March 2025 – TooBusyForWork

Out of Quartzsite for this year

We left Quartzsite on Monday, 23 March, planning on gradually working our way home to Iowa. This is the picture Kevin took on Sunday night of the sunset. It was taken through a long lens, and then it had be reduced in quality some, but it is an impressive sunset view from our campsite.

We first went to Lake Havasu City, spending 4 nights at the Elks Lodge there. I went to a “Staycation” with the Havasu Quilters guild Monday through Wednesday. The problem was that I was still very, very sore from my back spasms. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I intended. I finally sewed up the quilt block for March’s Block of the Month, but I am not very happy with it. It is not only not my best work, it isn’t even my average work. Oh well, it will do though. I made some little scrubbers for gifts from a kit I have been hauling around for a couple of years. They will be cute in a gift package of a mug and hot chocolate mix (the fabric is hot chocolate related). I also finished all the 8 star blocks I needed for my Christmas quilt, but I didn’t get much more accomplished. All day Monday back would spasm for 30-60 seconds while I just tried to breathe through it. It really sucked. Tuesday was better with no spasms, just soreness. Wednesday the pain was bad. The staycation is normally a treat with lots of good companionship, good food, and lots of sewing time.

After LHC, we headed north to Monticello, UT. We spent one night at the NavajoLand RV Park in Tuba City, AZ on the way. It was decent but not really set up for a rig our size. In Monticello we are staying at the Western RV Park. It is another older campground where we barely fit, but they obviously just redid their sewer system with a lot of fresh gravel on all the sites.

The reason we are in Monticello is because Kevin bought a new side by side! The shop is in Grand Junction, CO, and we drove the truck with the old RZR in the back from Monticello to there. Why? Because when we leave here tomorrow we are headed back to Monument Valley, UT and then to AZ to complete all the paperwork. We had planned on picking it up after we left Monument Valley, but they had rebates that expire tomorrow. But first a bit about the trip up to Moab on the way to I-70. I don’t think we had ever driven the road headed north, though we have done it southbound a few times. It is a glorious drive. There was haze and we had a schedule to meet so only a couple of pictures, and those were through the windshield. The first was the lovely La Sal mountains south of Moab. Lots of snow on their peaks.

And then we started getting to the fabulous rocky outcroppings as we got nearer to Moab. I loved this one the most, and I named it “Haystack.”

And here is Kevin in the brand new rig! It is a Polaris RZR 900 Trail Sport. We got a very good trade in, rebates, and additional deals because they had a bunch of 2024 rigs still in stock. It is a 900cc engine with 75hp and real doors that don’t require contortions to get in the rig. Even the seats are more comfortable. Now he gets to keep the UPS driver busy bringing all the accessories to make it street legal and comfortable. Things like roofs, windshields (front and back), mirrors, and storage boxes are all aftermarket. Kevin has a great time shopping for them, and putting them all on will keep him busy when we get home. I can hardly wait until we can take it out on the trails!

We leave tomorrow for Monument Valley. I will post as we finish that portion of the trip.

Edited to add: We had an absolutely fabulous late lunch at Bella Thai in Moab. It is probably the best Thai food I have ever had! I wanted to make sure I had it in the post because I look back a such info later on.

Quartzsite Redux

We are staying at a different location in the Tyson Wash LTVA than we were the last time we were here. The crowds are gone, so we moved a bit closer to the entrance. We back up to a wash, and there have been quite a few birds coming by – quail, hummingbirds, doves, and some other ones I don’t know. A friend has a trail cam, and I am definitely going to buy one before we head out for the summer. She puts it out every night, and she finds lots of cool creatures. One time a bobcat came by! Not here luckily.

We definitely have done a bit of riding since we arrived and my back has improved. I am still taking it easy, so no long, rough group rides. We enjoyed this view from the “Q” mountain (someone put a rock art Q on it). I have posted other pictures from a nearby spot, and the reduction in campers is significant.

One of the interesting things in the area is this old mill just outside the town. It is always fun to wander around it.

We took one 55 mile jaunt out past the famous Quartzsite golf course. You are advised to bring colored ball, orange being the most popular. The 9 hold course has marked holes with flags .There always seem to be people on the course.

We also took a side trip to the old Scott’s Lead Well. There is an old corral, a broken watering tank, and water storage tanks. They aren’t working anymore, so the fish and game folks installed a new wildlife guzzler. The tank is underground, and it has a well to pump. If the water gets low, they come out and fill the underground tank. When we were there we startled a bunch of birds away. The video shows the ride up to the old tanks, and the still picture shows the guzzler and the old tanks in the background. As usual, click on the link to get the video.

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Sadly the desert will filled with trash. We collected 1 1/2 sacks of small pieces of garbage since we couldn’t take any big stuff. This is a burned out fifth wheel someone had taken out to a lonely spot and torched. Probably an insurance scam: “Oh officer, the rig was in perfect shape before it was stolen!” Disgusting..

This is a memorial to a local bicyclist. The bicycle was actually stolen a few months back, but they replaced it.

It is still very, very dry, but the ocotillos have started blooming even though there isn’t enough moisture for their leaves to come out. They are among my favorite desert plants.

Our ride took us out to the Cyprus Copperstone Mine. It is an open pit gold mine that was very profitable. Now they are planning to dig underground in the same disturbed area for more gold. We didn’t get too close; they have gates that are locked. The pit is off to the right.

On the way back we hit the sandhills that are northeast of town. So many people think Arizona is just sand dunes, but they are actually pretty uncommon. Here is a short sample.

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I have been sewing some as I recover from the back problems. This is what I am calling “Midnight in the Desert.” I am in love with the colors of this, and I really like the way the circular star pattern shows up as a secondary design. I was planning on sandwiching and quilting it here, but I have decided I really want to get the intersections super flat with the LaraStar ironing system I have at home. The colors in the first picture are accurate, but those in the second picture are quite washed out. It does show the fabric design of the print though. I have also sewn a few hundred Christmas squares together, but I won’t show that one for a while yet.

Tonight Kevin got a great picture of a doze camouflaged in the brush. It was easy to hear him/her, but it took a bit of work to see.

And no post in the southwest is really complete without fabulous sunrise …

…. and sunset pictures.

We are heading to Lake Havasu on Sunday. It will be getting hot here – upper 80s into low 90s – so it is time to head in for electricity and air conditioning.

After Death Valley – KOFA National Wildlife Refuge

We left Death Valley on 1 March and went back to the Needles Elks Lodge. We did the necessary tasks of laundry and grocery shopping, then we headed to our favorite spot in KOFA along King Road. This spot is so pretty, sitting between two rugged mountains. Except for a friend that pulled in a couple of days after we set up, there was nobody within 100 yards.

The first picture is on the north side of our campsite.

This is just a bit to the side, just as the sun was almost gone.

We did go back to Cibola National Wildlife Refuge one day. This time we took the highway, and our friends took the 4WD road. We beat them by only 5 minutes or so. The paddle cactus blow was just starting to bloom in the garden there. I think it is a Beavertail cactus, but I am not foolproof on identification.

At least some of the cranes were still there, but a lot have already headed south.

There is so many places to ride the RZR here! The landscape is generally more vegetated than in Quartzsite, so here is a sample.

One of the key things the Fish and Wildlife Service does is maintain watering spots, known as tanks, for the wildlife. Here is a natural catchment area that has been enhanced. In prolonged dry spells, they will bring large water trucks in and fill the basins. I am quite impressed; the trail in was rough and narrow.

Sadly I came down with a massive back spasm while we were here that resulted in a trip to the ER in Yuma. Some heavy pain meds (400mg Gabapentin, an injection of an NSAID, and a Lidocaine patch), and I was able to walk out. But I sure didn’t do much the next few days! It was over a week before I felt 75% recovered, so we didn’t get to ride as much as we wanted.

We headed back to Quartzsite on Monday, 10 March. I finally got some more sewing done. Here is my in-process inspector saying I better get going!

Goodbye Death Valley (for now)

“Goodbye Death Valley!” That supposedly was the phrase uttered by one of the 49ers that were stranded there. I think she said it as prayer of salvation, but Kevin and I are always a bit sad. It is a fabulous place.

We did do a few things since I last posted. I am trying to make new bag covers for the collapsable chairs we keep on the RZR, and it isn’t as easy as it might seem! I made one, and it is waaaayyyy too big, so I marked what size it should be and soon to rip out the stitches of the big one to remake it. Not my favorite task, but ripping is part of sewing so I will see it through. While I was involved with that, Kevin hiked Golden Canyon with our friend Ron. He said it was lovely, but I don’t have the pictures. They left pretty early, and he was still hot when he got back about 3 hours later. We definitely had a heat wave.

WHen you have been to a place as many times as we have been to Death Valley, you tend to not re-visit the places that are nice but not awesome. We hadn’t been down 40 Mule Team Canyon for four years or so, because it is one of those “nice” places. The last couple of years it had been closed due to flood damage. We had a good short trip this time. The interesting thing about this little canyon is the amazing yellow mudstone backed up by black intrusions of volcanic-related rock. It was absolutely the wrong time of the day to capture this, so I increased the contrast so it might be at least somewhat visible.

We also took a drive down Greenwater Road, a dirt/gravel road that goes to Shoshone, CA. It cuts off just before Zabrisky Point. We were surprised at how many boondock campers there were. It is definitely a place where you could be by yourself if you had a very small rig. We only saw a couple of spots we would have fit in, and it was a long way from any of the standard Death Valley sites. The road ran through a broad valley most of the way with lots of creosote.

The first mile of the road was bad washboard, but it smoothed out to quite mild washboard. We stopped in Shoshone for lunch with an absolutely fabulous green chile burger at the Crowbar. Highly, highly recommended! Not only did the burger have thick slices of green chile and Swiss cheese, but the fries were divine. We rolled out rather than walked, but it was worth it. We then visited the lovely little museum next to the restaurant. Nice set of exhibits of Anglo settlement and mining, but also some good information about the local tribes and even some seriously pre-historic mammoth bones that had been found nearby. A university in California had returned them to Shoshone when they ran out of room. There were also tracks of some of the mega fauna that lived in the area 600,000 years ago. The mammoth track gives a good idea of how big they were, but I forgot to take a picture of the camel tracks which were very surprising.

We are back at the Needles Elks Lodge for a couple of nights. I had a video class on the Moda Block of the Month for March this afternoon, so we are waiting to do laundry tomorrow. It will probably take all day! Then we are going to a boondock site along King Road in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. Beautiful site, but a long way from anywhere. We expect to spend a lot of time driving the RZR around.

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