The first effort was a visit to the dump station. With empty holding tanks and a full water tank we returned to our old campsite by the wash with it's two trees. Breakfast was left over French toast with bacon for me and Cherrios and bacon for Lou.
We relaxed at home the rest of the morning. Lunch was jalapeno loaf Dagwood sandwiches.
Lou went over and looked at the shops on Kuhne Rd. I enjoyed a quiet nap. I fixed ranch beans and hot dogs with cheese for dinner.
After dinner we went over to the Quartzsite Improvement Association (QIA) to see the Sizzling Strings (Jensen Family Entertainers) show. They are a musical group consisting of a piano playing mother and six of their children playing violins, cellos, violas, bass fiddle and the occasional guitar and other string instruments. They each did solos and, other than the singing, were all very talented. The production quality was excellent. The dad was the crew and handled lighting and audio. When we arrived, we noticed a Dolphin motorhome much like ours towing a small box trailer parked in front of the QIA building. Some how all 10 family members (there are also two very young children that don't play instruments) used it as their dressing room and must live in it as well. We had no idea when we saw it that there would be such a large group performing. We thoroughly enjoyed the show. QIA does a great job in hosting these shows. Here is a link to a video of them on YouTube. And more.
Wednesday: (02/17) Lou fixed some nice ham and cheese omelets for breakfast. We enjoyed eating them outside overlooking our wash and watching the birds.
We headed over to the Main Event area and looked at the remaining shops. Some have additional discounts now that the crowds are gone. Most vendors are gone. Some, with permanent building just closed and the unsold product, even canned goods, will be sold next year. Buyer beware. I can look these places over rather quickly, as in a brisk walk by or through them. Lou examines them in more detail. I completed my rounds and then went over to the nearby RV dealers. One has everything unsold just like when we got to town. Another across the street has sold a half dozen motorhomes since I last visited it a week ago. It's a small outfit with only the owner/salesman there. The previous dealer,with all it's inventory, has several sales people and doesn't seem to have sold anything? From the prices of the RV's I asked about I can see why. Too high. Marketing is everything.
Today was mail day which turned out to be an adventure, as seems to be usual. General delivery moved from the downtown office to the annex building. Interesting, there are as many post offices in Quartzite, a town of 3,500 as there are in Palo Alto, a town of 55,000. I found the annex building to be rather confusing. There is only an exit for the parking lot, no entrance. You have to enter through the police department parking lot next door. There is a sign on the minor street but not on the street that the post office is located on. And then there were the 6 unmarked doors, except for one that said exit only. That is the door you enter to get mail. The other doors lead to their own little rooms with PO boxes. Quartzsite is a town without mail delivery so if you get mail here it's in a PO Box or General Delivery. Am I the only one confused? Did they hire California Department Of Transportation Engineers to determine how and where to install signs. It seems much like the terrible signage on California Freeways.
We did a little grocery shopping and returned home for nice chef Lou's salad.
We went over to the QIA pancake dinner. We enjoyed their pancakes and ham and it only cost us $5.50, quite a deal.
Thursday: (02/18) I started the day, since it was shower day, by crawling under the car to reattach the pan I knocked off down in Lake Havasu. it was only held on with two bolts but should have had 7 bolts. The pan was broken off around one of the two mounting holes so it fell down and I had to remove the other bolt when we heard it dragging. I bought some more metric bolts in Lake Havasu but haven't taken the time to remount it. It did make me more nervous when I drove these bumpy roads so I wanted to get it back on. With the job done and grease up to my elbows, it was time for my shower.
Lou fixed biscuits and gravy for breakfast. After breakfast, I started dinner in the crockpot. I browned a pork roast and added it to potatoes and sauerkraut in the pot. This is our first time using the crock pot with the inverter. We usually use it when we have power at an RV park which is quite seldom for us. I started the generator and warmed the crockpot and ingredients for 5 minutes and ran the generator for a total of 30 minutes to knock the top off our overnight battery consumption. The solar system kept up with the crockpot's needs and charged the remaining 50 ampere hours needed for the batteries as well. Looks like we can have our crockpot meals even in the RV, when the sun shines at least.
I lazed around home most of the morning working at the computer. I met Lou later to look at some things she found at the thrift store and then stopped by Discount Solar to see what they had that I might need. I may get some wire there later to fix the cable routing on the solar panels later.
Lou called about lunch time and was headed home and offered to pick me up. I mentioned I was across from the Quartzsite Bakery so we enjoyed some of their pastries and tea for lunch. I had an apricot flower while lout had an apple turnover.
Lou continued her rounds of the vendors. I walked home looking at some of the vendors on the way. On my way back through the camp area I noticed Ron Bunge of Hitchitch.com sitting outside so I stopped to say hello and chat. I hadn't met him before but knew of him since his website has a nice list of RVer blogs and ours is included there. He is also a fellow Datastorm satellite system user and appears on the usergroup map page.
When I returned to the RV it was becoming more difficult to be inside with the smell of dinner from the crockpot. I worked at the computer some more and then enjoyed, what is becoming a habit, an afternoon nap. When Lou returned she worked on making shoes for her dolls for a while then we enjoyed our solar powered dinner.
Friday: (02/19) Lou fixed a wonderful breakfast. She bought a smoked pork chop from the General Store Market and fried some potatoes, onions and peppers and topped it with eggs. We spent the morning tinkering on our favorite projects, me the computer and Lou doll shoes.
We enjoyed salad Lou made with cottage cheese, red and green peppers, onions and ham.
After lunch we took the car out Old Yuma Road intending to take a hike to see some petroglyphs and Indian grinding rocks South of here near Tyson Wash but we couldn't find the road they were supposed to be on. We made it all the way down old Yuma Road to the La Paz Valley Road through some rough spots when crossing washes that had been washed out. Our car rides quite low and we can't take too rough of a road but we found our path. We looked around the housing in that area and stopped at a garage sale there. Since we were out, we continued West on what would be La Paz Valley Road but after the pavement ended until the ruts got to be too much for our poor little low riding Volvo.
We took Old Yuma Road back to where the gas pipelines cross it. though it's not marked as a road we took the well worn route along the gas line route. It was a pretty good dirt road headed toward Rainbow Acres except where we crossed the Tyson Wash. It was a bit soft and washed out with fairly deep trenches but again we made it through. Fortunately we didn't have to test our auto clubs towing response time. we looked around Rainbow acres and the took the paved road back to Quartzsite and home.
Dinner was leftover pork roast, sauerkraut and potatoes with fresh asparagus. A 630 we headed over to the QIA for the Tim Smallwood comedy and magic show. It was a pretty good show and his Bill Clinton impersonation is pretty good as well. The shows at the QIA have all been well worth their $5 admissions.
Saturday: (02/20) When we went to bed the sky was clear and the stars bright but by 3:30am it started to rain and rained lightly, continuously until about 6;30am. Then it was just heavily overcast. Google had predicted the rain Friday evening and I guess it did. They now say showers today as well. I guess the storm was delayed slightly. Lou got another pork chop yesterday and with the leftover fried potatoes and eggs called it breakfast. It doesn't look like the solar panels will do well today. Lou was in a baking mood and baked some brownies.
Our little trip yesterday was just in time. The roads we were on would not be as hospitable to our little car today.
Lunch was excellent. Brownies and ice cream.
We tinkered at home most of the day except for a couple of errands. Another visit to the thrift store to look for something with a 36" metal zipper for reuse. Couldn't find one, yet. We also stopped at the little market in a tent by the post office for some potatoes and onions. They seem to have the best looking vegetables at good prices in town. Hope they stay open for as long as we're here.
We also went over to Rice Ranch for an Off Off Broadway show. It was too far off for us.
We saw an interesting new motorhome over at Rice Ranch. A very rustic, nice unit all the way from Ehrenberg, Az. It is really very nice inside and durable outside. it even comes with a back porch.
For dinner we went back out to the Mountain Quail Restaurant for prime rib dinners. Of course we brought home leftovers partly because there was plenty and partly because we had shared a slice of apple pie for desert.
It was cloudy most of the day with only very occasional sunshine. After dinner I got back to the TV antenna. I finally got it aimed and we get two channels from Parker ABC and Fox neither our favorite networks so we wont have to watch too much TV. We haven't had TV reception at any of our campsites until now, except presumably the rest stop in Redlands. We haven't really missed it much.
Sunday: (02/21) The wind blew last night rattling the TV antenna which raise the ire of Lou so it may come down and be put away soon. There isn't anything worth watching anyway. So that's why we haven't missed it since we left on this trip.
Breakfast was warmed up leftover prime rib and baked potato from last night with fried eggs. After breakfast we walked downtown.
Lou was feeling restless so we walked downtown. We looked at the new RV's at RV's for less. We stopped at Janet's Kitchen by the Post Office for a bit. We shared a Blue Cheese burger and a slice of cherry crumb pie. It's a nice cafe though a bit pricey. We walked a little further up Central and looked at 5 park model open houses in an RV park. All quite nice at from $18,000 -38,000 with a $1600 annual rental. None of the owners live here all year. I wonder why?
Dinner was more left over pork roast and potatoes.
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