Feb 13 - 17 Desert boondocking at Quartzsite

Feb 13
The weather this year in Arizona is colder than other years. They are talking about it on the news fairly often and we are seeing it first hand. Today and the forecast for the next few days is cool and windy. Out here in the desert the wind is the difference. It can be sunny and warm out of the wind but step out of cover and it's not very nice anymore. Ah whatever. It's not -40 with a wind so we'll live.
I wanted to find a couple things online. I found the exact burner tube for our fridge on Amazon so I will ask Dianne to order it for me. It says 2 day shipping but we'll see. The other thing is information on my leg bruising. Leslie is looking online too, to help out, as she has better medical knowledge after 22 years as an X-Ray tech. It's coming up on 2 weeks since I strained my calf and I'm still limping and that concerns me. Like I said last post, we talked to Rachelle, a registered nurse, and she thinks we are on the right path as well. Put those 2 opinions together with Dr. Google and the answer is always the same. It's a grade 2 strain/tear and will take 4-6 weeks to heal. It's getting better but I want it to heal faster. Enough about my leg.
We got together with Steve and Dianne to head into town in our truck. A few errands to do and I want to drive through Rainbow Acres again to get some better pics for the blog. We did a couple stops in town and did another tour of Rainbow Acres. I really like that area but, no, I'm not thinking of buying a lot. Would like to rent one sometime but I don't want property in the USA just yet. The rest of the day was just doing normal everyday stuff. Some easy chores, a nap, happy hour, supper and watch TV. I love being retired and am not finding it boring at all so far.
Feb 14
 Happy Valentines Day to my favourite girl..... yes, I mean Leslie ;) !!

Love you Leslie :)

We had a quiet morning and I made us a nice breakfast. I was going for heart shaped pancakes but that didn't happen. Cereal and toast is close right? Both Leslie & Dianne want to do some grocery shopping so I'm driving them to Parker to shop at Walmart and Safeway today. Steve is staying home to work on blog pics for them. It was a nice drive to Parker on a cloudy, windy day and we got all the shopping done as planned. We all want some lunch and we decided on a Mexican place but which one. Spicy food is not Dianne's go to meal but she's willing to play along with us. Thanks Dianne! We settled on Maya's Mexican Restaurant, it looked good online and looked good in person.

Good Mexican food in Parker.

The interior was nice too, very Mexican themed and it had all the faves on the menu. I'm buying lunch for the girls for Valentines so their first order was a Margarita! lol. Dianne ordered Carne Asada which she found was quite spicy while Leslie and I ordered shrimp dishes. Leslie's was spicy garlic and mine was freakishly hot shrimp in sauce that was "El Diablo" something. Holy mother of pearl that was spicy hot!! I don't think Dianne would run back there because she isn't a fan of spicy but I think Leslie & I would go back. I know better than ordering anything El Diablo though. Leslie's daughter Sam would love it as she loves spicy hot food.

We drove back to La Posa South and unloaded groceries and then over to Steve and Dianne's for a beverage to see how Steve's day went. We didn't even bring him a burger, sorry buddy. The weather is bad again so we went home to have supper and watch TV. Depressing weather :( We got lots of rain with a flood watch and higher elevations got a foot of snow! This is Arizona right??

This rain came in and it stayed most all night.

Feb 15
Leslie has a morning of cooking planned. We are having pasta and spaghetti squash for supper tonight so Les wants to get her fantastic sauce together early so all the flavours come together. It's honestly one of my favourite suppers. We are looking forward to it. Leslie is also making another batch of dog food right afterwards so she will be busy for a few hours. I'm going outside with Margaret and working on some stuff out there. Mostly just staying out of Leslie's way while she cooks. I came back in and helped package the dog food and then we all went for a short walk. Steve invited me to go on a quad ride this afternoon for a little bit just to see the area. Awesome! That will be great. Another part of their full service Quartzsite guided tour. They even carry a spare helmet for me. How great is that?? We took off about 1pm for our ride. Leslie is getting on to the mountain of dishes and Dianne is working on their blog.

Steve getting the quads ready to go.

Our first stop, a short mine tunnel.

The top of a hill overlooking Tyson Wash.

Native mortar holes used for grinding corn etc.

Me and the mortars, gives a better size perspective.

I'm having a blast! I haven't ridden a quad for a while, well over a year for sure, so it's like a brand new toy. Steve lead us over to the back side of Rainbow Acres and I took a pic of the back side of the 2 story house from our driving tour a few days ago.

Front side from before....

Back view from the desert.

Next stop is the Erdman Mine. We have driven to that before as well but it's way more fun to get there on the trails.

You can tour the site and see the old equipment.

Back on the quads, Steve is leading the way back to Quartzsite past some old cabins from the mining days and through some nice hills just outside of town. We stopped for some photo ops at the cabins and then he suggested Beer Bellies for a beverage. These tours are great! 

Still in not terrible shape. They fence it off because of stuff falling.

Happy guys!

Looking left.

Looking right, so green in the desert this year. 

There is lots of grass which almost never happens.

Looking toward town. Still lots of rigs in the desert.

Another great stone cabin complete with fireplace. 1954 scratched in the cement.

We rode right up to the entrance of Beer Bellies and Steve bought me a beer, the bill for these tours is going to be huge ;)

A quick beverage and back home to clean up for happy hour and then Leslie's power pasta! We invited Harry to join us also for dinner. He's by himself now that Vicki is in Pennsylvania with her mom.

Haha that's how we fit 5 at our table. Nice pic Leslie.

Of course Leslie's pasta was great and everyone had seconds. With full bellies we moved to more comfy chairs and chatted for a while. Margaret had to bug Steve and Dianne until they brought out the laser light to play. She expects them to have treats and play the game every time now! Geez.

We visited for a while and then everyone went home for the night. Another pretty great day here in the desert.

Feb 16

Another chore day today. Leslie and Dianne are taking the truck into town to do laundry, ugh. Steve is working on blog pics and I am doing our dishes and vacuuming. The glamorous part of RV life.

Leslie gets all the fun stuff !!

At least the sun is out and it's a fairly nice day. Take the good with the bad. I got a text from Derek with a picture of our mail and he asked if we wanted anything opened. There was a couple that we wanted open and one of them was from Alberta Justice? Leslie has been selected for jury duty and it says to respond within 5 days!! We don't get that much mail and Derek doesn't check every day so the letter was dated 3 weeks ago. Hmm hope they have some leeway with the time limit. It's Saturday today and it's a holiday Monday in Alberta for Family Day so we can't call until Tuesday. We'll see how that goes. ( Turned out okay, Derek could sign it for Leslie and decline because we are out of country, phew.) 

Feb 17

It's another quad ride day and Steve asked if I want to go, why yes I would love to! Dianne says she doesn't want to go today and I really appreciate that she let's me use her ATV. I'm being as careful as possible so I don't do any damage to her quad. 

Checking the oil and getting ready.

Thanks Dianne! I'll take good care of your ride.

It's a bigger group today with Steve, me, Roger & Cindi, Jim & Cec, Randy & Jen all going. Randy and his wife are on a Can-Am two-up with a 1000 cc motor, what a monster quad! They are very experienced riders from Vancouver Island where Steve is also a club member so they handle that rig really well.

We followed a similar path as the other ride from La Posa to the mine tunnel and past Rainbow Acres to Erdman Mine where we stopped for a look around. Great day for a ride, the sun is warm and the wind is just right to blow most of the dust out of the way as you ride behind another ATV.

Checking out the Erdman Mine.

There is a line of old toilets, I'm thinking ;)

From the Mine we are going to Copper Bottom Mine and a place called The Footprint. Steve explained this place earlier and it is an actual ancient barefoot print in the stone. Can't wait to see it. How cool is that? Jim and Cec took the lead and after a great ride through some canyons on a trail that had a couple technical parts we arrived at The Footprint. 

Look closely in the center, you can see a bare foot.

How awesome is that?

Bosco wants a closer sniff while everybody looks.

When we got back up to the machines Randy noticed one of his tires was flat. Rats! With this bunch of seasoned riders a flat is no big deal. Out came the plugs and the glue and a spare air compressor. Randy's Can Am has a built in air compressor too. That's a cool touch. The tire had a small cut on the side which can be a tough patch but it was small and Jim gave it extra glue. It was a good fix.

Plug installed top center of wheel, blowing it back up.

With the tire fixed up and holding air we are off to Deer Run next. The ride into Deer Run had some larger hills and some more technical riding over the rocks on the trail. Dianne's quad made it over the suff easily. I was surprised to see this place. There is quite the collection of "stuff" here lol.

Games, chairs and a couple tables and all sorts of stuff.

People hang items in the tree too like ornaments.

We relaxed at Deer Run for a while and then continued our ride back towards town. We passed the stone cabin that Steve showed me a couple days ago and stopped briefly for a last break before town.

Last stop before town.

Steve was back in the lead and we headed into Quartzsite to Beer Bellies for a quick beer. I didn't get a picture but it was a nice warm day and it was a great day to stop there. We headed back to La Posa South and cleaned up a little before happy hour at home. What a great ride and awesome day out! Thanks Dianne for letting me ride your quad and thanks Steve for bringing me along with the crew from Cowichan Valley ATV Club.

While I was out having a great day Leslie was at home working!! She did get out for a walk with Dianne and Margaret for a bit to enjoy the sun even though it was crazy windy.  She even managed to sew up the hole in the couch cushion that we have had for about a year or so. Good work Leslie! 

We got together with everyone for happy hour until the sun got low and it cooled off lots from the crazy strong wind. It has been super windy here for a week or so and way colder than normal. We put together supper at our house with Steve and Dianne. The good times continue. 

Another great day with these awesome peeps.

The time is just flying here in the desert. We are having a great time and really enjoying boondocking thanks in no small part to Steve & Dianne helping us out a little. We need to really think about our set-up and make some decisions on whether we need to change the truck or the trailer so that we can bring a quad or side by side. We need to take our time and do the right thing for us. Not 100% sure what that will be just yet. We really like our trailer and the truck and any decision won't be cheap due to depreciation on both units. We'll just go slow and hopefully do it right. First world problems right?  Cheers everybody.

Feb 6 - 12 Fun with Steve & Dianne and Margarets new food.

Feb 6
It's still cool outside and windy which is okay by me because I can walk a bit, but not very far. My leg hurts like crazy. This is by far the worst I have strained my calf. We spent quite a bit of time on google checking the symptoms and with the absence of visible bruising on my calf it's still a strain vs a tear but feels like it's a tear. We'll see. 
Margaret is still kind of lethargic but she ate a little bit of the food we got from Earl & Allison. The food is basically 2 to 1 lean burger to rice with peas and carrots mashed in. They use different veggies in each batch but the meat to rice ratio stays the same. Again we did some google searching and learned that there are vegetables you don't want to use in there. We're giving her a little at a time to start. At least she'll eat what we put out for her and that's a good sign.
We didn't do much all day. Leslie did take Margaret for a short walk and I just stayed on the couch with the ice bag and Voltaren.
Feb 7
We have some errands to do today and Steve & Dianne are jumping in our truck to go into town. Dianne needed to stop at a place called Quiet Times where they get their packages delivered here in Q. They said we should come inside to have a look. The store has lots of souvenirs and stationary stuff and then a whole separate Christmas wonderland ??

Low roof in here.

Merry Christmas all year.

Well that was fun! Next stop is at Roadrunners grocery for the girls. Steve & I waited in the truck. We also picked up some drinking water and propane and did a small drive around learning more about Quartzsite. Leslie and I would like to find a sun shade for our awning so we are going over to the vendor tents to see if they have one our size. We weren't successful but it did put us in the vicinity of Beer Bellies Adult Daycare, an outdoor patio pub that is a must do here in Q. Margaret is allowed in too and she is feeling better today so we stopped for a quick beer.

A group selfie attempt.

Margaret bellied up to the table.

We went back to the rigs and relaxed a bit before happy hour. The new dog food is helping lots. Margaret has way more energy and is back to normal on her walks, if you know what I mean. What a good find. Thanks Earl & Allison. We went to Steve & Dianne's for a beverage and then home for supper and relax. Still keeping my leg elevated lots.

Feb 8

Leslie drove to Roadrunners this morning specifically for ingredients for dog food. We'll make a big batch and keep this going. Margaret is doing fantastic already! She is running around in circles when Les takes her for walks and has that good bounce in her steps. Awesome. When Leslie got home she started cooking right away. In a pinch we can thaw out some dog food for our own supper lol.

Looks tasty doesn't it??

We didn't do much exciting in the afternoon but we have plans to go out to Silly Al's Pizza in town for dinner tonight. There are 12 of us going out to say "see ya later" to Vicki as she is flying to Pennsylvania to visit her mom for a month. Harry will be a bachelor for the month. He seems heartbroken haha ;)

The 4 of us hopped in our truck and I volunteered to be the driver tonight and not drink. Of course I picked the night when a local Phoenix brewery was there promoting their beer with free samples. Bad timing. Silly Al's is another Quartzsite landmark and it's packed on Friday nights for dinner and dancing. Tonight is no different and the service is slow but they make pretty good pizza so it's worth the wait. Unfortunately the waitress sort of forgot about us while we waited and everyone was out of beer. My gingerale and water were fine lol. She made it back to our table and topped everybody up right before our food came. I'm starving.

A Quartzsite must stop.

Steve, Dianne, Harry, Vicki, Pam, Red & Colin, my big head is blocking everyone else (Marilyn, Earl and Allison)

My pizza with light cheese because of my lactose thing.

I ate almost the whole pizza and Leslie got a box for our combined leftovers. It was fun being out for a bit but I was glad to go home and stretch my leg out. It was a  little sore from being tucked in to the table. We got to people watch some of the Friday night characters at Silly Al's, which was fun. You get all kinds here in the southern desert. We drove back home and said good night to Steve & Dianne. There is an RC (remote controlled) airplane show and fly-in tomorrow that Steve, Red, Earl & Allison are going to early. I will join them a little after. The weather is a question mark for tomorrow and if it's really windy they can't fly the RC planes. We'll see how it looks tomorrow.

Feb 9

Well the weather is not great for a RC fly-in but at least it's not super windy. It's about 12C/56F and cloudy but you can see the break on the horizon so hopefully it gets nicer. Steve, Red, Earl & Allison are leaving at 8:30 for the airfield to get good seats and help out if necessary as they are club members. I'm going a little later in our truck in case my leg doesn't agree with being out and about. Everyone has lawn chairs so other than walking around to see stuff it won't be strenuous. Leslie and I had a big pancake breakfast and after that I got ready to leave. Leslie is taking the garbage up to the dumpsters and taking the dog on a nice long walk. Nice! I put on my race compression sleeve on my left leg thinking the compression would help for the day. It felt not bad when I left. I parked at the airfield, a really nice facility here in Q, and then set up my lawn chair behind the rest of the gang. Planes were already buzzing around. Pretty cool! I've never been to a RC fly-in so it's all new to me. The gas engine planes really move and sound awesome as they go zipping past us. There are some really good pilots here today!

A couple of the planes and the strip.

This biplane was incredible, the stunts he could do were great.

Just looked cool.

Twin engines, not a real stunt plane.

Hot pilot too lol.

This jet I really liked, sounded so cool.

Look at the size of that thing!

Best pilot herein my opinion. He could hang this plane

in front of us like this for as long as he wanted.

I got to move up front with Steve, Earl & Allison.

Around 11'ish, Red, Earl & Allison bailed out as they were getting too cold. The breeze and lack of sunshine was not great but Steve and I were layered up warm enough so we stayed to watch some more. I see they are grilling burgers and hot dogs behind us too so I am definitely staying for a hot dog. Yumm. 

The sun did start to appear after lunch but the show was winding down and then it was open to just random club members to fly their planes. Steve didn't bring his planes so we decided to head home. It's a good day to have seat heaters and a steering wheel heater for my digits! 

Leslie and Dianne had a nice walk with Margaret and Leslie grabbed a picture of "the map" here at La Posa South. Someone went to a lot of work to build a rock outline of Canada and the USA with all the states and provinces. I think that must have taken days!

Hard to get a pic without a drone but you can see most of it.

The day turned out to be quite nice actually. We sat out of the wind and in the sun beside the rig for a bit enjoying the heat.

Nice when we're out of the wind.

Clouds were stretched out above us.

We all gathered at Steve & Dianne's rig for happy hour after 4:00 and at some point it was suggested to have a fire. It has been so windy and nasty that we haven't had a fire since we got here. Everyone went back to their rigs and brought out whatever they had to contribute to a hot dog dinner at the fire for supper. It's a 4 hot dog day for me! Yayyy! We had the fire at Harry & Vicki's place in the middle of all our rigs. One minor problem...Harry & Vicki aren't here. They are down in Yuma with friends for lunch and a visit before Vicki flies out for a month. Won't they be surprised to see a nice fire, using their wood, when they get back? lol. (Apparently the wood was a shared purchase before we arrived)

From left, Colin, Marilyn, Pam, Red, Earl, Allison, Steve's chair

Dianne with Margaret, Leslie and me. Thanks for the pic!

Harry & Vicki got back around 7 pm and were surprised to see the crew at their firepit. We all had a laugh and got a chance to say so long to Vicki. She is going inside to pack for her trip as they are leaving at 4am to drive to Phoenix. Harry joined us for a quick beer.

Leslie & I called it a night shortly after that. My leg is sore and we're chilled. I've had the compression sleeve on for 12 hours now. Probably not the best idea, I soon found out, as my leg is pretty swollen and you can see where the sleeve and my sock left a line on my leg. Advil before bed tonight.

Feb 10

It turns out that the combination of the sleeve and walking around etc yesterday was not a great idea for my calf. I was a little alarmed when I got up and looked at my leg and it was a greenish/yellow color!

That's a weird color?

I kept it elevated all morning and took it easy on it. Leslie checked my leg to see if it is warm or not. Apparently that's one way to see if I have a blood clot in my leg which would be really bad.

It felt not bad in the afternoon so we got on with our chores. We have to go dump the grey/black tanks and refill our fresh water. We did 9 days on our tanks which we felt was alright for our boondocking initiation. We know what we can do better this next go around. It took us almost 2 hours to get that done with about a 25 minute wait at the dump station.

Fun times.

Not like I want to go running or anything today. We pulled back into our spot and set up again and then just relaxed for the evening. Keeping my left leg elevated today. We called Rachelle, she's a registered nurse back home, to get her opinion. She feels the green/yellow color is old bruising from underneath that pushed to the surface. Continue with RICE therapy like we have been. Thanks Rachelle!

Feb 11

Our fridge is occasionally still making the popping sound when it lights on propane so I want to pull the burner tube again and give it a better cleaning. I'll ask Dianne to order a new one on their Amazon account with free shipping so that I have a spare. Leslie was working inside while I was outside and once we got the fridge back together we could test the repair. No popping yet! So far so good. Next up is a trip to town for propane, fuel and generator gas. While in Q we decided to try a Mexican place called Taco Mio for lunch.

Burrittos mmmm.

It was alright. Not super stellar but good food and super quick. We would go back. We drove back to the rig and relaxed until happy hour at Steve & Dianne's.

Definitely Margaret's favourite treat lady!

We met their friends,  Roger & Cindy, who arrived today and parked not far from us. It's great that we are expanding the amount of RV'ers we know here in the desert. There is a ton of knowledge here about boondocking, solar power and all the other stuff that makes it nicer to be off grid. Everyone is glad to share what they know and Leslie and I are trying to retain all that we can for future decisions.

Feb 12

We are trying to do some fun things that don't involve a ton of walking until my leg gets a little better so we're going to drive to Imperial Dam down by Yuma and check that out. There is a military display along the side of the highway on the way there also for us to check out. Our awesome tour guides can even accommodate the partially disabled lol. It took almost an hour to get to the military display and we got to see where some other BLM land is off the highway south of us. Steve pointed out the road/trail to Palm Canyon which we can hopefully hike to before month end. There are natural desert palms growing in a canyon back there but it is a bit of a hike in over some rough terrain. I won't make that yet. 

The "big guns" mark the turnoff Hwy 95.

Military base to our right.

Apache helicopter ?? Right Steve?

Hard to see but we're looking at bullet marks.

Of course a group selfie. Staring into the sun....

We took our time around the exhibit and when we had seen what we wanted we got back in the truck for the drive to Imperial Dam and the BLM land in that area. It's a much smaller dam than the one at Parker but the clear blue water always looks nice on a sunny day. We drove across the dam and into the marina/ RV area by the boat launch.

Driving across to the boat launch.

Power gen station below us.

Someone is very creative with metal !

Not really room for rigs our size down here but plenty of room in the BLM we passed to get here. After a short drive by tour we pulled into the BLM main entrance. 

Lots of big rigs in here. They have water fill and dump stations at the gate.

We toured some of the "lakefront" sites and then took a road that leads around the lake to the other side where we saw only a few rigs parked. We were basically on the hill across from the entrance sign above.

Steve, me & Dianne looking back to the entrance.

The view across but would be a rough ride towing the trailer.

Leslie having some fun obviously lol.

We drove back to the gate and turned right to tour more of the BLM taking the long way back to the main road we came in on, basically a big circle. We saw a rig that made me chuckle, a contradiction sort of....

Love the Harley bar & shield logo with the scoot in front lol.

When we got back to a T intersection that would return to Hwy 95 Steve said to turn right because him and Red had gone that way before. Okay. We hadn't gone far and he says "maybe this isn't the road we took"?  Well as it turns out it was a great choice of roads. It's  a rough surface but follows beside the river for a bit. Nice scenery.

Not certain but likely oxygenates the water downstream I think ??

Of course we are all getting hungry so Steve is using his phone GPS to guide us to Old Yuma for lunch. Oh, but wait.... Imperial Date Gardens, date shakes perhaps? Oh yeah baby. They were delicious! I even helped Leslie with hers quite a bit taking a chance on the whole lactose issue. It was all good though.

We got some dates, raisins and a date shake. Great stop.

The shakes were all we needed to take the edge off and we soon parked in Old Yuma under a shady tree so we can safely leave Margaret while we have lunch. We walked around the block to get to Lute's Casino. Steve & Dianne have been before and wanted us to see it, part of the tour package haha. Best description in a word is "eclectic". There is so much memorabilia in here that you could spend a half day checking it all out. There's stuff hanging everywhere! Plus they have good food and beer, ding ding.

Leslie as a criminal. Yuma Prison is another attraction close to here.

The waiting for a server selfie.

Just some of the stuff hanging in here.

Back toward the entrance.

We had a short wait to get in but it was worth the wait. Good choice for lunch guys. There was a farmers market going out front when we came in with lots of locally grown veggies that we want to take advantage of. To our surprise they were packing up to leave when we came back outside but we bought what we needed off the truck tailgate. Good to go. Now just the drive through Yuma and back on 95 to Quartzsite, about 75mi/120kms.....yawn. It was a less than chatty ride home. I noticed Leslie had her eyes closed and of course Margaret too.

Long day for everyone buddy :)

It was relax in front of the TV time when we got home. That was a great day. Thanks Steve & Dianne for another awesome tour of the area! Until next post, cheers everybody.