Beavers in Quartzsite AZ

Tuesday, Jan 13 thru Jan 18, 2015

Today we head to the desert near where we will boondock for 5 nights out in the desert with about 60 other Beaver coaches.   Our drive to Quartzsite was interesting.

This blimp looking craft was in the sky just outside Yuma.  We wondered if it was for weather.  We have no idea.

A little further out of Yuma we saw this.  The signs told us this was Castle Dome.  It does look like a large castle.

It was interesting to see desert scrubs leading up to rugged mountains on the west side of the road.

These were the mountains on the east side of the road.  There was even some grass.

This was the road leading to the desert where we were going.  We really had no idea what to expect as far as what the land would look like when we pulled off the road.

 This was a neat looking cloud over the eastward mountains.

There is a lot less scrub brush now.  We turned in behind the silver Air Stream trailer. Then we drove about three-quarters of a mile into the dessert.

This will be several firsts for us.  This will be our first Beaver Rally, first time to Quartzsite AZ and first time to boon-dock.  BTW, boon-dock means to camp without any utilities.  We arrived with our water tank full, holding tanks empty, propane tank full and diesel tank nearly full.  We used the propane for the refrigerator.  We use diesel fuel to run the hydro-hot which gave us heat in the coach and hot water.

Here is one row of Beavers parked.  You can see ours on the right side of the picture.  We have both the US flag and the Texas flag flying.  The woodpile you see in the foreground is one of two woodpiles.  We had 2 big fire circles and had bonfires every night.

Now you can see the other woodpile.  The tables and chair are set up near the gathering area and "kitchen".

This is looking out from the "kitchen" area.  

Here is one several beautiful sunsets we were blessed to see.

This is one of the bonfires just before dark.  Korky was our fire monitor.  He was supposedly the only one to be able to add firewood to both fires.  He did a good job.

Here we are about to have breakfast one morning.  The cooking line is on the right side of the picture and the serving line is on the left side.  We all took turns cooking either breakfast or dinner.  We all helped spread out over the 5 days we were there.

A couple of mornings after breakfast there were technical seminars about our coaches.  This was one of the seminars.

Afterwards we decided to go into town and walk through the flea market.  It was huge.

Quartzsite AZ has a RV and gem show every year about this time.  So this little burg of about 3800 people, grows to around 100 thousand for a few weeks as hundreds of RVs park and boondock on BLM land in the desert nearby.  After breakfast we drove into town to see the flea market.  We were blessed and found parking just after we turned into the area.  This is looking down the main road.

We went early in the day and fortunately it was not very crowded yet.

This booth had several kinds of flags, wind socks etc to fly overhead.

There were so many rows of these tent booths that I lost count.  It was a beautiful morning and nice that it was not crowded.  We spent all the cash we had with us (which was not much) so left without spending too much.

This afternoon, Escapees (which is another RV organization that we are a part of) was having a get-together or "meet and greet" so we decided to check it out.

When we arrived they had already started.  They were talking about the benefits of Escapees.  They went on to describe several of the groups that could be joined.  A few groups had tables set up that you could talk with people about those groups, i.e.;geocaching. 

They had a nice gathering of people.

They also had several tables of snacks available.  This was one of them.  We had just finished lunch and were not hungry.

Back at the Beaver Rally, one afternoon there were Beaver races.

You cannot see the track was laid down but it is there.  Each Beaver was numbered - through 6. Then 3 large dice were rolled and based on the number rolled, the appropriate beaver was moved forward one space.  It went like this... if 1,3,6 was rolled beaver 1, beaver 3 and beaver 6 each moved forward one space. 

Beaver 3 and beaver 4 are tied here.  Beaver 4 ends up winning.  It was fun to watch.

We enjoyed our first Beaver Rally in the Quartzsite desert!  We met lots of great people!