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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.

Dark Sky Festival and West Side Road

The Dark Sky Festival was fabulous as usual. We attended the keynote addresses in the evening, and Kevin attended an astrophotography workshop that got his photography drive going. I also enjoyed the outside exhibits from the organizations participating. I am particularly interested in the autonomous rovers of all type – wheeled, winged, or snaked. The wheeled ones are obvious to most, and we have probably all see the helicopters too, but they actually had a fabulous 20’ long prototype of a snake-like “EELS” (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor) designed to go into and come out of crevasses to be found on a moon of Saturn. I even got to drive it for a minute or two until two little girls came up who needed the experience more than I did.

(Click to see EELS in action)

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Monday we decided to drive the West Side Road, a dirt/gravel road west of the main salt basin. There are some fabulous views of snow-covered Telegraph Peak from the road. Telegraph Peak is 11,000’+ high, and is usually snow covered in the winter. It is such an amazing contrast to the warm desert below. Here are the views as we drove the road.

There are lots of historic sites along the road. Tule Spring, Shorty’s Well, and others come from the buried Amargosa River flowing underground. There are also human related sites like where the original Death Valley 49ers were stranded for over a month until their rescuers arrived. There is also an interesting gravesite for some early prospectors. Shorty Harris was famous for being involved in many of the gold mines in the area, but specified his grave should say “Here lies Shorty Harris, a single blanket jackass prospector.”

Gravesite of Shorty Harris and his friend Jim Dayton

Last year we couldn’t drive the West Side Road because it had large areas of washout from the historic rains that gave us back Lake Stanley for a while. I posted pictures of the fabulous sight last year. The salt is fresh here, and since the road sees orders of magnitude less traffic than the famous Badwater Basin area, you can see the way the salt pan looks before it has been walked on by tens of thousands of people. The salt begins as a polygon shape.

In Some areas the crystals build upon each other. These formations are 2-3” tall.

Eventually the crystals stop forming and get partially covered by the never-ending Death Valley Dust. This is an older crystalline area that developed before last year’s rains.

As you continue on the road you will eventually get to the back side of the famous Badwater Basin salt pan. It is truly amazing.

Those tiny dots are people. The water is from springs that are almost always present.

I have also been doing quite a bit of sewing, though I don’t have much to show for it yet. I am putting together block after block for both of the quilts I am working on, and I am making good progress. I also cut out a new bag for the folding chairs we use on the RZR. The existing bags are nylon, and the sun has really destroyed them. My finger went right through one bag when I pulled it out for measurements! Kevin has been playing with his 3D printer and the telescope.

We also did a bunch of housekeeping tasks. We dumped our tanks and got water yesterday, so we did some laundry. It has been getting into the mid 90s in the afternoon, and I like my AC with those temps! We have been running the generator from 2-5 to cool off the last two days, doing the laundry at the same time. I think we have decided to leave on Saturday and head somewhere back into Arizona, though we haven’t decided where. We will almost surely go to a private campground to have electricity for the AC.

Arriving in Death Valley and trip to the Racetrack

We arrived in Death Valley on Monday, 17 February. We got lucky again and got an end site looking east to the mountains. My favorite spot! We are here for the Black Sky Festival in the park this weekend plus this is one of our favorite places! We didn’t do much but settle in and look at the glorious views on Monday. Tuesday we also just relaxed. A friend, Ron, came on Tuesday, so we chatted a bit and sat around the propane fire pit (no charcoal producing fires in the campground). Another motorhome came in near us towing an F-150, same model we have. The man came and asked Kevin to help him get it out of tow mode; it was brand new and he was having problems. We invited them over to the same fire, and they had all kinds of questions about the park. They were only going to stay two days, but I notice they are going to the Racetrack today. Glad I convinced them to stay longer.

Wednesday we went to the Racetrack ourselves. Ron has a 1 ton 4X4 pickup to tow his fifth wheel and we had our F-150 4X4 so we were all ready to do it! We stopped at Uebehebe Crater first. Pretty impressive as usual. We didn’t hike down it or anything, but I enjoyed the view. It had been a few years since we have been there. First the road was washed out, and the next time we just didn’t get around to it.

(As usual, click on the link to get the video)

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Then we started down the high clearance 4X4 road to the Racetrack and the moving stones. Ron said this was almost the #1 item on his DV bucket list, and we hadn’t been for years. The road was definitely rough. Due to how good the image stabilization is on the GoPro, it is hard to tell. Look toward the end of this video to get an idea though.

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Here are Ron and Kevin walking to the Grandstand, a black chunk of rock in the middle of the Racetrack. Without some humans for scale, the size of the rocks and mountains is impossible to show. And sorry for the truck antenna in the way.

I took more pictures come back than I did going down because the light was better. Here is one showing the layers of rock in the area.

To get to the Racetrack, you have to go by Tea Kettle junction. Why is it there? Lots of stories, and no one knows the truth. Occasionally the NPS has to pull off some when they get too heavy.

Why would it be named “Tea Kettle Junction?”

Another interesting spot is an entire forest of Mohave yuccas. They look a lot like Joshua Trees from a distance, but they are obviously different close up. Like Joshua Trees, they are found at a very specific elevation.

The campground we are in got its name from the fabulous sunsets. They look different each direction you look.

On Thursday we had to go to Pahrump to pick up Kevin’s meds, and we again ate at the fabulous Chai Thai restaurant. We also had dinner at the Furnace Creek Inn, quite upscale. You have to make reservations for dinner, and we never got around to it before. The meal was scrumptious as were the cocktails before hand. Expensive though. $40 for cocktails and another $100 for dinner before tip. Occasionally a splurge is worth it. The only problem was my right side was so beat up from the drive to Racetrack that I was in real pain. I ended up taking 10mg of Flexeril, and I slept like a log. Still a bit sore this morning, but not in agony like yesterday.

The Dark Sky Festival begins today, and we have tickets for the main speakers tonight and tomorrow. More on that later.

Taking a break from Quartzsite

We are now staying at the Elks Lodge in Needles, CA. Definitely a sad town, but the lodge is nice. We are on our way to Death Valley, arriving there tomorrow. We have been busy here doing laundry (lots and lots of laundry!) and cleaning up the incredibly dusty motorhome (lots and lots of dust!). In between I took a Zoom class about machine binding offered through the Arizona Quilt Guild. Well worth the time and money. I love Zoom classes!

To catch up on what we have been doing since the last post, it has mostly been quilting, driving back and forth to Parker for Amazon packages and good food, and a bit of relaxing in the warm weather. The temps have been in the 70s for a couple of weeks now, and the nightly lows are mostly in the upper 40s, even into the 50s. We haven’t used much propane recently! Kevin got his new drone out again since the wind was down, and I love the pictures.

The first one is from above our campsite looking toward La Posa South LTVA. You might have to zoom in a bit to see the much more crowded area. I don’t go boondocking to be 30’ from my neighbor! We much prefer the less crowded areas. The second picture is our campsite. Motorhome, outdoor kitchen, truck, RZR, and the Clam shelter make a comfortable resting spot for a few weeks. The blue covered tripod has Kevin’s telescope on it, trying to keep it out of as much dust as possible. The third photo shows a picture using the telescope on a clear night with a full moon. He’s been figuring out how to use the tracker with the telescope.

As usual, the cats are a big distraction. They both like lying on my legs with the “magic blanket,” but they are not always cooperative about it. A look at Minnie’s face here says that Luna is taking up far too much space!

I did finally get the practice pieces from the feathers quilting class bound as a cat bed. Minnie says it is marginally acceptable, but she still prefers the blanket.

I forgot to mention something we actually did buy at the Big Tent – a microwave toastie/panini maker. Pretty handy little gadget. The ham and cheese sandwich shown was made in 2 minutes in our low powered microwave. We now use 3 minutes. The cute thing has a silicon outside and metal grates inside. The metal grates absorb microwaves and heat up, but the silicon keeps the contraption from sparking. I am quite pleased! We have had “grilled” sandwiches a number of times now, and this gadget it a keeper.

We left Quartzsite on Wednesday ahead of some rain and wind that was coming in. We spent Thursday night at the Elks Lodge in Parker, just to see how it was. Kevin would like to transfer to a Lodge he can be more active in, but the Parker lodge is quite small. We arrived in Needles on Friday night, and besides cleaning, laundry, and shopping, we also visited the Goff Historical Center. It was called “Goff Schoolhouse” the first time we visited a few years back, but it was definitely misnamed then. Yes, the schoolhouse is an historic building that is part of the museum grounds, but there is so much more! Lots and lots of mining history and general history about the Mohave Desert and the Mohave Road. Fascinating stuff.

The schoolhouse was the center of the Goff community when it was busy and active with mining, ranching, railroads, and WWII training. Little is left of that except the schoolhouse these days.

A few of the more unusual exhibits are working stamp mills that have been restored. Very impressive! The vast majority of stamp mills in museums are incomplete and definitely not in working order. It was a true labor of love to restore the mining equipment at Goff. The first picture of the two stamp mill shows how they worked taking in 2” pieces of stone and breaking them up into dust. The dust was then washed and moved to chemical vats for separating the gold or other precious metals. Goffs no longer uses aresenic and cyanide, but they do have water tables for separating. I would love to come here some day when they are operating the mills. The ten stamp mill is the big buy with huge wheels for moving the stamps.

I have also been quilting a lot. I got all the squares for my Christmas quilt made up into twosies before, but I made them all into 4 blocks and then combined a number of those into 16 blocks. I still have quite a few more to do, but I am making some good progress.

I will end with a glorious Arizona sunset. They just can’t be beat.

Quilting and riding in Quartzsite

People I meet sometimes think I am an extrovert because I engage in conversation well. However I am actually just an outgoing introvert. I am mentally exhausted by the last 3 weeks of people. I really like the group who showed up for the rally, and keeping things a bit organized is just what I do, but my oh my, I needed some “me” time. I have done it, finally.

But first another trip on the RZR. We went on Colorado River Indian Tribe (CRIT) land on Saturday with 27 other rigs. It was supposed to be a short ride, but with that many rigs it took a lot longer than anticipated. It didn’t help that 10 rigs got lost on a turn. Of course they were found again, but it took about 45 minutes to get them all rounded up and back with the group. Interesting ride though!

The first video gives a good feel for the ups and downs. The GoPro smooths things out so much that the ride is deceptive; it was rough!

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The second video is just a nice view of the area.

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I also took some photos of the cabins we visited. I didn’t spend much time on good pictures because I have a bunch from previous visits. The area is just full of mines – big ones, medium ones, and small little glory holes. Lots of gold and silver taken out of this area.

This is where we had lunch. I hadn’t ever been here before. Fascinating rock formations.

I also did a lot of sewing. I am participating in a Block of the Month Club with a quilt store, Inspired to Sew in Cedar Rapids, IA. Luckily the classes are all virtual so I can follow along easily. I finished my first block quite late on 2 February, but I kind of made up for it by finishing February’s block today. Here they are. Note they are big blocks – 18” finished.

The BOM is from Moda, and it is hundreds of 5” charm squares, all in solids. Each month is in a different color palette. The kit didn’t include the 6 yards of background fabric, so everyone chose their own. I chose to go with an Amish-inspired look, and I think the colors just glow. I have also finished a few dozen blocks of Turkey Giblets that will be eventually a donation quilt (I think). Still a long way to go on that one. Tomorrow I start on my Christmas quilt again. Lots to do there!

Where does the time go in Quartzsite?

I have been busy with the RVForum rally, so that’s my excuse! It isn’t a very good one though LOL! We had folks starting to arrive the Wednesday before the rally officially began on Saturday, 18 January, and we enjoyed a daily Happy Hour around the fire. Folks brought a LOT of wood, so we have had fires every night but two when it was too windy. Wind is a continued issue in Q, but it just goes with the territory.

We added a LOT more wood after this picture was taken

We did a really challenging ride with the Arizona SunRiders again – Preacher’s Pass and Hogsback. Glad we were with experienced riders! We would never have dreamed of tacking it ourselves. But this is exactly the reason we like going on group rides; experienced riders in a group can really advance your skills. The ride leader said there wasn’t any ride in the area that was more challenging, and our little RZR did just fine! Some pictures and videos are needed of course. Click on the links to see the videos.

The second video shows the ride to one of the passes. It is steeper than it looks!

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One of the activities of our rally was a high clearance vehicle ride across the Yuma Proving Grounds to the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge. Lovely ride through pristine desert, though the lack of rain in the last 6 months made it very dry. The only casualty was our own flat tire! Luckily we got it changed in 15 minutes, and we were all on our way again. There weren’t as many birds as usual due to the dry weather. We were told there were more at Imperial Wildlife Refuge south of Cibola. I did get a few shots of the Sandhill Cranes.

A lot fewer sandhill cranes than in previous years

They liked the edge of the corn rows this time

I also took a video at Goose Pond. Normally there would be thousands of birds, but this time there were only a few hundred.

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Our final formal activity of the rally was a trip to the Desert Bar, aka Nellie E Mine. Absolutely off-grid completely, only opens weekends in the winter. There are pictures of previous trips on other posts, so I will just show the pictures from the women’s toilet, a famous vista (yes, really!).

View from the women’s toilet to the right

View from the women’s toilet to the left.

I admit I am tired and need some quiet time, but I should get that today. Tomorrow evening we will go to dinner at Silly Al’s Pizza, a tradition. Until then I will clean up the mess that is inside the motorhome and get some sewing done.

Cibola National Wildlife Refuge – Goose Pond

Putting this out quickly so I can share some videos. More to come.

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Busy in Quartzsite

We have now been here for a bit over a week. After the fun SxS ride I posted about last time, we have just been hanging around trying to avoid the wind. It has been bad with gusts of 35-40 which is a lot in this open, dusty country. As you can see from this picture Kevin captured of me, I have done quite a bit of relaxing. Seems like the cats had the same idea. Those recliners are really comfy!

We ended up making a day of it in Lake Havasu City on Thursday. We picked up Amazon packages we had delivered to Parker, AZ on the way, bought and ate one of the ham and cheese croissants from Stark Bakery in Parker, did laundry at the fabulous Modern Laundry in LHC (cleanest and nicest we have ever been to), did grocery shopping, got my hair cut, and picked up 14 yards of fabric at Fabrics Unlimited.

Fabrics Unlimited is a really nice shop. They sell HandiQuilter machines and supplies plus Accuquilt products in addition to a big selection of quilt fabrics. They also have some specialty products for bag making, but that isn’t something I have ever really been interested in. I bought 6 yards of a black background fabric for the Moda Block of the Month I am starting on, two coordinating 3 yard pieces for a new quilt using the Turkey Trot Accuquilt die I bought before Christmas, and 2 yards of duck canvas for making new bags for the folding chairs we use on the RZR. While I was there the owner told me about a Zoom class they were having the next day (Friday) with a national HQ educator about quilting feathers. I was excited! I have always wanted to learn how to quilt feathers, and I haven’t ever been very successful. They had a sitdown quilting machine I could use (the rest of the class used long arm machines), so I signed up. That meant another 3 1/2 hour round trip the next day, but it was worth it. I used up three big pieces of quilt sandwich (they supplied that and the thread) practicing various feather types. I think I finally caught on! Some of the options I like better than others, but I now feel I could use feathers on a real quilt.

I know there is a lot of fuzz and some chalk marks, but you can ignore those. I am going to bind these and use them as cat quilts for Minnie’s hiding spot behind the recliner.

We are also getting ready for the rally I am hosting in a week. I am an active participant in the RVForum.net forums, and we always used to hold a rally during the big RV show week (aka “The Big Tent”). Sadly the previous rally master died a couple of years ago, so I stepped up to host it. Kevin made cool signs as turn indicators. There are a lot of roads out in the desert! Give a man a 3D printer, and you can get all kinds of neat stuff you never thought you’d need!

The sign is maybe 6”x4”, made on his 3 color printer

I have been cutting and piecing some, not just buying fabric. On Saturday I cut about 680 2.5” squares from the Christmas fat quarter bundle my kids bought for me. The quilt will be made up of 8 star blocks and 40 sixteen patch blocks, using pretty much all the fabrics in the bundle. I will still have enough for a pieced border if I choose to add it. I always cut more pieces than I need when making a scrap quilt so I have some extras to adjust colors and in case I mess up a few. Today I have been making “twosies” – sewing two squares together. I have well over half of the squares sewn, and I will probably finish the twosies later today. Then I start making “foursies” – sewing the twosies together. I won’t start that until next week. But here is the current state of twosies and single block in the box I am using.

I love pretty much mindless sewing like this. I have been listing to an audio book in the background, and just sewing a huge chain of these. Maybe I will have some blocks in the next blog post. Or I might decide to cut out the blocks for the Turkey Trot quilt and take that to the Quilt Guild meeting on Tuesday. Decisions, decisions!