closely, this ‘train’ is on a Jazzy motorized chair!

I rec’d a big hug from Magilla Gorilla!

She was probably cold! Temps were dropping very fast.

A hot air balloon came over during the parade. Guess they wanted to see what was going on….

The parade was performed by the officers of the Western Area of FMCA and the many various chapters. This is one of them.

These cages had live “animals” but many of them had stuffed animals.

This dog looks like his is bored, or maybe embarrassed?

Most of the folks threw candy to the crowd. Not like Breck where some of them threw condoms!

Another not really happy canine! This one looked like he was wondering what he had done wrong to land in the cage!

These folks passed out fresh popcorn and peanuts. The lady was playing music.

Can’t have a circus without an elephant. Just passed us the elephant stopped and ‘peed’ on the asphalt. The crowd laughed.

And of course, the elephant needed a pooper-scooper!

After the parade, we walked back to the happy hour spot where we had a pizza dinner ( from Ciro’s) before the sun completely set. The temp drops rapidly when the sun sets. We said good bye to most of the folks, as many people are leaving early in the the morning. The entertainment this evening was an Idol impersonation of Billy Joel and Elton John, so we decided we were tired and stayed in the rig, watching TV.

Sunday-  Many people were leaving early, but we were not in a rush. At 8:30, the MCD shade guy, from Davis Cabinets arrived. He measured our windows and set up a delivery time.

I was having an issue, so I went in search of a Urgent Care. The closest one was not open on Sunday, so I ended up at the Eisenhower Center Urgent Care. They called in my prescription and I headed back to the motor home. Bob had packed up pretty much everything and we took off a little before 12. We backtracked to Cathedral City, which is between Palm Desert and Palm Springs, to the Encore Palm Springs Oasis park. It was about 16 miles. This is an older park, so the sites are not very big. Because we are 40 ft., we would have had difficulty getting into the site that they originally assigned us to… so the gal moved us to a double site. We parked up near the wall, across two sites, only paying for one site. We are only staying one night, so it was not an issue.

Bob walked the dogs,and I ran to the laundry room to throw in 3 loads of laundry. Plus we were doing laundry in the motor home. Then I left to go to Walmart to pickup my prescription and groceries. Bob continued with the laundry. We had a lot to do, since we won’t have the machine to use over the next two weeks.

We loaded up our water bottles and continued doing laundry until bedtime. At least everything dries quickly in the desert!

Sunset: over the mountains. The camera is not capturing the magnificent colors.

Monday- We moved today to Quartzsite Arizona. Quartzsite is an RV’ers mecca. Many years ago, RV’ers discovered that you can stay on the BLM( Bureau of Land Management) land  for free in some areas and for $40 for 2 weeks, or more for the entire season, so people converged on the area for the last two full weeks of January, every year. It is estimated that during the two weeks, over a million people will be here. It has become such a big deal, that there is a huge tent set up and vendors with all sorts of ‘stuff’ come to sell their wares. The RV manufacturers also set up shop, hoping to sell new and used rigs.

You can set up pretty  much anywhere on the land. Various groups pick a place and get together at that location. We are currently with the Escapees Boomers group and move on Saturday to meet up with the Alfa Roadrunners, an Alfa group who are full-time RV’ers. There are some RV parks in the area, but they are reserved a year in advance, although we have seen some vacancy signs.

The wind was pretty strong during our drive from Cathedral City. We were driving along and I noticed water off to the right of I-10, also known as the Sonny Bono Freeway. It is the Salton Sea. On the map ts shows that the southern end is the Sonny Bono Natural Wildlife Area.

Once we crossed over into Arizona, we stopped at the Flying J for fuel. We exited at 19 at Quartzsite, turned right, and went to a T-intersection. We turned left and followed a road, which badly needs repairs, to the end of the paved road, parallel to I-10. We turned right onto the dirt road and drove another two miles over pretty rough dirt and rock. We turned right at the Boomer sign and pulled into “Boomerville “. There is an RV with a tent out front, so we pulled up and jumped out to speak with the woman there. She told us to just set up wherever we want. We had noticed that most people were facing east-west, so that is what we did. The wind continued to howl, and it was really cold. At 4PM, there was a scheduled happy hour, so everyone gathered under the tent for a quick meeting, while shivering! Then everyone scurried back to their rigs to warm back up. The temp was 48 degrees with a 30 mph wind. Not a cloud in the sky!

Sunset over the mountains, again, the camera is not capturing the magnificent colors.

We ate a quick dinner and settled in to watch TV before bed. We ran the generator for an hour prior to going to bed to charge up the batteries.  We had put the electric blanket on the bed to warm it up. We had no heat during the night, so we all snuggled under the sheet, two blankets, one quilt, and duvet.

Tuesday-  Brrrr it was cold last night, dropping down to 22 degrees. At Breck we had 50 amp electric, propane and running water. Here we are boon-docking with nothing! Bob found icicles were the water is leaking from the Hydro-hot. At least it does not appear to be anti-freeze!

The dogs must have gotten hot at 3:15, as they both decided to get up. They walked out from under the covers and decided that they were up for the day. We did not appreciate that! We all eventually went back to sleep. At 5, Bob got up and turned on the furnace, to heat up the rig. At 8, we turned on the generator to recharge the batteries.

We left around 10:30 to drive into Quartzsite, stopping at the BLM camp host’s site to register for our free 2 weeks. We continued on into Quartzsite. On the road in, we spotted Dave Root Glass repair. That is the guy who did some of our windows in Bend OR, May of 2011. So we stopped and asked his employees to come re-do the drivers side window, as it seems to be starting to fail. We have a 3 year warranty on the work. So we are expecting him to arrive at some point. Bob had called the Hydro-hot guy and he will not be here until Saturday, so we expect him to catch up with us on Saturday.

We tried to stop at the Pilot for gas, but it was so crowded with RV’s we left. We went to the Chamber of Commerce to pick up a map of the town and info on the RV and vendors. We stopped at the local grocery store for milk, since I had not gotten any at Walmart, a real mistake!

We returned to the motor home, ate lunch, and took a nap. At 4 we went to the happy hour, which was over in about 1/2 hour since it is so cold. They have a tarp with freebee’s on it so I dug out some puzzles that we have and donated them. They also have a tarp with auction items where we will donate a bottle of wine. All the money goes to CARE(the Escapees Assisted Living in Livingston Texas).

I made some of the chocolate covered Ritz crackers with chocolate drizzled over them for the Escapees happy hour. This is when we found out that we cannot use the microwave oven on the inverter! I had to melt the chocolate on the stove.

The Escapees happy hour is different from the Boomers happy hour. We have two of them tomorrow. Hopefully it will warm up, as we have been missing the happy hours and the campfires in the evenings. While I was doing this, Bob called an RV tech who works on RV appliances to come to repair our oven. He is coming tomorrow afternoon. Probably during the Escapees happy hour!

We ate dinner and watched TV. We turned on the generator at 8AM and 9:20 PM today to recharge the batteries. We are doing an experiment for Alaska. We have nothing in the basement freezer, where we usually keep the dogs food, and we are checking to make sure that we can keep a bottle of water frozen in the freezer, running the generator two times a day. Someone had suggested that to us, so we are giving it a try. So far, so good! It is not expected to be as cold tonight.

Sunset reflecting on the mountains behind us.

Wednesday- The low temp overnight was 35 degrees, so it was a lot warmed than yesterday’s 22! The dogs slept most of the night on top of the duvet, not under the covers with us. Bob got up several times during the night to check on the Hydro-hot. We do not want it to freeze; if it does, the unit will have to be replaced. That is very expensive. He turned on the furnace at 5AM, so that it was warm when we woke up at 7.

After sailor showers,( first we run the cold water into a bucket, until the hot water arrives, then you wet your self,  turn off the water, shampoo and soap up, then rinse off. We then funnel the excess water from the bucket into a water jug and use that water to flush the toilet.) We have to conserve as much water as possible, as we are living off the water tanks and we do not want to fill up our gray water tank. Boon-docking takes some work. We use bottled water for the coffee, and make it in a metal percolator on the stove. We only wash dishes, pots, pans etc. 1x a day, heating the water on the stove. We also use paper plate/bowls for meals.  Yet, we have TV and electric, so life is not that unusual.

We ran into town to look around and shop. We stopped to take this picture on the road into town. Bob is in the picture to show you how tall the cactus is….

We stopped at a little shop to look and I found some of the ‘sparkles’ for t-shirts, very inexpensive! Then we went to a kitchen shop and picked up a couple of items. We went in search of the Two Crazy Ladies to purchase some tags, but they were not open. Then we went to another area, where we bought  long metal skewers for hot dogs and marshmallows, for next week. Next we bought a new small flashlight, as ours had broken. We also bought some books.

We returned to the motor home, ate lunch, and took a nap. We had an actual happy hour today, meeting many people. There are 60 rigs here.

This is a picture of a small part of Quartzsite over looking Boomerville. Not the far background, all those white things are RV’s.

Thursday- We had a pancake breakfast, with the money going to CARE. We ran into town again. This time we drove over to where the Alfa Roadrunners are going to be parked and met three of the men already in place.

Then we went to the Post Office to mail off some books. From there we stopped at the used book store. This is a famous book store with RV’ers. The owner Paul Winer, who is evidently a talented musician, is also a nudist. Yup, since it was cold, he had a jacket on and a g-string, to his skinny drooping self. The books were reasonably priced, so I bought 4 for a dollar! No, I did not get a picture!

We returned to the motor home, ate lunch,and went to the Escapees Happy Hour. They had a different singer this time. He was paid by Everett RV and hardly anyone clapped for the guy. He was okay, but not as good as the couple yesterday.

We returned that took a quick nap then went to the Boomer Happy Hour.

We ate dinner then went to a campfire. That was fun. One guy was popping popcorn over the fire in one of the old fashioned popcorn poppers.

There are 78 RV’s here this evening.

Friday- We left at 8:15 to drive to Parker to the Walmart. It took about 50 minutes on a very nice two lane road. Both Quartzsite and Parker have done land grabs,  as the town’s each reach ten miles out into the desert  before you actually get into town. Parker was originally named for an Indian agent named Parker. The town is located on the Colorado River and is situated on the Colorado Indian Reservation. We went to Walmart then over to the Safeway, before returning to the motor home.

At 11:30  I went to the ladies circle. We all introduced ourselves to learn a little about everyone.

We ate lunch and the RV tech called. He came to check out oven. It is the thermostat, an they do not make ours anymore. So we either have to buy a new stove/oven or see if we can find a used one. Bob stayed with the tech and I went to the Mexican Connection, which was a quick seminar on travel to Mexico.

At 4 PM we went to happy hour.  We hate to leave as we are still just meeting folks!

There are 80 rigs here today!

Filed under: Uncategorized |