Quartzsite

Wednesday: (01/19) We pulled in to La Posa West and unfortunately our nice campsite from last year was occupied so we found a suitable parking spot near the road close to the show. We took a quick look around Prospectors Panorama. And then I dashed over Satellite Advantage to setup an appointment to get the dish fixed. Turns out the factory technicians will be here for the show and they we be out to fix it sometime this week. Dinner was leftover white bean soup and toast.


Thursday: (01/20) On my morning walk around camp I took these photos. The winter migration to Quartzsite brings some interesting groups. Across the highway from us are a bunch of old 70's GMC motor homes. In the same area as we are is another covey of old 70's era Vixen motor homes. The Vixen seems like it should be made today. You can park it in any garage 96.5 inches tall, 19 feet long. It has 6'4" inside ceiling height with the lid up. It's diesel and gets 28-30 mpg. How come we could make them then but not today?

Irish oatmeal with rehydrated banana chips and honey for breakfast. Our morning was spent cruising the isles at the Pow Wow at the Quartzsite Improvement Association grounds. QIA is like the local fairgrounds. The Pow Wow is mostly a rock, mineral , jewelery, and beading show.


We enjoyed our lunch in the dining room. I had Salisbury steak, Lou had roast pork and Dawn had beef stew. All good. After lunch we headed over to the Main Event, one of the flea markets. That finished the day. Dinner was chicken tacos at home. Even though the sun was shining all day it never got all the way to 70 degrees today. We like the local KBUX radio station. It can only be heard within a few miles of Quartzsite but the programming is really nice. Oldie's music and local ads and news.

Friday: (01/21) PBJ English muffins for breakfast. Got to try some of the Peach amaretto preserves I picked up yesterday at one of the vendors. After breakfast we were all off. Lou and Dawn were back at the junk vendors, I mean flea market vendors. I looked around at rice ranch. I picked up some new flat water hoses. They store much more compactly than the standard round hoses and now there is extra room in the water hose storage box.

After that I returned to the RV and worked on a website. Lunch was an olive loaf and cheese sandwich. Lou and dawn had the leftover chicken taco fillings. After a little relaxation we were all off to another bunch of junk dealers near the Post Office. I, of course, finished with them quickly and headed off to look at RV's.

I then received a call from the Motosat factory technician. They are here for the RV show and while here come out to the camping areas and fix peoples satellite dishes. Mine has been OD since last May when the UCB failed in Death Valley. I was so busy when we got home I didn't get it fixed. So, as it turns out, Quartzsite was the best place to get it done.  Since my dish is so old they tried to get me to replace the whole system, then to replace the arm and transmitter but I preferred the cheaper route of just fixing what was not working the upper control board. They had one and swapped my bad one out and amazingly, it now worked, or was at least on the way to working. The dish now moved but I was offline so long I needed to do a re-registration to get it working. That only took another 4 hours to do successfully, but I am patient and all was working by 9:30pm. All in all a successful day.

It's nice to have the satellite Internet system working again. While we don't really need it here at Quartzsite because Verizon has nice 3G service on our phones and they can be tethered to the laptops for Internet access. That was not the case by Imperial Dam where we were just camped and also many of our better camping sites.

Dinner was some of Lou's new years tamales. She froze the leftover tamales and now they are all gone. Tomorrow is the first day of the RV show so of course, that's where we're headed tomorrow.

Saturday: (01/22) I fixed home fried potatoes with sausage and eggs for breakfast. Lou picked up some of the Quartzsite General Stores home made sausage last night. So good!. After breakfast Lou and I were off to the big RV show. First day so lots of people. Too many for the isle spacing. We made a quick round through most of the then and all the outside and then met Dawn at the apple pie lady's shop for lunch of fresh apple pie with caramel sauce. After lunch we went over to the Main Event hoping to see the steam engine show but they had canceled for this year. Too bad. We looked around the Main Event some more then had dinner at the Quail Mountain Cafe Northeast of town. Prime rib night so Dawn and Lou enjoyed that. I had the usual, chicken fried steak. All very good. It warmed up nicely today, not at all hot but just room temperature.

Sunday: (01/23) I intended to get over to the show again this morning but when we tried to open the roof vent, it fell apart so I spent an hour or so rebuilding it. The pin on the arm that raises the cover came out. Should have been an easy fix except it was on the fantastic fan and it neither comes apart nor goes together easily. I did a little looking around before returning for lunch. It was quite breezy (it's never windy in Quartzsite we were told by a resident, always breezy) We hung around the RV reading the rest of the afternoon.

Leftover steak and prime rib with home fries for breakfast. Lou made shrimp cocktails for lunch. Smoked pork chops, baked spuds and cole slaw for dinner.


Monday: (01/24) I went down the road a ways to pickup a used Motosat F1 from one of our fellow campers. I intend to use it for a solar panel tracker. It also provides lots of spare parts including another upper control board if ever needed. It's too big to haul around in the RV so it will go home with Lou and Dawn in a couple of days.

When I got back to the RV Lou and Dawn were off on their search for the ideal pieces of junk. I moved some things from the jeep to the RV to make room for Lou and Dawn to load it up for their trip home day after tomorrow.

Breakfast was PBJ English muffins. Lunch, for me, was an olive loaf and cheese sandwich and some coleslaw. Lou and Dawn were out and stopped at a Mexican restaurant for a taco salad and some margaritas.  Lou and Dawn started some stew in the slow pressure cooker. First time for stew. It's worked so well for beans we decided to try stew. Worked the same just get it hot and put it in the thermal bags. Actually better than the crock pot and no power needed after getting it hot.


Tuesday: (01/25) Quartzsite morning rush hour traffic during the big show. I fixed pancakes and sausage for breakfast. Lou and Dawn were busy packing for tomorrows departure. I got out of the way and looked around over at the RV show. An Olive loaf sandwich for me and shrimp and fried curly onions for Dawn and Lou.


I went to tha annual Quartzsite BOGSAT. The BOGSAT (Bunch of guys/gals sitting around talking) was held at John Watson's campsite this year. It's a meeting of Motosat users. Up on the roof is Royal Lamb and Ryan form the Motosat factory fixing John's big dish. We learned all the latest from Royal about Motosat.

For dinner we went over to Silly Al's pizza parlor. Excellent pizza.

Wednesday: (01/26) Leftover pizza for breakfast. Lou and Dawn were off early toward Bakersfield, then home to Palo Alto. Dawn has a job coming up she needed to return for. I walked East a few miles to Boomerville, a gathering of Escapees Boomer BOF. They were discussing going to Alaska. It looks like we are going to try that trip ourselves this summer? I over-estimated my walking speed or under-estimated the distance. In either case I arrived about an hour late for the 10am gathering. It was probably 6-7 miles out and I was on foot. I got a good 15 minutes of the tail of the talk then hoofed it on back home. I strayed off course heading to Boomerville but my return trip was easy and direct . Head back straight toward Q mountain. As it turns out I should have headed toward the peak to the East to get to Bommerville. Next time. Pizza for lunch as well, then a well deserved nap. I took the RV on a trip the two miles South to the dump. Now all ready for a couple of more weeks. Dinner was, of course, pizza. Can you overdose on pizza? Nah! One advantage of a ginormous pizza is the leftovers. Lou and Dawn made it to Helen's in Bakersfield for the night. They made an extra long rest stop in Barstow to look over several antique stores downtown.

Thursday: (01/27) PBJ English muffin for breakfast. Off to the show again. I picked up some info from the Canadian booths. For lunch I went to where Lou an Dawn had lunch the other day over at Rice Ranch. I had fried onions and chicken strips for $5. Almost too much. I then walked over to La Mesa RV to see what they had then along main street then out to Herbs hardware. I was back home a little after 4pm. I enjoyed the time doing some reading in the shade. I of course had to interrupt my reading when a neighbor came over to ask about my solar system which extended into other topics for over 30 minutes. By then I moved my chair out into the sun as it was now cooling off. Dinner was left over stew and some sauteed mushrooms followed by an apple with peanut butter.

Friday: (01/28) Pancakes and sausage for breakfast.


After breakfast I visited the RV show again. Finally took a picture of the inside the big RV show tent. Not much of a crowd now. Also looked at some RV's. Lunch was an olive loaf and cheese sandwich. I did a little Alaska trip research this afternoon.


For dinner I walked North of town to the Grubstake Bar for their fish and chips. Quite a crowd but I was seated in about 15 minutes. Their fish and chips ranks up there with the best. I've seen a lot of sand nearby but haven't found their fishing hole yet. By the time I made my way home it was dark. On Friday nights when it is all you can eat the crowd is huge. I controlled myself and didn't order a second plate of fish like last time.

Saturday: (01/29) Don McMuffin breakfast this morning. It's another fine sunny day, no winds, now. I tinkered at home in the morning. I installed the tax preparation software and started thinking and collecting for that disagreeable project. I also started backing up my photos from the laptop to DVD's. It's been a while and even though they are backed up at Carbonite online, you just can't have too many backups. Lou finished uploading the Jeep at home. The used F1 satellite dish I bought wasn't the lightest thing and she rounded up the neighbors and they lifted it off the roof of the Jeep and stored it away in my shop. Interesting how other peoples projects occupy so much of ones time. Thanks Lou. Now we don't have to cart that thing around for four more months. For lunch I warmed up some stew and had some apple cake I found in the back of the fridge.

I caught up on the pictures for the past week or so. I also published an article about our new No Power Required Slow Cooker at RVexperience.

I finally got outside about 3pm and dropped by the RV show and some other shops before stopping at Trina's for a couple of her $1 burgers and a milk shake for dinner.

Sunday: (01/30) Breakfast was some cottage cheese and pears. A pretty nice morning, sunny with a few lightly scattered clouds. I tinkered at the computer all morning. I fixed a nice chef's salad for lunch. After lunch I got the bike out and rode over to the RV show, it's last day. Many of the vendor booths were empty. There wasn't much of a crowd. I did break down and buy some rescue tape. It's supposed to be able to fix a leaky radiator hose or anything else. Since we plan on heading to Alaska, I knew if I didn't get it, I'd need it, so I got it. I also got some Montana summer sausage. It's the same people who used to handle buffalo summer sausage but I guess the herd has changed. I then rode over to Main street and looked at the RV dealers way out East of town. That didn't take long. There are only four vendors but one didn't seem to want me on the lot, so I left. I'm sure I took a shower this week? I then rode around looking at real estate. I had picked up a list from a local Realtor but most of the for sale signs seem to be for another Realtor and not on my list. Final stop was to pick up a loaf of bread. It was pretty cloudy and cooling off by the time I headed back toward home. There was a steady breeze from the South. I was headed South and it was a lot harder peddling on the way home than it was coming in to town. In fact when I was headed North down the overpass I had to continually apply the brakes to keep my speed down. Not so going South toward home. In fact going down the overpass I actually had to peddle to keep my speed up. When I got home I fixed a chili size for dinner. The clouds seem to have thinned but the wind was then from the West and there was even more dust blowing.