Tuesday, January 10th, was essentially a free day for us. Nothing really starts at the rally until Wednesday. We left the fairgrounds after lunch and went out to do some geocaching with the Bullocks. In the course of a few hours we had managed to garner ten new finds, with one additional DNF for our stats. About 5:00 we drove over to the handicap
parking area of the rally where most of our friends ended up. The Bullocks, the Wilsons, and the Babcocks are all parked much nearer to the “action” of the rally in handicap. We had cocktails and then Ray Babcock treated everyone to his signature taco salad dinner. It is a relatively simple dinner but very tasty. Ray has served it to us several times over the years at various events and it has become a bit of a tradition for the group when we get together. After dinner we chatted for a while and then packed up our chairs and went back to our coach for the rest of the night.Wednesday, January 11th, we went over to the rally auditorium to participate in the Chapter Fair. Most FMCA rallies hold a Chapter fair early in the schedule which allows the various Chapters to set up tables to try and recruit new members. Today I was going to represent the Full Timers Chapter at their table. I am the Vice President of the Chapter and the President could not be at this rally. Jackie also helped at the table. We talked to a few potential members, but didn’t have anyone sign up today. The fair went for two hours and after the fair we went out to do some shopping at Walmart.
After our shopping we drove to a nearby pizza place in La Quinta for a get together for Monaco coach owners. There are two Monaco coach chat groups on Yahoo and I belong to both of them. Some of the Monaco owners suggested that we have a “meet and greet” so one of the members set up a pizza party at the Lamplighters Pizza place. The owner was very nice and offered a 20 percent discount for our members. Since the Bullocks, the Wilsons, the Babcocks and the Minards all own Monacos as well, they all came too. There were probably fifty people there so I think the place made money, even with the discount. We had a very nice time and the pizza was good too. After the get together we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.
Thursday, January 12th, was the first day of the rally during which they held seminars and meetings, and the first day the commercial vendors were open for business. We had committed to helping with a luncheon put on by Bev and Jerry King for the Military Veterans’s Chapter, so we left about 10:00 to go to the King’s house, only a
mile or so from the fairgrounds, to help get things set up. The King’s live in a luxury RV resort community called Desert Shores. The lots have small houses built alongside pads sufficient to park a very large RV on. Since they have this nice place to put their RV when they are in Indio, they are not parked at the rally site. They also own a regular home in San Dimas, California.We helped Bev and Jerry set up the party and about 11:30 the guests arrived. We ended up with about fifty people and everyone had a great time. The Military Veteran’s Chapter is one of the larger chapters of FMCA and is a very popular one. We had a very nice
time and stayed until the party was over so we could help clean up. By 2:00 we were back at the rally doing some window shopping in the vendor area. We didn’t buy anything, but we still like to look at all the stuff they have for sale. There are also a lot of RV resorts with booths, and they like to give away free nights, so we watch for those kinds of bargains too. We did pick up a free seven night stay in El Mirage, Arizona, a northwest suburb of Phoenix, where we plan to stay in March. Free is good, very, very good!About 3:30 we went over to where our friends are parked and set our chairs up along the rally parade route. One of the traditions of the Western Area rally is they always have a parade on the first full day of the rally featuring a lot of the Western Area chapters.
Every rally year is a different theme, this year’s being “Pirate Adventure.” Last year was a frontier theme. A number of the chapters build fairly elaborate floats for the parade and they end up with a couple hundred people participating in the parade. It is a lot of fun to watch and the participants really get into the theme. Lots of pirates and wenches to watch. Yea! After the parade we had cocktails with the group until it got too chilly to sit outside. We then went back to our coach for the rest of the night.Friday, January 13th, yikes, Friday the thirteenth! Oh well, we ain’t afraid. We headed to the main area of the rally about 11:00 so we could have lunch on the midway. One of the things the rally does for participants is include a $4 food vendor voucher for each person. Of course, the food booths on the midway charge an arm and a leg, maybe even an ear or two, for their food. Nonetheless, we got lunch on the midway. After lunch Jackie headed off to a seminar on microwave cooking while I just browsed the vendor area and the coach sales area. Still couldn’t find anything to buy from the vendors. I did find a coach I really liked, a 2007 Monaco Signature, their top of the line coach. It had been a custom build and the interior was all black leather and charcoal colors. The outside was red and black. A very nice coach that I would probably love to have. However, even at a reasonable $325,000, it is unaffordable to us. The coach sold new for $700,000. We would still have to give our coach and probably another $250,000 to get it and that is not going to happen, especially for a coach only two years newer than ours.
Jackie left the seminar early because it was boring and the two of us looked at coaches for about an hour or so and then spent another hour in the vendors before deciding to go back to the coach to rest. About 6:00 we left and drove down to La Quinta to
the Sand Bar restaurant for dinner. Regular readers may remember that one of Jackie’s oldest and best friends, Nancy Heinrich, died suddenly a few months ago. Today was Nancy’s birthday and her daughter Vicky had set up a sort of remembrance dinner for close friends and family at the Sand Bar, which was Nancy’s favorite place to eat. We had celebrated Nancy’s 80th birthday with her here last year.When we arrived Vicky and her son Shane, Jackie’s Godson, were there along with three other friends of Nancy’s. Ultimately there were eight of us at the dinner and several
other people came up and talked to the group. The piano player was quite good and played a couple of songs requested by the group in memory of Nancy. Towards the end of the evening I got up and sang Sinatra’s Summerwind with the entertainer. In his defense, the place was pretty much empty by the time he invited me up. Dinner was pretty good, although the service was very poor. I would have expected much better from what is considered to be a high end restaurant. I certainly would never recommend the place to anyone despite it being one of the oldest restaurants in La Quinta. After dinner we said our goodbyes and went back to the fairgrounds and the coach for the rest of the night.Saturday, January 14th, we woke up and were surprised to see an overcast sky. The clouds were high and light, and the forecast didn’t call for rain, so we weren’t too worried. This was the last day of the rally and everything would end this afternoon. I headed down to the fairgrounds about 11:30 to attend a seminar on writing. Actually it was more of a workshop put on by an author who recently self published a book. It was a very enjoyable and helpful session and revitalized my interest in writing. My problem is I’m sort of naturally lazy, I enjoy being relaxed, so I sometimes have difficulty driving myself to write, whether it be this blog, a newsletter article, or the novel I have been working on forever.
Jackie came down to the rally just as my session was getting out. She was down for a craft seminar, something about creating a commemorative plate. Not sure why we need more plates, we don’t use the one’s we have very much, but she thought it would be fun. Turns out the lady who was to put on the session was sick. She gave the few who showed up for the session their money back (they had to pay for supplies) and cancelled the class. Oh well, no plate for us.
Jackie and I then decided to just wander around and shop for the last afternoon of the rally. We spent a couple of hours in the vendor area and I bought a couple of things, including a toy. I finally bought myself a radio control helicopter. I have wanted one of these things since they first came on the market a few years ago. The prices have finally come down to where I could get a fairly big RC chopper for less than a hundred dollars, so I did it. I have always liked helicopters and back in the 80's when I was with the Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time flying in them when I commanded the Aviation Division. I just hope I don’t wreck the thing the first time I try to fly it.
The vendors started to pack things up about 3:00 so we quit shopping and went back to the coach for a little rest. About 6:00 we drove over and picked up the Bullocks and went to Cactus Jack’s restaurant for one last dinner in Indio before we left. We had a great dinner and great conversation with our good friends. After dinner we dropped Peggy and Vernon off at their coach and we went back to ours for the rest of the evening.
Sunday, January 15th, dawned another cloudy day, this time darker with a forecast calling for a chance of rain. Oh goody, the rain arrives on moving day. We packed up the coach and prepared for our drive from Indio to Ehrenberg, Arizona, just across the Colorado River from Blythe, California. The trip is only a hundred miles, and we had reservations, so we weren’t in too big a hurry to get out of the fairgrounds. Some folks sure were, I heard some of the big diesel engines firing up as early as 7:00 a.m. We finally pulled out of the parking lot at 10:30 and started east on Interstate 10.
There is not a lot to see along I-10 once you climb the long hill out of Indio and get up on the flatlands of the southern Mojave Desert. Jackie was reading and I was left with my thoughts as we cruised along at fifty-five. I was taken back to my early teen years by the occasional glimpses of what is left of old U.S. 60, the highway between Phoenix and Los Angeles before the interstates were built. My family moved to Phoenix from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1960 when I was thirteen. Sometime in the summer of 1961 we made the first of many trips from Phoenix to California in the family car. This first trip we were headed for Long Beach, California. My stepdad was in the Naval Reserve and each summer he would have to go for his two week active duty training. Since he was a Corpsman, the military version of a Physician’s Assistant, he usually did his training at a Naval Hospital facility. In 1961 he was assigned to the Naval Hospital at Long Beach Naval Base.
We were clipping along U.S. 60 in the 55' Ford that we brought from Wisconsin on a toasty July afternoon with the “450" air conditioning running at full blast. The cooling was obtained by driving 50 miles per hour with four windows down. We had climbed the hill out of Blythe, California and were crossing the Mojave Desert and I remember looking at the black stripe of two lane blacktop vanishing to infinity straight out in front of us, shimmering in the summer heat. The memory that sticks with me, and was kicked to the front of my mind by today’s drive, was of the dozens, perhaps scores, of small bridges crossing they myriad of desert washes. Each one of them adorned on each side by a three foot high, brightly whitewashed wooden guard rail. As you drive along the Interstate today you can still catch glimpses of these now faded white rails where sections of the old road survive alongside the freeway which supplanted it.
The real bout of nostalgia was triggered by the remains of a gas station about halfway between Blythe and Desert Center. All that’s left now is the empty hulk of a rusty steel building and the skeleton of the sign in front of the building. The station sits adjacent to the crumbling blacktop road with it’s faded yellow line. Just west of the old station is a small wash, with a small bridge lined by the wooden guardrails and their checkered white paint. I remember stopping at this station on that first trip to California to get gas, cool down and get a cold drink to drive off the heat of the desert.
The nostalgic mood was broken when we hit the outskirts of Blythe and realized that the day’s journey was almost over. We crossed over the Colorado into Arizona and took the first exit to our destination, the Colorado River Oasis Resort. This is one of our membership parks and we have stayed here many times. We checked in and as we were completing the process our friends the Babcocks and the Wilsons pulled into the parking lot. They will also be here all week before moving on to Quartzsite. We all got spots close together and got our coaches settled in. It will be nice to have full power and sewer after living in a parking lot for a week.
Once we got settled in and the interior of the coach back in order we relaxed and found we were more tired than we thought. We had considered going to play Texas Hold’em at the rec center tonight, but decided we were just going to take advantage of the opportunity to just veg in front of the TV. We “lost” an hour when we crossed into Arizona, so the clocks said it was an hour later than our bodies told us it was. We would have had to rush to make it in time and we just didn’t feel like hurrying. We will probably feel an hour behind for a few days. We ended up just staying in for the rest of the night.
I did spend several hours getting familiar with our new automotive GPS device. Our old Lowrance GPS, purchased in Florida in 2006, had finally given up the ghost last week. The new one I ordered online was waiting for us in the office here in Ehrenberg when we checked in. We got a nice Garmin Nuvi unit that, in addition to being a great GPS, will also accept the type of files we use in geocaching. This will help us by letting us preload our cache sets into the car GPS instead of having to enter them one at a time while we cache.
Monday, January 16th, I was initially a little shocked when I got up just before 8:00 a.m. and saw the sun just coming up over the horizon. We have been in California since the end of daylight savings time and have gotten used to the sun coming up before 7:00 and it being dark by 5:00 in the afternoon. I quickly figured out that our location here on the Colorado River puts us at the very western edge of the Mountain Time Zone. The sun comes up later and it stays light until about 6:00 at night. I like that much better. The wind was blowing pretty good, signifying the departure of the weak storm front from the day before. I was also surprised to discover that it was Martin Luther King Day, a Federal holiday. I know that MLK day comes around this time in January every year, but it is still not a holiday that springs to mind like Labor Day or Memorial Day.
After lunch we set out to do some geocaching. This is another area where we have done a lot of geocaching in the past, so it gets more difficult to get a list of caches that we haven’t already found within a reasonable distance. Fortunately, people are always putting out new caches, so we did manage to get a decent list. We had a number of potential First To Find (FTF) caches on the list, caches that did not indicate anyone had made the first find yet. However, the closest one eluded us despite a half hour of searching. We hate DNFs, but we really don’t like going to a brand new cache and having to log a DNF. Oh well, keeps us humble. The other FTF caches were about 15 miles south of Ehrenberg on a dirt road that runs parallel with the river. The wind was blowing very hard and whipping the sand and dirt around, so we decided to let those go until a more favorable weather day.
We still managed to find ten caches in a few hours, although we got one additional DNF in the process. Fortunately, a local cacher had put out a new series of caches along Highway 95 running north from Blythe along the west side of the river. The caches were only a few miles apart, so we gathered them up pretty fast. One of the caches had a travel bug in it that had to be one of the largest I have ever seen actually left at a cache to be taken. For those not familiar with caching, travel bugs are another part of the sport wherein items can be provided with an individual tracking number. It can be done by attaching a serialized dog tag to some trinket, or it can be a custom made coin with a unique serial number. These items are left in caches to be found, picked up, and then moved to another cache and left. Each of these travel bugs or travel coins are tracked individually on the geocaching website.
Most travel bugs are relatively small. There are some exceptions, most notably that one can get a travel bug decal with a serial number that you put on your car. However, since you won’t leave your vehicle for someone else to take, these types of travel bugs can only be “discovered” by cachers, that is, they log that they saw it at a certain location. However, at one of the caches today we found a full size, 14" car tire with a chain and a travel bug dog tag attached! Since we had no desire to haul around a car tire until we found another cache suitable to leave it at, we just discovered it. Nonetheless, when Jackie logged it later in the evening she found that it has already gone a number of miles from cache to cache. The cache we saw it at was very remote, so it was possible to leave it lying on the ground with little chance of accidental discovery by someone not a cacher. It would be difficult to find another cache nearby with the same characteristics.
After caching we made a quick stop at the store and then went back to the RV park for dinner. At 6:30 we went down to the clubhouse for Texas Hold’em. This was another of the two hour, five dollar buy in games. There were a number of people there with whom we have played at other parks, including some of our Canadian friends that we played with a couple weeks ago in Desert Hot Springs. Neither of us had a winning night, we lost nine dollars between us, but we had a lot of fun. After poker we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.
Tuesday, January 17th, we decided that we needed a “chillax” day, just hanging around the house doing some light chores and relaxing. In the early afternoon I took my new helicopter out on the lawn for some practice flying. I know not to rush something like flying an RC plane, so I just worked on getting it up into a hover a few feet off the ground. After a few false starts and some adjustments I got to where I could bring it up into a hover without it spinning. Then I noticed it would start to crab sideways after it lifted off. I finally noticed that a breeze had come up which was pushing the chopper. It is very light weight, so it is easily affected by wind. I know that eventually I will have the skill and confidence to fly it in a light breeze, but for now I stopped practicing to ensure that I didn’t fly it into an obstacle and break it before I had a chance to really learn how to use it.
Other than that I did some housekeeping and administrative things and Jackie did some light housekeeping in addition to just watching TV and chilling out. At happy hour we got together with the Babcocks and the Wilsons for cocktails on the lawn. Later we all went into Ray and Suzie’s coach for dinner. Suzie had made a nice salad and a big bowl of bean and ham soup. We had a great dinner and finally went back to our coach about 8:00 where we stayed the rest of the night.
Wednesday, January 18th, we again spent most of the day around the house. Jackie was making dinner for everyone tonight, so she needed to be home in the early afternoon and I had made an appointment for an awning guy to come out and measure our slide topper awnings for replacement. As it turns out, it’s a good thing we didn’t go out because the awning guy came by early, around 2:00. I gave the go ahead for him to order the awnings and he said they should be in tomorrow. Pretty quick service.
About 4:30 we had happy hour again with the Babcocks and the Wilsons and later everyone came into our coach for dinner. Jackie made chicken enchiladas with all the fixings and everyone really liked it. After dinner we played a stand up comedy show we had saved on the DVR. We recorded this comic, Sebastian Maniscalco, when he had a Showtime special a few weeks ago. We had never heard of him before, but he was so funny we saved the show. I laughed just as hard this second time as I did the first time, and everyone else really enjoyed him too. He tells stories that are hystericaly funny and very relatable to real life. We have to watch for this guy to come to one of the casinos because I would love to see him in person. After the show finished everyone packed up and headed back to their coaches for the rest of the night.
Thursday, January 19th, we decided that we needed to get out and do some geocaching. The weather was cool but clear with no wind, so pretty ideal caching weather. As I have alluded to earlier, caches that are new to us in this area are getting few and far between, so we knew we were not likely to get a lot of caches for the day. We left before lunch and drove west on I-10 about 20 miles west of Blythe to Wiley’s Well Road. There is a large California State Prison complex about five miles south of the interstate on this road. One can just see the complex from the highway, although without the signs advising not to pick up hitchhikers you wouldn’t know what it was. We found three caches along an eleven or twelve mile stretch of Wiley’s Well Road. That pretty much exhausted the caches in that area, so we drove back into Blythe for lunch at Denny’s.
After we finished lunch we decided to make an effort to get one of the caches south of town that still had not been found by anyone. They were still potential FTF caches even after having been out there for a week. The caches were on the Arizona side of the river and would have required a 20 mile drive on a gravel road if approached from the Arizona side, likely the reason the caches have still not been found. However, I remembered from caching in this area last February that there was a single lane bridge across the river not too far from the small Arizona town of Cibola, which just
happened to be only a couple miles from the cache we wanted to grab. We pointed the Jeep south out of Blythe and started towards the cache. We finally located the bridge and were just about to cross into Arizona when the awning guy called me and said he was at the park. He didn’t need to get into the coach in order to install the topper awnings, so I told him we would be there in a half hour or so and we continued on to the cache site.We crossed the river on the old concrete bridge and quickly found the cache location on the levee road just north of the bridge. However, it took me about a half hour of searching in a rock and brush covered gully before I found the actual cache. But, I was rewarded with an FTF because there were no other cachers logged on the paper log. Yea, I would have really been bummed to go through all that trouble just to find that someone had beat me to the FTF. After we found the cache we crossed back into California and scurried back to the coach. We arrived back at the coach about an hour after the guy called and he was just finishing up. I got there just in time to review the work and pay him. Yea, new toppers. Hopefully I don’t have to worry about water intrusion from the slides the next time it rains.
Later in the afternoon we went to Gary and Ramona Wilson’s coach for happy hour and a dinner of heavy hors d'oeuvre. We had little pigs in blankets and little chicken wings and little shrimp. Lots of good nibbles in small forms. We ate and chatted until about 7:30 when everyone went back to their own coaches for the rest of the night.
Friday, January 20th, we left the coach about 10:30 or so and drove across the river to Blythe to attend the 25th Annual Blythe Bluegrass Festival at the fairgrounds. Although not
my absolute favorite genre of music, I do enjoy listening to bluegrass from time to time. However, I think the last time I went to an actual bluegrass festival was in Wickenburg, Arizona back in the 80's. Gary and Ramona Wilson are big fans and they come to the Blythe event almost every year. We don’t go out of our way to be here when the festival is going on, but this year the timing was right and it was this weekend, so we went for the day.The event is not too large, area wise. There were two stages set up along with a row of food vendors and another row of merchandise vendors. We wandered through the vendor booths for a while and then sat at one of the stages and listened to a group called Lonesome Otis. They were quite good and we enjoyed the show. When they stopped to change bands we went over to the food area to get some lunch and met up with the Wilsons and the Babcocks. The Wilsons bought the three day pass, but the Babcocks were in just for the day as we were.
We all sat down and had lunch. Unlike the fairgrounds in Indio, where the FMCA rally was, the food here was reasonably priced and actually quite good. I had a Philly cheese that was actually better than the one I had at Denny’s yesterday. I was waiting
for a screen printed tee shirt I bought to be made, so Jackie and I sat and listened to some more music for an hour or so. When it began to look like the shirt guy wasn’t going to get the thing made today we left. Gary will be here tomorrow and can pick it up for me.We went back to the coach for the rest of the afternoon and got together with the rest of the group at 5:00 for cocktails. We didn’t do any dinner because we had a big, late lunch at the festival. At 7:00 Jackie and I went over to the clubhouse for karaoke. They
have a good turnout for karaoke here at this park and they have a pretty good sound system too. They had a big rotation of about a dozen singers, but I did get to do four songs during the evening. Most of the singers were good, so we enjoyed the music and even did a little dancing. All in all, a very fun evening. After karaoke we went back to the coach and off to bed.
Saturday, January 21st, we awoke to a very cloudy day with a lot of wind. The weather forecast gave a ten percent chance of rain and high winds all day long. We decided that the weather was not conducive to caching, and we really didn’t have anything else we wanted to do, so we just stayed in. Jackie touched up her hair color and we did a few other chores, but mostly just relaxed. We did hear from some friends that the big tent in Quartzsite, where the RV vendors set up shop for the January show, had been closed because of the high winds. Yikes. Gary Wilson did stop by in the afternoon with my shirt from the bluegrass festival. I guess they finally got their machine fixed. Other than that it was a quiet day around the coach.
Sunday, January 22nd, we left the park after lunch and went over into Blythe do some last minute stuff before our move to Quartzsite tomorrow. We did our laundry and then went to the grocery store for some last minute items. There are no big stores in Quartzsite, so we needed to make sure we had everything we would need for the next week.
After our chores we went back to the coach for the rest of the day. At about 5:00 we had happy hour with the Wilsons and the Babcocks. Later they headed off for dinner out and we went back into the coach where we relaxed the rest of the night.
Monday morning we got up and started packing the coach up for travel. We only have to go 24 miles, but the packing is the same whether it’s 24 miles or 240. We left the park about 11:00 and drove east to Quartzsite, Arizona. We will be dry camping in the desert here for the next five days with the same group of people we were here with last January. We drove a couple miles north of town to a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) camping area known as Hi Jolly Campsite. Our group was camped about a half mile
east of the paved road. Some of them have been here over a week already, while some have only been here a couple of days. The one’s that were here with us last year are Curt and Sharon, Curt’s brother Ray and his wife Del, Dave and Karen , and Vernon and Peggy. There were two other rigs parked in the circle with some folks that we have met in passing but do not know well. Ernie and Andi, and Ron and Pam. There was another couple who had been parked with them, but had trouble with their batteries and had to move to town. They are Bob and Ann and will still be part of the evening group events at the campsite. No one was around when we got to the campsite, they were all in town shopping, however, we found a spot in the circle and got the coach parked and set up.After we got set up we drove into Quartzsite to visit what is known to most everyone as “The Big Tent.” Technically, it’s the Quartzsite RV Show, but it’s in a big white circus sized tent so that’s what everyone calls it. The tent is filled with vendor booths selling or promoting all variety of RV related stuff, from cooking items to RV maintenance and repair, to campgrounds and resorts, to just stuff for RVs. The first thing we did was grab some lunch at one of the food booths. Then we started the tour. There were probably a couple hundred booths, including a row of them outside the tent, so we spent the next couple hours wandering around looking at stuff. I think the only thing we bought was a new remote control for our Direct TV receiver. My old one was getting sticky buttons.
After our shopping time we headed back to the campsite where we visited with folks for the rest of the afternoon. At 5:30 the entire group, sixteen people in all, went into Curt and Sharon’s motorhome for dinner. She served chicken cordon bleu and pasta, and it was great. Surprisingly, there was room enough for all those people to eat. Curt and Sharon have basically the same coach as ours, same model and floor plan, just a year newer, but we got everyone in and fed. After dinner we stayed and chatted until about 8:00 when we went back to our own coach for the rest of the night. When we walked between the coaches we found that the rain we had been waiting for all day had finally arrived. It was drizzling a little bit and it rained on and off most of the night.
Tuesday, January 24th, the rain and clouds were gone, but now the wind was blowing as the storm front moved out. It was also a little on the cold side. The weather forecast said it wasn’t going to get any warmer than the mid 60's today. We had lunch at the coach and then drove into Quartzsite to visit the giant swap meet that is always set up during the Winter season here. Actually, the whole town is a series of swap meets, with booths selling most anything you could think of. However, the largest one is called Tyson Wells and is not too far from where they put up the big tent for the RV show. We spent several hours walking around Tyson Wells, but ended up only buying a couple of little things. As is usually the case with us at these events, we really don’t need too much new stuff anymore. We have most everything we need or want, or at least what we can afford, so we just walk around and look at stuff.
We finally headed back to the campsite about 3:00 or so. Happy hour with the group was about 4:30 and about 6:00 we all gathered for dinner again. This time Del and Ray were primarily responsible for dinner and we had a very nice pork roast, along with scalloped potatoes and a couple of salads. After dinner we all went outside and sat around a big campfire for a couple hours just talking. Around 8:30 everyone headed to their own coaches for the rest of the night.
Wednesday, January 25th promised to be a very nice day, low seventies with just a little breeze. Our intent was to go out geocaching before lunch, however, we had a lot of geocachers in the group, along with some folks who wanted to see what it was all about, so it took until about 12:30 before we got everyone herded together and ready to go. Dave and Karen, who have been caching about a year and had a little under 300 finds, went with us in our Jeep. Peggy and Vernon, who are our biggest caching buddies, went with Bob and Ann in their big pickup truck, along with Sharon Minard. Sharon had never cached and was just curious. Bob and Ann want to cache and are just learning.
With the two vehicles in caravan we set out to do a series of caches along a gravel road known as the Old Yuma Road. On the way to the first cache we happened to see the most remarkable RV parked in one of the BLM camping areas. It was unlike anything I have
ever seen before. Sitting in the middle of the desert was an art deco work of art doubling as a motor coach. It was mostly polished aluminum with a very nautical theme, including, believe it or not, an open, flying bridge just like on a big boat. The rig could be driven from the flying bridge or the cab, but the steering wheel today was up on top. A set of stairs descended down the back spine of the coach to the ground. The windows on the side of the rig looked like portholes and what wasn’t polished was a lovely turquoise color.Several of the folks on the caching trip had Ipads and immediately looked up what we learned was called the “DecoLiner” motor coach. It is a completely hand built coach built on a 1973 GMC motorhome chassis and using the cab from a 1955 White truck for part of the structure. The artist is Randy Grubb and his company is called Blastolene. They hav
e made a number of art pieces that were also motor vehicles. The vision for this coach started out as what Buck Rogers would have driven, but it ultimately migrated to the more nautical theme. It was only finished late last year and it is for sale, according to the sign on the coach. No price was quoted, but I can guess it would be high. This is a vehicle that is destined to live on the car show circuit.Once we started caching we really knocked out the finds. By the end of the afternoon we had gotten twenty four new finds for our total, only a couple of finds shy or our all time high of twenty five. After caching we all went back to the campsite and sat
around for happy hour. No group dinner tonight, several of the guys were going to an auction in town and most of the ladies were going to bingo. We and Peggy and Vernon headed back into town for dinner at the Grubstake, which is a very well known bar and restaurant on the north end of town. They are famous for their fish and chips, and during the season the place is always crowded. Some people that have reviewed the place on the internet gripe about the service being slow, but it is not a large place and with the number of people they put through there you have to go in expecting not to get served quickly. We had a couple of drinks and relaxed and had a marvelous meal. After dinner we went back to the campsite and into our coaches for the rest of the night.Thursday, January 26th, Jackie and I left after an early lunch to some more shopping. We went to the big tent and walked through all the vendor booths again. I bought a tee shirt and a couple little odds and ends, as did Jackie. Nothing major. I had planned on buying a new satellite dish for use on my tripod since my old one is falling apart. However, earlier this morning Vernon told me that there was a guy just across the road from where we are camped that was selling a couple of satellite dishes. I looked at them and one was just what I wanted and only $20 instead of the $35 they wanted for a new one. Yea, scored one dish. We have a built-in dish on the roof of the coach, but I have always kept a regular dish and tripod in the bay for those times when we end up parked under trees and the roof mounted dish is blocked. The old one I had was used when I bought it six years ago and it was falling apart. Now I’m ready for another six years. We also walked through some of the other outside swap meet areas that we had missed on our previous visits, but didn’t find anything worthwhile.
After shopping we picked up a couple of geocaches on the way back to the coach. Today was Jackie’s day to cook for the group, along with Peggy. Jackie made a Chinese chicken salad. I was supposed to cook a pot of chili, but several of the group left this morning, so we would have had too much food had I made up the chili. I will save that for when we are all together again in Yuma in a couple weeks. While Jackie was preparing the salad I got out the karaoke stuff and started setting up for a karaoke night.
When we were here in Quartzsite with this same group last year we did a karaoke night and it was a big hit. Sharon Minard used to be a drummer and singer with a country band some years back and has a very nice voice. Around sundown everyone got together outside
for dinner. This was the first night since we joined the group which was nice enough for everyone to eat outside. There was no wind and the temperature was very pleasant. Peggy made a ham and we had that with Jackie’s salad and some other side dishes.After dinner we built a big campfire and started singing. Most of the songs were done by either me or Sharon, however, Ann joined in the singing after about a half hour. We sang
and had a great time until almost 10:00 which is considered quiet time in the desert. We sang the last song, “Wonderful World” and packed up the audio equipment for the night.Friday, January 27th, we decided to do some geocaching with Peggy and Vernon. The four of us loaded in our car and headed out about 10:30. We found three caches and then went into town to a pizza parlor called Silly Al’s. We have eaten at Silly Al’s for
years, every time we come to Quartzsite. A couple years back Jackie was looking at the pictures on the walls of the owner and realized that it was a guy she dated back in the 60's. Unfortunately, we learned that he has passed away and the kids are running the place now. We had lunch at Silly Al’s with both the Minards and enjoyed the camaraderie. After lunch we headed out for more caching. We found what is called a Power Trail located on a power line road about ten miles south of Quartzsite. A power trail is a series of caches that are put out pretty much in a line, with each cache only two or three tenths of a mile apart. This trail was small, only 20 caches, but we were able to snag them
all in about 90 minutes. The nice thing about these power trails is that they let you build your numbers up on you stats. After the power trail we did a few more caches and we closed the afternoon with 26 new finds, a new daily record for us. Previously 25 was the most we had done in one day. We also found our 3,400 cache along the power trail. We had to take a picture with a sign commemorating the milestone.After caching we headed back to the campsite. At happy hour everyone sat around the campfire and chatted. Since everyone had eaten a big, late lunch, we didn’t even put out any food. We ended up sitting around the campfire and talking until about 8:30 or so. We then went back to the coach and stayed in the rest of the night.
Saturday, January 28th, was moving day. We packed up the coach for the 95 mile trip south from Quartzsite to Winterhaven, California, just across the border from Yuma, Arizona on Interstate 8. We have stayed at this park, Pilot Knob, nearly every year since we have been traveling. We caravanned from Quartzsite to Pilot Knob with Peggy and Vernon who are also going to be staying there for two weeks. The Minards are headed for the Parker, Arizona area and also left the campsite today.
The ride to Winterhaven was pretty uneventful until we got about 30 miles north of Yuma and the wind picked up. By the time we hit I-8 through Yuma the wind was blowing 40 mph and it was really tough driving. We managed to get into the park about 12:30 and registered for our sites. We got side by side sites with the Bullocks and spent the afternoon getting set up and doing some house cleaning. A week in the dusty desert needed to be cleaned up.
We had happy hour outside with the Bullocks and it was very nice. The wind stopped blowing and we sat and chatted and watched the sun set, which was very pretty. Later we cooked some steaks and had dinner in the Bullock’s coach. Peggy made a pasta side dish that was delicious. We had dinner chatted until about 8:30 when we headed back to our coach for the rest of the night. It is nice to have a spot again with water, sewer and electric hookups. Dry camping in the desert is fun for short periods, but I like having the luxury of the hookups.
This is also the ideal spot to close this chapter of our story. We will be here in Winterhaven for two weeks. Until the next time, stay happy and enjoy every minute of your life. See ya.
