Sunday, January 26, 2014

Quartzsite, AZ

Have you ever seen 50,000 RVs camped in the middle of the desert?  No?  Then come to Quartzsite in January!

Here we meet up with old friends - not friends who are old, but friends from past travel years.  Plus we meet some new friends.  This year, the group is large - about a dozen RVs parked together south of town on one of the BLM's LTVA (Long-Term Visitor Areas).  Quartzsite has about 2,000 full-time residents, but during the winter the warm, dry weather draws snowbirds from all over the continent to winter here.  The shows in January draw even more crowds - the RV show and a couple of rock & mineral shows.  Fun, informative, tiring ... great to spend time socializing.

Not many photos from this part of the trip since many days are spent hanging out or wandering through the exhibits at the shows.  And towards the end of our stay, Brad gets a cold so isn't up to some of the activities.  Oddly enough though, another couple camping out with our group we met last year in southern Utah.  Frightfully small world!

The entire group on Potluck Spaghetti night. It's quite a crowd, and LOTS of fun.

Photo courtesy of Carol Ann Dwyer, resident photographer!
Lunchtime during a gold prospecting outing (Brad's out searching). One of our new friends is a member of a Gold Prospectors Club and takes us a half hour up into the nearby mountains to look for gold. We didn't find any.
Jerry panning his diggings from the prospecting trip with wife, Janice, watching. He didn't find anything either!
Still panning; Ed in the background trying to get into the photo and Brad yapping to Gerry.

5 comments:

  1. I want to go there one day. Love your mix of solitude and socializing. Good balance. It's AWFUL weather here. Don't rush home :-)

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  2. Wouldn't it be nice if they found just a LITTLE gold?

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  3. Nice to meet you both in Q! See you again down the road!

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  4. WOW, another year and so many beautiful sunsets and rock formations. However, you haven't made it to Oregon, and while a city, Portland is amazing. Maybe next year.

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  5. Ron, we WERE planning to got to Montana, Oregon and Washington this year (well 2013-2014) but when we decided to fly Brandon out in the fall to join us, we wanted to show him southern Utah and that's too far from the northwest states ... so next trip in 2014-2015.

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