Exploring the Quartzsite Area

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The Newmar rally events did not fill up all of our time while here. Even though there aren't a ton of things to see and do, we managed to keep ourselves occupied. There are hundreds of geocaches out here along desert trails. But we found that most of these can get monotonous after a while. So we were a bit more choosy in our selection.

The "Q" of Quartzsite Mountain Visible from I-10

Geocaching Map of Quartzsite - Yellow Smilies are Ones We Found

One hike we did early in our stay was to climb up Dome Rock. It is a small odd shaped hill that gets you up a couple hundred feet overlooking Quartzsite and all the the RVs setup in the surrounding area. It was a very rocky climb and wasn't that pretty of a day but it still provided a nice view and we did manage to find the cache placed up there. You need to click on the picture to be able to see the vast number of trailers and motor homes parked all over. The picture of the hill we climbed has a small arrow pointing out how high the cache was.

Looking Out at All the RVs (click image to view full detail)

Chris After Just Finding Cache on Dome Rock

Looking Back at Dome Rock - Arrow Points How High the Cache Was

On one of the afternoons, we headed over to a town park to meet a couple of guys that have been living full time in their motor home many years. They call themselves the RV Geeks and have a very popular YouTube channel among RVers. Since we have learned so much from them over the years, we felt we should take the opportunity to meet them in person and thank them for the hard work they put into making their videos. If you have any interest in RV maintenance and technology, there guys have some pretty good videos. While there, we walked over to do a geocache on the other side of the park. Two people yelled out to us from a nearby car and came over to introduce themselves. They too are geocachers and live in their motor home full time. We sat and chatted for a long time before heading out.

The RV Geeks and Their Rig With Other Fans

Jet Near Geocache at the Park

Of course one of the main reasons there are tens of thousands of people camping in the area is to go to the huge RV show. The main tent is roughly the size of a football field and is lined with hundreds of vendors. Maybe a third of them were selling products or services that were specific to camping or RVs. Another third were selling things that anybody, including RVers, might want or use. The remaining third were selling oddball things. Many of them seemed like snake oil vendors with remedies that apparently could fix all ailment. As we passed each one, somebody would ask us if something hurt and would we like to sample their product. I overheard one salesman asking a passerby if they were on chemotherapy or had diabetes - apparently his treatment is pretty versatile.

Booths Just Outside the Big Tent

Big Tent in Background

After going up and down each aisle, we hadn't found many things that we absolutely needed. Although we did find one booth with good pricing on RV parks in the Yuma area. Since we are heading there in a couple weeks for a big geocaching event and hadn't made reservations yet, we took advantage of the discount and booked a spot.

Vendors Galore

There were even more vendors outside the tent - probably thousands. We spent some time going up and down the aisles. Occasionally stopping to see what they were selling but more often than not, just glancing as we passed by. After a bit of this we decided it was time to call it quits. Maybe just around the next corner was that one thing we really needed but I guess we will never know.

These Folks Have More Junk than We Did

Found Humor in the "Adult Day Care" Sign for the Beer Tent

We did a couple other day trips to nearby points of interest. Cibola National Wildlife Refuge is just a little bit southwest of where we were. It actually straddles the Colorado River with the park office and some trails on the Arizona side and the rest on the California side. The woman working the visitor center was very helpful and we discovered she was also living in an RV and working here as a volunteer and getting a free place to camp within walking distance. Maybe someday we will lose the urge to keep seeing new things and try out something similar.

Cibola Visitor Center

There was one main auto loop around several ponds where thousands of birds were spending the winter. For the most part, you are not allowed out of the car so when we got to the burrowing owl nest, we could see one from the car but couldn't get a very good picture of it. Their nests are completely man made. Apparently created with a 5 gallon bucket just buried underground and a big PVC pipe angled down into the bucket, sticking about a foot above the ground.

Hard to See Burrowing Owl Peaking Out Pipe on Left

There was one stop along the drive that had a mile long walking loop so we stopped to check it out. It was amazing to see so many different types of waterfowl. Some of the ducks had a very strange quacking sound. We thought it sounded like some guy was sitting out near the ponds doing very bad duck calls. As we came along the trail near an irrigation ditch, we spotted a good sized coyote.

Birds Congregating on Pond

View From Observation Deck

We continued our drive back in the refuge on some dirt roads that were not too bad since it hadn't rained recently. It did look like this area could be treacherous with the wrong weather conditions. Supposedly there are large numbers of feral burros on the refuge and at one stop to see an old cabin, we swore were could hear some calling.  After climbing a small hill to get a better vantage point, we didn't see any burros and no longer heard them. As we crossed over the Colorado River into California, we stumbled upon some very impressive irrigation equipment. The soild didnt look that fertile but apparently quite a bit of lettuce is grown in this area.

Cibola Cabin from Early 1900's Needs Some TLC

Large Irrigation Pump

Irrigation Stretching as Far as the Eye Can See

Just south of our spot in Quartzsite is another neat area - Kota National Wildlife Refuge. There are all sorts of hiking, biking and ATV trails in the area. One hike we did was the Palm Canyon Trail. The drive to the trailhead is along a 7 mile dirt road. Boondocking is permitted along here and there were plenty of rigs parked just off the road. In fact there was one hardy group that was camping there with several tents. The day we went was extremely windy and it sure looked like their tents were going to go flying.

One Entrance to Kofa NWR

The trail is only about half a mile long but does go up quite a bit into a canyon area. Supposedly the draw of this trail is to see the California Fan Palms. The only native palms to Arizona. It was a very beautiful area and fun hike even in the extreme winds. The canyon didn't shelter us from the winds. In fact, we suspect it made them worse. The actual palms were in a very small ravine on the opposite side of the canyon up quite a ways. They were not all that impressive although we did try to stick around a bit to see if the sunlight would make it onto them. The cold and wind forced us to give up and come back down. Still it was a nice hike, but our advice is to not do it just to see the palms.

Looking Back on Road Out to Palm Canyon

Rugged Mountains

One interesting thing about where we were camping in the desert with thousands of other rigs is trying to locate it after you go out for the day. We never stayed out in the car past sunset so we didn't have to deal with finding "home" in the dark.  Many of our fellow campers had stories about how long it took them to find their spot after dark. We even had trouble find our spot on the afternoon after our rally hosts had left. They had removed the flags to help guide everybody in at the beginning of the rally, but we had obviously come to depend on these flags and had to stop at a couple forks in the road to think about which way to go.

We did get to take the Jeep out on some of the dirt trails in the area. In many cases we drove further into the desert than Chris was comfortable with but often not as far as Jack wanted to go. One such drive took us to a very interesting place. It was an old mining area with a stone cabin now without any roof, some old mining equipment, lots of old household items now just sitting in the cabin exposed to Mother Nature. But the highlight of this stop was the "parade of toilets". A geocache placed nearby was what even made us aware to check this location. There were about a dozen or more toilets decorating the area around the cabin. It wasn't simply a pile of broken toilets in a heap, but all lined up with flowers decorating them. Not something one sees everyday.

"Potty Lane"

Old Mining Home

Mining Equipment Looked in Decent Shape

One of the Dirt Roads Traveled

When we arrived in Quartzsite we really hadn't formulated what our travel plans were going to be the rest of the winter or for that matter where we might head once southern Arizona starts to heat up. Well after talking with many of the other rally participants, we actually started to put our plans in place. There are a series of rallies for a few different RV clubs we belong to that are going to be in the southern Arizona area. Instead of just picking one of them to attend, we decided to try them all out after being told by others that they are all very different in nature. Also a friend of ours from Rochester has relatives in Arizona and often comes to visit them during the winter. We managed to arrange to meet up with her in Tucson in before two of the rallies. So we will basically be bopping around the Phoenix and Tucson area going from rally to rally and filling in with other spots along the way.

As of now, our thinking is to head up to the Pacific Northwest for the spring/summer/fall and likely come back to the southern Arizona or California area for next winter. A few of the couples at the Quartzsite rally either lived in Washington or Oregon or have traveled that region a lot and had many good suggestions. Nothing definitive yet, but at least a straw man to work from.