We left home on Thursday, 10Jan2013 and drove toward Ft. Stockton, TX to meet up with Mark and Sue for our annual travels to Quartzsite. Since we left at 5:00p, we stopped short at about 10:30pm and spent the night in a Texas Rest Area. We got up early on Friday morning, and met up with Mark and Sue in Fort Stockton.
On Friday, the pair of us drove to Las Cruces, NM, and due to the forecasted freezing temperatures, we stayed the Coachlight RV Park so we could have electricity to put heat lamps in the water bay and behind the refrigerator ice maker lines. We did not want to run the generator on the Bus all night with such a small load on it.
On Saturday, we met up with fellow Tiffin Owners, John and Becky Perrella, who were going to Quartzsite with us, and we left early to drive to Tucson, AZ. We had planned to stay two nights on a casino parking lot, but again, with freezing temperatures, we opted for a campground. We also checked with a campground in Gila Bend, AZ were we normally spend the ‘night before Q’ to get ready for the desert by filling and dumping tanks, and doing wash, and we found it full due to construction projects in the area.
We found El Molino campground, which was a small Passport America campground that was part of a mobile home park. It was a pleasant surprise in that it was a almost new, and for the first day, we had it to ourselves. We stayed there three nights, not only because of freezing weather, but we wanted good TV reception for the Professional Football Playoff games. It was a good stay, and worked out well.
On Tuesday morning, we headed for Quartzsite. I did not fill my tanks on Monday night, and when I went outside to take care of my water tanks, the campground water spigot was frozen solid!! I put my insulated jacked over the spigot and put the wet bay heat lamp on it, and the water was flowing in about 20 minutes. The other two rigs headed out with plans to meet them up the road.
We met up with them at the Holt Shell station (and campground) in Gila Bend at about lunchtime. We topped off our fuel tanks, ate lunch, and headed for Quartzsite. We got to Quartzsite about 3:00pm and got set up…… not much to do, since there are not hookups.
The Quartzsite rally ended up with about 25 rigs, down from previous years, but so was everything else in Quartzsite. The desert was not as full as usual, and there were fewer vendors, both in the big tent and the local flea markets. We did a lot of visiting, bought a few items for the Bus, and had a good time.
I managed to take no pictures this year at Quartzsite. I do have my new dash cam, and have videos, but can’t post them here. You can look at the Perrellas blog noted above, or our friends, Chuck and Lori to see some of the activities in Q for 2013. Patsy did take a few pictures with her iPhone, and here they are:
Our “PREMIUM” site in the desert…….
A ‘fajita’ dinner in our Bus…….
The rally host and hostess, Robert and Tiziana Ruff doing the raffle……
A few of the rally attendees………
More people and food………….
With the Tiffin rally winding down, on last Tuesday, we moved over to the rally site of the RVAmerica group. This is the first group that we camped with when we first started to come to Quartzsite. The Didelot’s and North’s had already moved there. The Perrellas had left earlier to head north because they are workamping at a campground in North Pole, Alaska this summer.
The rest of the group was planning to drive to Yuma for a few days to visit friends there, but Patsy and I don’t know anybody in Yuma, and we opted to drive up to Las Vegas. We left on Friday morning……… driving through the Mojave desert for a part of the way. We arrived in Las Vegas at about 1:00pm and got set up in a campground.
More later!
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