bobanddenisewanderlust

Saturday-  We moved from Boomerville, in the Scaddan Wash BLM area, to the Roadrunner Rally in North La Posa LTVA. This is our first time with the Alfa Roadrunners, although we joined about a year ago.

Scaddan Wash is free for two weeks and La Posa( north, south and west) cost $40 for two weeks. There is water and a dump, in La Posa South, which we can use, and we can park at La Posa West to go to the shows.

On the trip in between, we stopped at Rose’s RV park to dump( $15)  and add fresh water ($5). We also refilled our propane tank, $2.15 per gallon, and we needed about  1/2  a tank, 10.1 gallons.  We only moved a few miles. La Posa is closer to the activities and is still quiet. We are also closer to the main road, and the park road is nicer. We have also noted that the area has a lot fewer rocks. The dogs like this better.  The picture is of Bob adding water to the tank at Roses. 

The Alfa Roadrunners have been coming to this spot since 1989. One year, the group put in this Alfa sign, using local rocks, to claim the area for this group each year. .

We parked towards the back, but there is a way out, in the back, which is shorter than the way we brought in the motor home. We have to cross a wash, so we would not do that in the motor home. We might get stuck!

Once we settled in, we went into town to visit some of the shops. Parking was an issue. If you have ever been to Branson, that is what the traffic is like, only you add in motor homes. Big motor homes, towing cars. At one point, a 40 ft. motor home turned left, with the toad behind, and blocked traffic in all four directions.

So we found a parking lot  which cost $3 for all day. We headed over to the ‘big tent’ where many of the vendors are located, and while walking there, the Hydro-hot guy, John called. So we walked back to to the car, picked up two pulled pork sandwiches on the way, and drove back to meet up with John. 

John quickly discovered that the part which had broken in 2008, on our way to Perry GA, had broken again. Bob had a spare one, so he gave it to John, who put it in. Then they worked on why the floor heater was not working. They first discovered that the thermostat was broken and then that the knob, located in the bathroom,  to send the hot water to the floor, was broken. So Bob is fixing both of those. John only does the actual Aqua Hot. 

We paid John and returned to the parking lot, walked over to the big tent and wandered through. We did not buy anything, as many of the vendors had been at the Indo rally.

The Wagon Masters had a Greek themed dinner with baked rum bananas(awesome), black beans, sausages, roast pork, veggies and desserts. It was very good.

We sat at the campfire, meeting everyone and generally talking about everything!

Sunday- I woke up at 5:30. I realized that the Laundromat opened at 5, so I woke Bob up. We ate a quick breakfast and ran over to the Laundromat. There were three cars already there. We hopped out of the car and raced in to grab machines, as others were right behind us. We were able to get the laundry completed and returned in time to go over to the campfire area for a ‘tech’ talk at 9AM. With so many people in town, who have no access to water, laundry is an issue all the time and the one  or two Laundromats being very busy!

I quickly got bored and left the tech talk, but the 1/2 hour meeting lasted 2 1/2 hours and Bob had a nice time finding out a lot about our rig. One question that we had was how to keep our closet doors closed. We have sliding doors. When we bought the rig, we had a small lock at the top, where the doors meet. It never worked! So we took it off and started using tension rods. They worked okay, if I got them adjusted, just right. Then the tension rods wore out. So we bought new ones. The new ones are designed differently, and we could not get them to work, at all. This is a major problem if you are driving down the road and the doors are banging back and forth. So one gal, Sharon, ran into her rig, and brought out 3/4” dowels, which have rubber tips on them, and that is what she uses. Good idea!

Bob found out some other interesting facts that he will be putting into practice in the future.

We decided to go sight-seeing. So off we went to visit some sites. First we went to the dollar store to pick up new bottle for our liquid detergent. Then we went in search of a 1050 y.o. tree, which we never found. The directions say that it is close to the Town Hall, but that is all that they say.

We then went to the “Hi Jolly “memorial/gravesite.  Basically what the sign says is that Jefferson Davis, when Secretary of War, instituted a program to use camels in the desert. The camel driver was Haiji Ali, which was quickly changed to Hi Jolly. The camel program was a success, but never followed through. Who knew that we had camels in the American desert!  This is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The graves in the cemetery were interesting. There were a few with concrete covers but most were like this one with rocks. and a small sign.  There are lots of rocks in the area!

 

We saw the grave of Joseph Cone, so next we went to visit his cabin.

Evidently he was a well known character, from here in Quartzsite, who was also a carpenter. He had a two room cabin on a hill, with a beautiful view. The back building, which is falling down, was his work area and the two room building to the front was his home. No running water, no electric!  That was the end of the sightseeing, so we went and had ice cream at Dorothy and Toto’s, a Wizard of Oz themed ice cream parlor.

We stopped at the Shell station to try to get money from the ATM. Both the bank and the Shell had run out of money in their ATM. Below are the vendors and the big tent.

We returned to the motor home, took a short nap, and went to happy hour.

The sunset pictures do not do justice to the magnificent colors.

Monday-  We ran back over to visit more of the vendors. There are 4 areas of vendors, the largest being on the south side of Kuehn Rd. We did the north side today, buying some hats with a flap in the back to cover our necks, a leather fanny pack for me, and a sticky mat for the car, so that our GPS does not fall off the dashboard.

We returned and ate lunch then took a nap.  Today was heavy hors d’oeuvres at a 5 PM happy hour. I took seven layer dip. There were leftovers, so you can imagine how much food we had.

This is the view from our window. The desert is beautiful in it’s own way.

Tuesday-  We had “breakfast in a bag”. We did not know what this was…. it is taking two eggs, whisking them, ( we used eggbeaters, so we did not have to whisk) and putting them in a freezer baggie. It has to be a double lock freezer  baggie, not a zip lock, as they leak. Then everyone brings some sort of item to put into the eggs. I had cheese and onions left over from the seven layer dip. There was also ham, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, salsa, and bell peppers. Some people made toast, black beans and hash browns for sides.

After you add your extra ingredients(above), you get as much air out of the baggie as you can and seal it securely with the double rows on the baggie. We had already put our names on the baggie. Then you drop it into a boiling pot of water. It should cook for five minutes, except there were so many bags in the pot, it took 12 minutes for mine.

The omelet turns out nice a fluffy and rolls right out of the baggie onto your plate. Amazing! What a great idea for a pot luck breakfast!

After breakfast we returned to the motor home to quickly clean up. At 10 AM we had the coach walk. Most of the coaches were  open to go through. I took lots of pictures for ideas.  Bob stayed at the rig for the first round, then I returned to stay at the rig while he went to look.

At 2 PM,I played Mexican Train, on our table outside the motor home, as the way we are facing, we have lots of shade.  Mary Ann, Sharon, Jan and Sherry played.

At 4, we went to happy hour. I took the leftover seven layer salad back over. We had a business meeting and they opened the store where we bought our Roadrunner           t-shirts, a Roadrunner decal, and our little roadrunners for our pins. They gave us a free neck wallet with Roadrunner on it.

Wednesday-  Sunrise this morning! There was coffee and doughnuts in the morning. We skipped the early morning get together and I made the chocolate covered Ritz crackers with peanut butter.  This time I had trouble making the chocolate thin enough. Not sure why. You cannot add milk or water, so I added a little olive oil, with worked beautifully!

Next we went over to the Two Crazy Ladies booth to pick up our order and drop off our Roadrunner pins to have a Roadrunner added.  We wandered around the outside booths. The went back across SR 95 to north Kuehn and went to “The Gambler” to wander through. This is a very interesting store! It is mainly used RV stuff, although there was some new stuff. It is pretty dusty and you have to dig through stuff to get what you are looking for. Everyone suggested that we try them for the small parts we are searching for. They did not have any of them. We also went through the vendors in this section. That pretty much completes all the vendors for us, although I am sure that we have missed some, as they are all over the place!

We ran into the Roadrunner Grocery store( not related to the roadrunner group) for some bread. They only had the stuff in packages on the shelves, white or wheat, but at the checkout counter they had fresh, hot, right out of the oven, Italian loaf. So we bought that for $1.49. Across the street at the bakery the loafs, which are half the size, are $3.99. Talk about gouging, although $1.49 for a large loaf is pretty inexpensive.

We returned, ate lunch ( using our still warm bread) and took a nap. We went to happy hour at 4, then returned and ate dinner. We went to the campfire this evening. There has been one every evening, but we have chosen not to go most of the evenings.

Thursday- It was sprinkling this morning. We went over to the coffee and doughnuts this morning. Just before 9 AM, one of the vendors showed up to do a presentation on a wind screen. We said the heck with that and I returned to make my corn casserole for tonight’s dinner. I will cook it just before we leave so that it will be hot.

We ran into town to pick up our name tags from The Two Crazy Ladies. Then we went to the Americas Mailbox to pick up our mail. They are the company from Rapid City SD. We had our mail forwarded to them and paid $2.50 to  be able to pick it up at their trailer, rather than at the Quartzsite PO. Good move, as you cannot get in the door of the Quartzsite PO, it is so busy. We stopped at the small farmers market and picked up bananas and oranges. We went back to The Gambler to measure the stove,but it would not have fit. It had sold anyway, but now we know that we cannot buy a Ammana.  We returned to the motor home and ate lunch. We took empty jugs of water to the La Posa South and filled them up with water. There were  18 rigs in line to dump and take on water. Guess we will not do that when we leave!

Then we tried to go to the Post Office( figuring since it was later the line would be gone, nope) to mail off the broken refrigerator handle. It had broken again. Bob called Dometic  yesterday and we are to send in the handle for analysis. Since it has broken in two separate times in six months, we have complained to the company and are going to fight for a permanent fix. It is a design flaw and we cannot keep having it break every six months.

We could not get into the PO since there were so many people in line, so we went to what we thought was another branch. It was not, it was just PO boxes. We stopped in the library and asked the Librarian where the 1050 y.o. tree was, and it turns out it is behind the courthouse. So we walked out to take a picture.

And there was  Geocache attached to the tree. Amazing to think that some Native American probably took shelter under this tree, hundreds of years ago! For an old tree, it sure looked healthy!

We went to the hardware store looking for a box to put the broken handle in to, so that we could mail it. The lady there said they did not have any boxes, but that there was a private mail center across the street, next to the bank. So we went there and they pulled out a “priority mail box” and we sent the handle UPS for 5 dollars less than we would have paid at the post office, and they boxed the handles for us!

We stopped for gas at the Pilot, then returned to the motor home. We took a nap and removed the items from on top of  the glass for Joe, the glass guy, to bring the new glass to us. He conveniently delivered it just before dinner, then joined us for dinner.

Tonight was the wiener roast. Bob turned on the generator for me to cook the corn casserole and the microwave/convection oven was not working. It would try, but would not cook. It is 9 years old and we think we are just going to replace it rather than repair it. The guys decided it was the circuit board. 

So I took the casserole over to Mary Ann’s rig and she cooked it in her Breville toaster/convection  oven. That was one expensive casserole, because now I want one of the Breville toaster/convection ovens! I dragged Bob in to look at it and have Googled them at Macy’s and Bed, Bath and Beyond! We are going to have to do some re-arranging, but we can do it. Bob is also working on finding us a new microwave convection oven, another expensive appliance, although we have decided that we are not going to replace it with the high-end one we have in the motor home. We don’t use some of the features that the current one has, so why buy them when we do not use them?

Dinner was fun with everyone bringing side dishes and cooking their hot dogs over the campfire. After dinner, we hung out at the campfire talking. Susan and Dale are planning to have their motor home re-skinned and painted this summer, so we spent time talking to them. Our plan is to have it done next summer, so we were plucking their brains for all of their research.

Friday- Beer Pancake Breakfast! They used Bud in the batter ( the alcohol evaporates off) and they were the fluffiest pancakes! There was also sausage and ham. All of the meals have been bring your own plates and silverware. I had helped to squeeze fresh oranges and lemons yesterday, so we also had fresh OJ.

After breakfast we worked on looking where we are going on Sunday and where we can buy a new under the counter microwave/convection oven. We need to do it either through Lowe’s or Home Depot so that they will also install it, since Bob will not be able to do it by himself. They are heavy, plus we need to be able to get rid of the old one.

At about 11:45, we left and went to the same place we had gone on Sunday for some nice pulled pork sandwiches. They were very good, again. Then we went to the bank to pick up a roll of quarters. We usually keep one in the motor home for laundry, but this time it is for the “Sheriff’s Dinner” tomorrow night. More on that tomorrow!

We returned, walked the dogs, and you guessed it, we took a nap! So far, no rain, but it has been cool and cloudy. With the clouds we have not had any sunrises or sunset now for two days! I miss them, as they are so beautiful!

Just as we went to go to Happy Hour, it started to rain!

We have really  enjoyed Quartzsite and plan to return again, some time in the future. Quartzsite was originally founded as the town of Tyson Wells. The town became too small for a Post Office, as people moved on, so they closed the Post Office. Years later, the town re-surged, and they went to open another Post Office. Since the Postal Service does not allow towns to reuse the same name, the town was named Quartzite after the Quartzite in the area. When the form was submitted to the Postal Service, whoever filled out the form put in the ‘s’, so the name is Quartzsite. Also, the town was originally in another area, but flooded out, so it was moved to this higher location, at 859 ft.

The town is know for being a little crazy, hence the naked bookstore owner. We have seen crazy things other places, but there seem to be more of them here. You see dune buggies all over the place, here they are being driven, joyfully and  wildly, by 80 y.o.’s! We have seen tenters walking in to the public lands.

To this Teepee,

To this home made  small RV:

To this home made big RV, note the upstairs, yes the VW bus is welded on top of the old school bus:

And we have seen every brand of trailer, 5th wheel, and motor home, including many Alfa’s, who are not with our group. We have even seen Liberty coaches, which start at two million dollars, out here in the desert boon-docking just like us!

Many of the RV’s are by themselves and lots are also in groups. Many of the groups “circle the wagons” parking in a circle around the fire pit. Some of the folks take rocks and make ‘driveways’ into their parking area. Others put different rock formations at their turn-off, so that they know where to turn. I guess it is a ‘human’ thing to ‘nest’ where you are staying.

The rain became heavier, but slowly stopped during the late afternoon. Since the dinner had been cancelled, Mary Ann and Ray invited us to join them for dinner. I had already made the Seven Layer Dip and I cooked some pasta and we went over to their motor home at 5 PM. We sat around talking until about 7, then joined others at the campfire.

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