A wonderful week

We have had such a nice week! The temperatures have been in mid to high 70's every day and the sun bright. Just what we drove all this way for!!

We started the week off with a trip to Bakersfield, California, almost 400 miles from here , to get the bus tuned up. It may seem like a long way to go to get that done but Terry wanted to go to a Detroit diesel man that he trusted. It was a great drive to Bakersfield too. We started off from Quartzsite at 820 feet elevation and had to go thru the mountains with one of the passes being 3800 ft elevation. That was the Tehachapi pass and once we topped that mountain it seemed like we were in another world! Everything was green. Lush. It was gorgeous. Going down the other side of the mountain was like being in the Swiss Alps or somewhere.(I have never been in Switzerland butI am sure it looked like this!) Beauty everywhere. It had been a long time since we had seen so much green!

We stayed in Bakersfield for a couple of days and headed back on Wednesday. The bus ran great and we had made some wonderful new friends. We loved being around buses and other busnuts!

Back in Quartzsite we took advantage of the great weather to do some quad riding and geocaching in our mountains. We also stayed busy meeting up and eating out with friends and going to music jams. I will include a photo of one of our geocaches hidden deep in the mountains.

Yesterday Quartzsite had their 4th annual Bluegrass Festival and it was great entertainment. It is a three day event but we probably will only go the one day since we are preparing to leave.We took our lawn chairs and sat out in this wonderful sun from 9:30 to 5:45 listening to a lot a great groups from Arkansas to San Diago. At the end of the day we were sunburned, a little tired, but had an awesome day. We ended our day with our friends, Rose and Phil, that we may not see for another year or so. We are both pulling up and leaving Quartzsite in the next couple of days.

Today we will load up our quads, see some other friends and get ready to pull out tomorrow. It is always a happy/sad time. We are excited to get back on the road and see what other adventures await us but we are a little sad to leave Quartzsite and our friends Barb and Bill.

Hitch itch setting in.

We are still in Quartzsite but we are getting the "hitch itch" so we don't really know how much longer we will be here!

We have had nice sunny days but sometimes the temperatures have not been conducive to ATV riding. But we really really enjoy the sunshine. We keep busy riding in the desert and mountains when we can, going to music jams, playing our own musical instruments here in the bus, and walking.(that is....Connie walking, not Terry!!)

I think I am finally getting my dental work completed in Mexico. We have been there a lot this season. Yesterday I got some fillings. Algodones was VERY busy with it being a holiday so there were lots of people. We got ready to get in line to go through Customs around 3:30 and the line was backed up to where we knew it would be at least a 3 hour wait so we went to Plan B. We decided to just eat supper while we waited for the line to get shorter. My feeling in my face and mouth was starting to come back and I was getting hungry so why not. We had a good meal and got into line about 5:30. The line was still long but shorter than it was. We ended up waiting an hour and 45 minutes. And we didn't have any purchases! The wait went pretty fast though since we were visiting and joking with the other people in line. We usually meet some very interesting folks in line!

The desert and mountains are getting green...well, green for here and it really is very pretty. Some purple and yellow flowers are starting to show up along with the green follage. I did snap some pictures on one of our rides last week but I don't know how well the colors will show up. The cacti will start to bloom soon but we may not be here to see it.

Better go. I need to practice my guitar. I won't get any better if I don't! Don't forget to click on the photo to enlarge it and then just click on the back button to return to the post.

Lazy Days and Friends

What a nice relaxing day we had today with our friends Clark and Janet. We took off about 11:00 in their 4-wheel drive Blazer and headed for the mountains.

We drove south of Quartzsite a few miles before heading west toward the mountains near the little town of LaPaz Valley. I think it is actually just a little community, not a town, built in the desert. After driving through the desert for 3-4 miles we got to the bumpy, narrow and dusty mountain roads and it got a little exciting for Janet. I have been out this way many times on the quads so I knew what to expect and I was just enjoying the views and the steep hills were just 'old hat' for me. We had a lot of fun laughing at Janet even though Terry kept telling her we were laughing WITH her, not AT her! The trail across and through the mountains was pretty steep at times requiring 4 wheel drive. Pretty soon, though, even Janet got used to the hills because she was so in awe of the scenery and the views. I know this because she stopped squeeling!!I was so glad they got to see the area that gives us so much enjoyment.And they loved it. We showed them favorite places of ours and it was so nice seeing them enjoy the ride. We even had an unexpected surprise of seeing 4 mountain longhorn goats(or were they sheep?) up close and personal. Of course I didn't have my camera with me so maybe I can import the pictures Clark took providing I can figure out how to do it!

The trail ended a couple of miles east of the Colorado River and California at Interstate 10. So we just went on in to Blythe, California and ate lunch. We often eat at local eateries and not the chain restaurants but there is a really good Sizzler restaurant at Blythe and we were hungry so we stopped there and ate a very good lunch.

After lunch we drove north of Blythe to the intaglios which we had seen before but Janet and Clark hadn't . The intaglios are huge drawings on the desert floor and thought to have been drawn by ancient Indians to tell a story. We saw three of them but there were more that we didn't get to. They are fenced in and protected by the BLM. The intaglios themselves were worth the trip but the views from there were awesome.

We had a really nice day with lots of friendship and lots of laughter. And the 75 degree temperatures were pretty easy to take too!!

Show Time-almost over

Boy oh boy, this season is going so fast.

Here in Quartzsite, the big RV and Sportsman show is almost over. The town is crazy busy with thousands of RVs here. I walked a couple of miles this morning to the Hi Jolly short term area and it was packed! The other 4 short term areas are pretty full too but they just got busy in the last two weeks. When the RV show ends the Craft show begins shortly but the crowds usually reduce in number. We have had great weather this year with mid to high 70's being the norm. It wasn't like this last year! The cool temps and wind last year made it less enjoyable.

1,500 to 2,000 vendors come to Quartzsite to be a part of these shows. The vendors' goods range from rocks,gems,minerals,fossils, RV related items and everything else imaginable. It is touted as one of the world's largest open air flea markets. And we haven't seen even half of it. Some of it we don't go to if it doesn't interest us (like rocks) but we haven't even seen all the things that DO interest us!

We have been busy visiting friends that we haven't seen for a long time and catching up on all of their lives and running back and forth to Mexico to get all of my dental work done. So, that doesn't leave a lot of time to shop. But , that is ok. We love catching up.

We wandered over to a bus group last week-end where they had 97 buses for their rally and just walked around admiring all the buses. There were a large number of Eagles and Flexibles and some Prevosts and MCIs thrown in. They were having a great time. We got a few pictures of the conversions.

I will blog more soon.

Hi Jolly

Quartzsite had their annual Hi Jolly Parade, their 21st, actually and it was a big success. The parade actually kicks off the tourist season here. There were 24 assorted entries and locals and winter visitors alike had a good time. Ah, life in a small town.

Hi Jolly, a camel driver whose real name was Hadji Ali was part of a failed military experiment here in the desert in 1857. President Lincoln knew horses weren't holding up very well in the arid southwest and authorized the purchase of camels from Arabia. They were to transport military and large quantities of freight to the frontier. Long story short- it didn't work! The camels and mules were not compatible and the Civil War halted the experiment when all military and human resources headed back east to fight the war.So anyway, Hi Jolly stayed in Quartzsite until he died in 1902.A local celebrity, of sorts! There is a monument in his honor here in town.

Right after the parade we broke camp and headed to Yuma to be with friends who had had an accident with their RV on their way to Yuma. A driver driving behind our friends Janet and Clark apparently fell asleep and rammed into the back of their towed car traveling at a high rate of speed. The impact snapped the tow bar off, their car traveled(as they watched,horified)across both west bound lanes of the interstate, across the median, and across both east bound lanes and into the field through a barbed wire fence. It became airborn a couple of times before it stopped. Luckily and miraculously no one was hurt.The car was totaled. So now here they are a long way from Ohio with no car. Their nerves were shot, to say the least. We went down to lend moral support and any help we could provide in helping them get all the arrangements for another tow car, and any other needs they had. We stayed in the Escapees RV park just down a few sites from them.

We left the Escapees park after a few days but stayed in the area for me to have some dental work done in Mexico. I had an abscess situation going on and needed treatment. I looked a whole lot like a chipmunk! And I felt like a train wreck!

So! That is why I haven't blogged for a while but am feeling much better and back on track. The weather is gorgeous with 70 degree temps and sunshine.

Gotta go. Sunshine awaits!

Happy New Year!

We want to wish all our friends and family a very happy new year. We are blessed with good health, lots of friends, and a great family and look forward to a good year.

We don't bother too much with New Year's resolutions because we would probably break them anyway. So any bad habits we manage to break will just be a bonus!

We are having great weather and rang in the New Year with a long quad ride. We had constant sunshine, 68 degree temps, and blue blue skies. What more could we ask! We decided to try to find a geocache that was hidden at the top of a mountain. The name of the cache was Pyramid Point and had a difficulty rating of 4 out of 5 and the terrain was rated 4 out 5 but it should have been a 10!! The find involved a ride, preferably a high clearance vehicle, and a hike. A very strenous hike to say the least but we were determined to get to the top of this mountain. Well....... we didn't make it. Terry almost made it but decided it wasn't worth a broken leg-or neck! The cache was actually hidden in 2004 so I am sure the trail had changed considerably. So, bad as we hated to we had to admit defeat. Bummer. But we got to places on that ride that we hadn't seen before and had a fun day. We got home in time to sit out and enjoy the sunset.

Quartzsite is finally getting busier. We went down town today and noticed that the number of vendors had increased a bunch. Probably doubled. And the number of shoppers and visitors increased as well. I am glad of that for the businesses. My beautician told me today that her business was 1/2 of what it was the previous 2 years. That has to hurt.

Tomorrow is the Hi Jolly parade so I will blog on that tomorrow.... or soon anyway.