Quartzsite, Arizona

We have been ‘on-the-road’ for 12-days; left San Diego heading for a crazy town in Arizona called Quartzsite, 20 miles east of Blyth in the middle of nowhere, Arizona. An annual pilgrimage occurs in this once truck stop town. Between January and March the population grows to over 1-million people and for the rest of the year, less than 4,000. This migration of traveling merchants has to be one of the world’s largest outdoor swap meets. A modern-day market bustling with young dirty hippies living in ratty old tents is a common sight, so are old mid-western retirees driving and living in 40’ luxury motor homes. The diversity of people extreme, the shopping fantastic! Lining dusty street after dusty street are 12-foot square stalls selling anything and everything from pieces of meteorites to custom made cowboy hats, Indian blankets, baskets, silver to African artwork, glass beads and Chinese herbs. All at a fraction of the cost; no paperwork, no tax, just cash. Though we did meet a guy from Nigeria who accepted MasterCard and Visa via a hand-held satellite credit card machine.

The one thing that was really cool about Quartzsite and the whole experience (besides the shopping) were these hyped-up 2-person all terrain vehicles. They were everywhere. We want one!

RV’ers can park in the desert for free or stop along the main street and plug into over 70 RV parks. We spent two nights in the desert and one night at a paid RV park (we needed to charge our house battery and take a real shower with lots of hot water). Camping in the desert without electric or water hookups is called boon docking and we love it. Dragon Slayer was perched atop a hill overlooking a dried river bed and beneath a larger hill called Dome Rock. Miles from town and no fire wood on board propelled me to spend the afternoon collecting twigs and dried up cactus for a much anticipated after sunset fire. Phil tooled around in his wheelchair snapping pictures of a landscape void of vegetation not taller than 3 feet and covered in white glimmering rocks, known as quartz. Hence the name, Quartzsite.

Phil’s creative side continues to flourish without the stresses of work and balance sheets. His wildlife photography is amazing and ‘Views From a Wheelchair’ is taking shape; he has over a dozen excellent photographs worthy for the book. Inspired by Quartzsite and all the beads he purchased, Phil has also taken to making beaded necklaces and earrings in the evening. I must confess his creations are beautiful.

I’m not sure what Rule we are up to now, though I do know we have broken another one. Let’s call it Rule #11.

Rule #11: Never leave the RV Park without checking with your spouse that all cables have been disconnected. As we settle into our gypsy lifestyle each of us has their own tasks to complete before departure. It goes something like this:

Phil’s Tasks: Connecting/disconnecting exterior cables. General handyman guy stuff and driving.
Vikki’s Tasks: Everything else.

The damage to our electrical connection was minimal though the damage to our egos will take a little longer to repair. Laughter continues to keep our spirits high and the neighbors guessing.

Not too much on the web about Quartzsite, though this site proved helpful. www.ci.quartzsite.az.us/about

Wheelchair Accessibility Rating: Pretty good, considering you're in the desert dodging rocks and crazy guys driving hyped-up golf carts!

Desert Flower

Desert Rat

High Flyer

Sunset Over Sedona

Jumping Squirrel

American Robin

January '09 Sedona

New Ability Equipment

Delivery Day for Dragon Slayer

Broken Rules

When last I wrote we were relaxing in San Juan, Puerto Rico awaiting our departure on an Eastern Caribbean cruise. Many adventures have unfolded in the last two months – most funny, some not-so-funny, though through them all, we are still loving and laughing each other blissfully content in each other’s arms.

Our journey started with 7-days of belly aching laughter surrounded by our good friends, Sylvia and Chris, Debbie and Stan, and Theresa and Dean. The highlight of the cruise – swimming with my husband in St. Thomas, thanks to our friends who hauled his little legs on and off the boat as we sailed away for a day adventure, one I will never forget and always treasure.

After a fantastic holiday, Phil and I found ourselves again in Puerto Rico for a 2-day recovery mission before flying to Miami and then onto San Diego. Unfortunately, we missed our scheduled flight and had to pay dearly for the privilege to fly on the next flight three hours later.

Arriving in San Diego 22 hours tired and loaded with 5 suitcases in tow only to be told that our fully paid and confirmed hotel room was taken by someone else and as the saying goes ‘there was no more room at the Inn’. It’s hard to be pleasant at midnight when all you want is a hot bath and soft bed. But pleasant I was and my politeness was rewarded with upgraded accommodations at a different hotel and at no extra charge to us.

T-Minus 10 days and counting before the next ‘big’ step – picking up our new 23ft camper van (all 120 sq. ft of her). But first we had to drive to Fresno, California to collect her. Deciding to turn the drive into a scenic one we headed north prior to Thanksgiving and drove along the beautiful and majestic coast of Hwy 1 from LA to San Francisco. We had a wonderful time exploring the natural wild life of the California coastline - seals, otters, falcons, several bars, good friend Ross Tibbits and a partridge in a pear tree.

As the miles melted away and our excitement increased, Phil and I would lay awake at night discussing how we would be good ‘captains’ and established several rules for safe skippering when we picked up our new rig.

Rule #1: Allow ourselves plenty of time to become accustomed to the van prior to driving.
Rule #2: Never drive in the dark.
Rule #3: Never drive in bad weather.
Rule#4: Never set-up camp in the dark or bad weather.
Rule #5: No pets of any kind.
Rule #6: Stay in warm and dry locations.

I’m happy to report that Phil and I broke every one of our rules within the first 72-hours, but thankfully survived! Rule #5 did create a mini-melt down for me, but I was able to recover and place the 12-week old Scottie Terrier with a good home. Something to do with ‘empty nest syndrome’. Don’t you have to have a nest to suffer from this illness?

First night in Dragon Slayer in Fresno, California (not a pretty location by any means, in fact ugly, cold, wet and damn awful!) the shake-down, melt-down weekend proved to be an education in electricity; how many amps does it take to trip the circuit breaker in near freezing temperatures at 3:30 in the morning? Answer: More than 15 amps. Note to self. Don’t run the electric tea kettle and heater at the same time and off the same circuit, and pay attention to the location of said circuit breaker box. Also, refer to Rule #6.

After successfully completing our shake-down and remembering the location of the circuit breaker box we pushed off and headed even further (in the dark with dense fog) north to Chico, California to pick up Phil’s new (bar height) electric wheelchair. This 6-hour drive was Phil’s first attempt at driving our beast. Chico was even colder and wetter than Fresno though a much prettier location from what we could gather through the dense fog. Refer to Rules #1, #2, #3, #4 and always, #6.

We have been in San Diego for the last two weeks at our current location in Pacific Beach, California at Campland on the Bay. I believe most of Canada’s Mallard duck population is vacationing with us; they are proving helpful with my empty nest syndrome. Every morning we are greeted with their pecking at our door or at the water hookup nozzle which is (conveniently located next to the electrical hookup). After a blissful sleep while enjoying our first cup of tea snuggled in our bed with the heater on (refer to Rule #6) our power went out again. On this occasion we naturally blamed ourselves and proceeded to research the lack of sparks. After a fruitless search we resorted to calling Ranger Dave, our friendly go-to guy. Dave and his assistant started testing circuits both in and out of the van and determined there was current; it just wasn’t in our van. At this point as Dave was waving goodbye he suddenly stopped to check the electrical connection of the electric cord; only to discover that it had indeed come loose. We all agreed that this was our ‘children’ the Mallards who got so excited with the water that they then started pecking at our electrical hookup. The offending Mallards now all have muzzles’.

Our days are spent detaching ourselves from our umbilical lines of electric and water and driving to our storage locker to sort out our most prized possessions; think of it as a huge walk-in closet from where we will exchange our winter apparel for the much anticipated 2009 summer apparel.

We have been also busy with Christmas shopping and lots of holiday cooking to share with 2 of our 3 sons, Chris and Jeff and soon to be daughter-in-law, Jenelle. A spring wedding is planned for Friday, 17 April. Son, James is in London trying to stay warm with his doctor girlfriend, Emily who is hard at work over the holidays. Such is the life of an intern.

Our plans to head south for the winter in Baja have been cancelled because of the lack of the correct fuel, Diesel 2 (which is the only fuel we can use). Refer to Rule #6.We are off on January 9 to Sedona, Arizona for a month and after that we’re not sure. Trying to stay warm and out of the snow apparently this winter will be a difficult task. I think Rule #7 should be: Never embark on your journey in the middle of December, guess we broke that rule too!

The greatest challenge for us has not been the near vertical growing pains of living out of our comfort zone; it has been the absence of our family and friends; it is they that define our sense of home and serenity. Stay tuned for the revised itinerary, we will publish within the month.

As Uncle Jack Robinson would say, love all around.