02-11-2020 Visiting Quartzsite

It feels wonderful to wake to the morning light here in Quartzsite. We don’t come here all that often. The lure of the extensive shopping tents and booths, and the thousands of RV’s scattered across the desert is less than alluring to us. Been here a few times, just to experience the Big Tent, to connect with other RV bloggers at Bloggerfest a time or two, and to overnight rarely when we are passing through the area.

In spite of all the things about Quartzsite that don’t excite us, it is undeniable that the desert here is gorgeous. A few saguaros punctuating the skyline like exclamation marks with arms, deep shadows on the surrounding mountains, and wide open skies. With the main event for the season over, the rigs are scattered widely here in La Posa South LTA. It’s good to know there is always a place to land here if you need it.

There was an almost full moon last night that appeared sometime in between the heavy rain that thundered on the roof as we retired for the night. I watched through the open windows in the bedroom portion of the MoHo. With a good distance between RV’s, there was no need to cover any of the windows for the night. What a treat to have all that open sky all around us. I woke a few times and watched the moon, and as morning approached I watched the rain clouds mask what attempted to be a bit of a sunrise. No color, but also no rain and some faint blue skies between the clouds. Lovely.

Taking Mattie for a walk was a bit colder than it looked, with the wind whipping around. She wasn’t all that excited about being outside. We are parked near a small wash with a bit of green grass, but she wasn’t interested in that either, wanting to walk on the moderately smooth road that didn’t have sharp rocks. I do know that if we were to spend any extended time in the desert, we would need to get her some of those little booties. I found a patch of what looked like miniature cholla plants, tiny things that were less than an inch high and even smaller in diameter that had long thorns as big as the almost invisible plants. Doggie damage was avoided, thank goodness, as we backed away from that area and returned to the road for the rest of our walk.

We left Catalina Spa yesterday morning under moderately cloudy skies, traveling east along Dillon Road for a nice long distance before intercepting I-10 in Indio for the rest of the journey. Most of the time the journey was uneventful, in spite of some heavy rain that we traveled through somewhere near Blythe.

We decided to fuel up just east of the State Line at the Flying J. There is a Love’s and a Pilot at Quartzsite, but in our experience, they are often incredibly crowded. The fuel at the Flying J was the same price, only 17 miles west of Quartzsite, and the station wasn’t terribly crowded. It even had a nice big RV pump area with both diesel and gasoline pumps.

By the time we got to Quartzsite, the skies were overcast but nicely for us, the rain held off till later in the evening. We had arranged to meet Gaelyn at her park for a visit, and emptied out a portion of the very full back area of the tracker to accommodate a third person. We had never been to Silly Al’s, a Quartzsite tradition I had read about for years. It was a good day to take a friend for pizza and lots of talk and laughter.

Gaelyn is every bit as much fun as I knew she would be, if a bit more lively and animated than shows from her photos. I would love to listen to some of her interpretive stories that she gives in the National Parks. What a hoot! She did tell us some inside stories about being a park ranger that I won’t repeat here, but oh so entertaining.

It was a short visit, but great to finally meet in person and meet Sierra the traveling kitty as well. The pizza was outstanding, too! All the reviews and conversation about Silly Al’s are not exaggerated. One of the best pizzas we have enjoyed anywhere…except maybe for our favorite wood fired pizza at our home town winery.

Today we will continue east toward Phoenix, meeting later this afternoon with Mo’s cousin Jim after we settle in to the Phoenix Metro RV Park. It has been a few years since we visited Jim and family in Phoenix and we are looking forward to it.