Thursday, January 19, 2012

Quartzsite Arizona

Monday we made the 140 mile trip from Lake Pleasant to Quartzsite Az. As we approached the town from a distance, we could see what looked like dotted snow. In actuality it was the roofs from thousands of Rv’s.

The town is full of tent after tent of vendors, selling everything from jerky to pink elephants. If you need something you can probably find it here, along with a few things you do not need. We headed north of town on interstate 95 about 5 miles. We had the GPS coordinates for the Escapees Boondockers group that are meeting up on the BLM land north of town.

Here we can stay for 14 days free of charge. Of course we have no hookups but we do have our two Honda generators to give us power when we need to. We arrived at the GPS location and found a spot a little bit away from the others. From looking at a lot of the rigs, there were plenty of solar panels and we did not want to bother them with our generator noise.

Our spot in the desert

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After getting set up we headed over to the campfire ring for happy hour to introduce ourselves. There are about 35 rigs in this group and you can look in any direction and see other groups that have “Circled the Wagons”

This is the first time we have met up with the “Boondockers” group and they welcomed us with open arms. We quickly got acclimated with the schedule of events and visited with several different folks before we headed back to the rig for the night.

Since we only have two 6 volt batteries, I plan on running the generator for a few hours each night to recharge the batteries. This is also the only time I will have to get on the internet to blog or to check e-mail.

Tuesday morning I got up and went to the campfire circle. Every morning there will be a campfire with “Cowboy Coffee” available. Since I do not want to go out and start the generator at 7:00am to make my own, I just go over there and swap lies with the other guys and have a cup.

We went into town to the vendor area and started looking for some of the things that we had on our list that we wanted to get while we were here. We found a lot of things and a few things that we didn’t know we needed. Like a flag pole.

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The flag pole also helps us find the rig from a distance. The bottom flag has a bottle of wine on it with grapes and it says “Wine a bit, it makes you feel better”. It was free with the flag pole set and I plan on doing a little wining myself.

The Rv show does not start until Saturday and from what we have been told, we will want to wait a few days to let the main crowd get through first.

Our friends Dan and Judy Todd, whom we worked with at Amazon pulled in today and it was great to see them again. They are right next to us and we are starting to plan a few adventures.

I think that the next few weeks will be a lot of fun and a great learning experience on how to live off the grid. Well, not really off, I still have sat tv and internet if I run the generator.

The colors of the mountains change all day long as the sunlight hits them.DSC_0047

And the sunsets should be amazing if we can get a few clouds mixed in.

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At night coming back from the campfire circle, it is really easy to get turned around and not find your rig in the dark. Maybe I should put a light at the top of my flag pole. One that changes colors of course! If it exists it will be here.

That’s it for now, we have a lot of exploring to do.

Enjoy Your Day!

4 comments:

Tom and Marci said...

Quartzite sounds interesting . . . looking forward to hearing about your adventures and your impression of the whole boondocking experience.

owensontheroad said...

Looks interesting...and warm! :) Be anxious to see how you like it.

Mike and Terri said...

Free camping is always a good thing. Enjoy your time there.

Catherine, Jo Beth and Grace said...

Looks good. Love the flag pole!