Yup…We’re In Quartzsite….Again

Well, we went back to Quartzsite.  We didn’t plan it, it just happened.

For those of you that do not know Quartzsite, here’s the jist of it.

Quartzsite, AZ is a town just 20 miles east of the California border, with a population of just over 3000 people sitting in only 36 square miles.  However, during this time of year, RVers from all over make there annual mecca, mostly parking on the large surrounding BLM land, and shop and socialize til they drop. 

Arizona Highway Department estimates between 750,000 to over 1,000,000 people surround this town for these various shows, flea markets, etc.  It has even been said that during this time of year, Quartzsite becomes the third largest town in Arizona!

The RV show sits on over 20 acres alone.  A 69,000 square foot tent houses most of the vendors, with others spilling outside and across the streets in other venues.

In other words, craziness under a tent.  At least that’s what I like to call it.  If you arrive in the morning you are greeted by shoulder to shoulder people, vendors vying for your attention and cooking demonstrations filling the air.  That is if you are lucky enough to find parking.  Needless to say, we don’t go in the morning.  We go in the afternoon and yes, it’s still crowded, but you can breathe, walk at your own pace and the vendors have settled down and can actually talk to you and not yell over the crowd.

So when we first arrived in the Quartzsite area we looked for the perfect spot to spend the next two weeks.  Once we found our spot out here on BLM land and got all set up, we decided to go into town and see what we see.  Well…we didn’t get very far.  No sooner did we leave the side of our motorcoach, not even making it to the road, we got a nice size gash in our sidewall of our Saturn tire.

We carry an air pump/jumper battery with us, so we decided to limp into town, 8 miles away mind you, to get into a tire shop.  Thank goodness, for such a small town, they actually have a tire shop!

Of course once we got there, they are such a small town tire shop, they did not have our tire.  So they had to order it.  And luck would have it, our Saturn uses a specialty tire.  So…CHA-CHING!

On went the donut…oh, I mean spare tire.  Three days later, yes I said three days, we got our new tire.  Nicely balanced and mounted we drove off praying we would not get another flat seeing this all happened on day one of our two week adventure out here.

Other than the show, there really is not much else to do around here.

Just breathe in the dust and dirt blowing around.  And oh yes, we had a dust storm the other night here.  As you can see from the above pictures, it is all open and flat land around here.  So the dust storm came through with a force that blew everything away that wasn’t tied down.  Needless to say, our black motorcoach turned brown.  YUK!

While sitting out here, in the middle of the desert, I happened to spot an RV Window Repair truck parked not to far away.  So we called the number on the truck and we were able to set up an appointment to get our lower window fixed in our door.  It had been fogged over for a while with a broken seal and it was driving us nuts.

An hour later we had a lovely new seal around our window and no fog.  Yeah!

So what do people do out here?  Well, this is a good place to fly your powered parachute.  Lots of wide open spaces.  Beautiful scenery.  And who can beat that sunset flight.

No one that we knew had a powered parachute, but we hear they are common around this area.

Our new friends Dave and Ken have model airplanes that they decided to get out and try flying.  Well, Ken’s plane had some difficulty and we’ll leave it at that :)  Dave’s on the other hand flew quite a few times around.  Hoover, Dave’s Great Dane, enjoyed chasing after the plane once it landed.  Too funny.

David also had a great time playing with Hoover and their other dog Mitzy.

I wonder who will win that tug-o-war?

We’ve had some beautiful sunsets out here.  We are surrounded by mountains which make for a wonderful backdrop as the sun goes down.

We’ve met some wonderful people, who are now friends.  And I’m not just saying that because they are constantly inviting us to dinner.

One night while we were sitting around the campfire David remembered he had a Sky Lantern.  So we decided to set it afloat.

If you are not familiar with Sky Lanterns they can be pretty cool.  They are made out of biodegradable paper and they have a wax base to them that you set on fire.  Once the heat builds up inside the lantern, they float off into the night where they eventually burn out and fall back to earth.  It’s really beautiful to see a bunch of them taking off at the same time, but alas, we only had one.

That’s pretty much our stay in Quartzsite, AZ.

Just hanging out.  Meeting new friends.  Shopping at the main event.  Sitting around the campfire.  Dinner under the stars.  And just general relaxing.

We’ve been to Quartzsite and this “main event” for three years in a row now.  We never planned on it that way.  We just happened to be in the area while this was going on, so we went.  Previous years we’ve gone with friends.  This year we came alone and are leaving with new friends.  That’s rv life.