Quartzsite AZ Again

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We enjoyed our stay at the Lake Havasu Elks Lodge and were pleased to have our slide out problem taken care of while we were in civilization. Our next stop would be back to Quartzsite Arizona for a Newmar Rally on BLM land just south of town. It’s less than a 80 mile drive to the Roadrunner Camping area. It’s a fairly easy drive since it is almost all on a state route. This will be the fourth time we have come here in mid January to attend the “Gathering in the Desert”. We were here in 2017, 2018 and 2020 just before COVID hit. We have enjoyed attending the event in the past and worked it into our travel plans for the beginning of the year. The plan is to spend 8 nights before moving east to Tucson.

Quartzsite is a quirky little town with a population of just over 2300 residents, but each winter around this time, many tens of thousands of campers descend to the area to attend rallies and go to the big RV show that is put on each year. There are several conventional RV campgrounds around town, but the vast major those coming here will park their rig in the desert and camp without any real services like water, electric or sewer. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is a federal agency that administers several hundred million acres of land much of it out in the western United States. They have a handful of areas defined around Quartzsite where they permit camping for free with a 14 day limit. There are also a couple of Long Term Visitor Areas that have a similar camping setup but charge a $40 fee to stay 14 nights. These areas come with some services though - vault toilets, trash dumpsters and fresh water fill and dump stations. For the really hard core boondockers, you can get a 7 month pass for one of these LTVAs for a mere $180 bucks.

The couple that use to organize the Gathering in the Desert as part of the Newmar Kountry Klub, have sold their rig and have passed the reins to a new crew. We were arriving a few days before the main rally was to begin in order to partake in some off road Jeep excursions. There were about 15 rigs already here when we arrived. We picked out a spot in the line that was forming and got setup. Since this rally always is at the same location in the Roadrunner area, I suspect that the 4 spots we have stayed at over the years would all fit into a circle with a 300 foot radius. The organizers had a table setup with registration information and the forms that need to be filled out for the BLM permit. They are expecting about 130 rigs to show up for the rally with maybe 30 of us coming in early for the off road pre-event.

Newmar Rigs Lined Up for Rally

Shortly after signing in, I came out of our rig and nearly took a spill on our steps. A linkage that goes between the step motor and the steps had broken and the steps now behave more like a swing. I managed to secure them so we could at least come in an out without the risk of taking a fall. The same part had broken six years ago, so at least I knew how to fix it but it might be difficult to find the very specific part for our model of steps in Quartzsite.

There was a meeting in the afternoon for those of us that were planning on going out for a ride on some of the local trails in the surrounding desert and hills. Most of the people here for the ride were in some sort of Jeep Wrangler. Some were stock units while others were lifted and substantially modified for even more serious terrain. While our Grand Cherokee Trailhawk is likely 75% as capable as a stock Wrangler, it was also quite new and has yet to get all scraped up. After discussing the intended route for the ride tomorrow morning, we decided we might just skip the off roading aspect of the rally and find other things to do before the real rally begins.

One other thing we needed to start thinking about soon was “where are we headed this summer?” I knew people around the campfire at the rally would ask and we didn’t really have an answer. Given we had most of this past summer’s camping sites for Colorado reserved by this time last winter, we were really behind on the planning. I suggested two options to Chris for consideration.

One thought was to recreate the plans we had made for the summer of 2020. We were going to head north to Canada and check out the Rockies, some of the national parks and do things like the Calgary stampede before heading west to British Columbia. That trip was cancelled when COVID caused the border to be closed. The second option was to head back to western New York. We had spent over 30 years in the Rochester area before leaving for our current lifestyle in 2016. We made a brief stop in the area for a couple weeks as we were heading to Maine in 2018 but we haven’t been back since. After some thoughtful consideration, we decided it would be nice to head back to our old stomping grounds somewhere around Rochester. Of course, we still needed to make concrete plans and reservations if we have any hope of pulling that off, but this will be a discussion for future blog posts.

We have spent a total of 40 nights camping here during our prior 3 visits to Quartzsite, so we have seen much of what there is to see in the area. But we had a couple of days to kill before the rally starts so we need to come up with something. One day we headed into town to do a little sightseeing. There was one small park that we had been to before to attend a geocaching event and we discovered there was a geocache there we hadn’t bothered to do. The monument there is in honor of Hi Jolly. This man was the caretaker of a group of 70 camels that were part of an experiment on using the beasts as part of the war effort in the 1850’s in this part of Arizona.

Hi Jolly Monument in Quartzsite

On another day, we dusted off the mountain bikes and headed out for a ride on an ATV trail with a series of geocaches hidden along it. As you can see from the included geocaching map, there is no shortage of geocaches hidden in the area. The smiley faces are ones we have found, but it’s clear from all the green and blue pins representing ones we haven’t found, we will likely never clear out all the caches in Quartzsite! Our ride looked to be about a 13 mile loop along some trails we haven’t explore previously. It was a nice ride and we only ran into a few ATVs along our route. The pictures from the ride give a sense of how vast and remote the desert lands are here. By the time we made it back to the rig, we had gotten in a 15 mile ride.

A Plethora of Geocaches Around Quartzsite

Along Our Bike Ride

After a few days, our area in the Roadrunner BLM was starting to fill up with lots of Newmar motorhomes. The weather was rather chilly so it looks like some of the fair weather campers might end up skipping the event. Starting on Wednesday afternoon, the rally kicks off in earnest with happy hour followed by a spaghetti and meatball dinner. All the attendees brought their camp chairs to the area around the fire pit and we all enjoyed a nice meal and got to know some of the folks.

The next two mornings, we had various speakers scheduled to give presentations to the group. We sat in on most of the talks since many of them were on topics or products we were interested in learning about more. One of the couples that was sitting next to us for most dinners and talks told us about the fairly extensive solar system they had installed in their rig. I was a bit jealous since we have been considering adding solar panels and switching from our flooded lead acid house batteries to lithium batteries for some time, but weren’t finding an installer we were feeling confident with.

A Group of Owners Listen to Presentation

We knew a system that would do what we want would be rather pricey. We weren’t looking to make the addition to “save money”, our goal was to get much greater flexibility when we do dry camp, be it in the desert like our current location or simply at an Elks Lodge that doesn’t have electric hookups. Such a system would eliminate or at least greatly reduce the number of hours we need to run the generator to recharge our battery bank. For reference, we find we need to run our generator twice a day - usually around breakfast and dinner - for about 2.5 hours at a time in order to bring our eight 6 volt batteries back to a full charge. For this stop, I estimated that we used $8.50 per day in diesel fuel so it’s not a lot of money. But if the solar panels could charge the batteries in the course of the day, we wouldn’t need to listen to the generator and could have a more peaceful stay when boondocking.

We asked the couple about where they had the install work done and were told back in Nappanee Indiana which is the town where Newmar motorhomes are manufactured too. Then they mentioned that one of the talks coming up was from the folks that did their system. Turns out that Solar Energy Systems LLC sends a rather large team and lots of parts out to Quartzsite and have a location at the RV show where they do some install work. Our rally hosts had contacted them and setup a presentation on the second morning. We listened to the talk and asked our new friends some more detailed questions of the capabilities of their system. We even got a tour from them of their rig and the setup. It was rather impressive what they could do and on most days their battery bank would be fully charged by mid afternoon.

Up until now, we were having trouble finding a company that we felt confident in doing such a major upgrade to our rig. But after listening to the presentation and getting first hand information from a client, we felt this might be the time to make the change. We spoke with the company’s owner and gave him the rundown on what we were looking to accomplish and he did some rough estimates on pricing. We weren’t positive we wanted to have the system installed out in the desert even though that sounded like it was a possibility. We told him we were working on our travel plans for the upcoming year and that we could swing through Indiana in late April. He penciled us into their schedule and told us he would follow up with a written estimate in the coming weeks. One added perk is that this solar install would qualify under one of the clean energy credits the federal government is offering. Thirty percent of the total system’s cost would end up being a tax credit. I’ll have lots more on this topic in future posts.

Back to the rally itself, we had a couple of nights with entertainment. Both were solo artists and they performed on a flatbed trailer as a stage. The music started before sunset but extended into the night. In the desert, the temperature drops pretty quickly once the sun goes down. And since the days have been rather cool, it was outright cold at night.

Music by Rocky

Decent Crowd for the Music

And the Sun Sets

A Fire to Keep Us Warm

One of the meals was a pizza party. A local vendor was able to supply 80 pies for the group although it did take them 2 trips from the shop in town to deliver them in a warm condition. Another evening brought a chili contest. There were at least 20 entries plus the hosts had made a huge pot so there was plenty for all.

Chili Cookoff Table

On the Saturday of the rally, a good portion of the group was going to head out to a place called the Nellie E Saloon or its more common name - the Desert Bar. We had been here back in 2018 out of our stop in Lake Havasu City for the fireworks festival. It’s quite an unusual place and we were looking forward to going back after 5 years. The plan was for all those wanting to attend, try to arrange car pool options and leave the rally around 10 AM. We ended up getting in touch with some friends of ours we met back in 2017 at a casino in Tucson who happened to be camping in a different BLM area on the north side of Quartzsite. It had been a few years since we had met up with them since we have been in Florida for the past two winter seasons and they are snowbirds from Washington state that drop down into the desert southwest. We got coordinates from them - we first met them because they are avid geocachers as well - and we arranged to meet them at their rig and bring them along.

Metal Artwork at Entrance to Desert Bar

It is a very bumpy 5 mile dirt road back to this remote, off grid bar. We got there early enough to grab a table and chairs and scoped out what the food and drink options were. We had a lot of catching up to do with them but managed to get a sense of what they have been up to. The Desert Bar seems significantly larger since the last time we were there. They do seem to get a rather large crowd with many of the visitors taking alternate routes in their ATVs. A band was just setting up as we finished our lunches and went to walk around. There were a couple of geocaches but only one of them was very close. Our friends had already found this one in a prior visit but agreed to accompany us over some of the ATV trails to the cache so we could sign in.

Some of the ATVs Out Back

Behind the Stage as Band Starts

View from Geocache Location Near Desert Bar

The time seemed to fly but we decided to head back with a quick stop at a larger grocery store than Quartzsite offers. We got back to our friends spot and sat around chatting some more until we realized we needed to hustle back for the chicken dinner that was being catered that evening for the rally. The rally ran smoothly with one exception. Nearly 40 rigs that responded with a “will attend” did not show up. But since much of the food was catered in and had to be paid for in advance, the original cost per rig was based on all the people showing up not just 75%. Those of us that did show up agreed to add some extra money to the kitty so the organizers didn’t have to deal with the shortfall. We all agreed that there needed to be a better way to somehow pay upfront to coax all people to show up if they registered and if not at least defray the costs.

We didn’t have much happening on Sunday. The RV show had started over the weekend, but we had walked the big tent with hundreds of vendors in past visits and we weren’t really looking forward to the massive crowds so we decided to skip it this time. Our friends drove down to see us again, mainly to pick up a hat that mistakenly was left in our Jeep unnoticed. We sat and chatted some more before we said our goodbyes.

A Sliver of Moon Sets Over Quartzsite

We enjoyed our time at the rally and are really looking forward to having solar and new batteries installed in a few months. I needed to tie up the broken steps before heading out. I had found a replacement part while in Quartzsite, but the weather was not cooperating and I wasn’t in the mood to lay on the cold ground with 30 MPH winds blowing. Our next reserved spot is in Tucson for a full 2 months.  The drive is nearly 270 miles so we stop at the midpoint in Gila Bend at the Elks Lodge. We had stayed there once before back in 2020. They do not have any utilities but there is a large fairly flat gravel lot to park for the night. We had the place to ourselves and was a relatively quiet evening. The weather was much improved here so I crawled under the rig and with Chris’ help got the steps working again. I hope this new part lasts for as long as we own the rig.