KOFA National Wildlife Refuge Boondocking

January 25, 2015

Well, we got bored with La Posa South LTVA in Quartzsite and decided to leave before our 14 day permit expired. Last year after the rally we were content to sit tight at the end of the road for the rest of our pass. Cheap camping and all, you know...It was nice to just sit in the desert and soak up the warmth and Greg explored the ridges to the south on his mountain bike. We had several more months of exploring the West still ahead of us last year, so staying longer was okay. This year we are heading back to Maryland very soon for “family business”, and wanted to boondock in a new spot before we start the long drive back.

Impressive saguaros near our La Posa South campsite.

Our "shady" Palo Verde

Large bird nest, maybe a thrasher or a small hawk

Our campsite along the narrow track.

Greg did a few more bike rides, but I mostly sat in the RV. The weather turned colder and very windy. When I would venture out, I got short of breath from the blowing dust. No fun...So Friday we stowed our gear, drove to the dump and water station, and drove away from Quartzsite down Route 95 to the south. Last year we boondocked a night at KOFA National Wildlife Refuge not far down the road. We took the road in to Palm Canyon again. Check our post from last winter when we had a great hike up the canyon to the only native palms in Arizona, and found a spot for the night along the road next to a lava flow.   Palm Canyon, Mittry Lake, and California at Last!

After checking out the area again and seeing how busy it was, and electing not to take the side road to a new area, that is recommended for four wheel drive, we ate a quick lunch in the rig. Then we drove back out to Route 95 and took the road east at Stone Cabin to the Kings Valley area. We drove along the dusty, but recently graded and wide road back 7 miles. Turning around we drove back a few miles and found a good level spot slightly off the roadway and settled in. A bit later two RV's pulling trailers with ATV's pulled in across the road from us. What? This is a huge refuge with lots of isolated places to boondock. Not many people are back here, and they decide to park across the road...Well, they weren't very smart. They were on the downwind side up the road and the few vehicles that drove past dusted them thoroughly from the strong winds roiling across the desert.


We stayed through the night and yesterday morning Greg rode a side road to the Horse Tanks. This area is filled with old mines, and livestock and wildlife watering holes. Just like in Quartzsite, he fought the wind the whole way. When he returned he suggested we change sites. The big Class A rig had left the great spot on the crest of the hill, and we quickly packed up and drove a mile back towards 95, and snagged a prime spot. Now we have a ridge behind us, and a commanding view of the valley in both directions. This ridge has a lot of cholla cacti that drop their prickly branch tips on the ground to start new plants. We've been picking cactus spines out of our soles!

Horse Tank, one of 4 natural rainwater traps about 4 miles up a jeep trail from our camp. This is a former (Pleistocene age?) waterfall plunge pool about 60 feet across.

Deer and mountain sheep come to the tanks for water and grass.

Indian grinding holes in the flat ryolite outcrop below Horse Tank.

Inside the grinding hole

Campsite with a great view into the valleys on either side of the pass.

Our knee-high forest of Jumping Cholla.

Small barrel cactus with red spines

We had no neighbors for more than a mile!

Our "backyard" - See Greg in the orange shirt climbing our mountain!

Cholla Fruit

Lava tube cave stuffed full of cholla spines to protect the resident packrats.

It has been warm enough at night to leave the blinds up and not put the insulation in the windows, so we can see the stars all night. The desert is very quiet here, and the only light besides the early setting crescent moon is a soft glow on the horizon from Yuma in one direction and Phoenix in the other. The sun set last night behind a jagged ridge, and even though it was cloudless, the sky had a orange glow from the dust blowing all day. The opposite hills faded from pink, to mauve, to deep purple as the light disappeared.
 

Looking east across the KOFA National Wildlife Refuge. The King of Arizona Mine is in the distant range.

Another view of our "neighborhood" in the late afternoon sun. White spot is our RV.

Sunset shadows racing across the valley floor.

Alpenglow on the mountains behind our camp.

Sunset over the Castle Dome Mountains

  Greg is out exploring new dirt tracks on his bike and we will stay tonight and head out tomorrow. We plan to drive to Yuma and then east on I-8 and cross all of Arizona tomorrow. The next day will be a stop in Deming, New Mexico to do a mountain of laundry, get some goods back into the fridge, and try once again to find green chili cheeseburgers at The Patio!

Heading down the jeep trail on a 25-mile loop.

 

Heading south into the Castle Dome Mountains

The Proverbial Fork in the Road - Only one way home.

What's the Future of Quartzsite???

January 21, 2015

It was interesting to be back in Quartzsite and contrast this year's visit with last year's. Last year we came to experience our first RV rally. We don't consider ourselves “rally people”, so we have avoided them. RV rallies happen all over the country, all year. They are organized by national camping clubs; such as Good Sam's, Escapees, FMCA, and by owners of brands and types of RV's such as the View/Navion rally we attended. They are also organized by people with similar interests such as the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous of small van dwellers here at Quartzsite. Ours was organized by other owners, and the Quartzsite rally tends to be more informal than others. Everyone is boondocking, and it is a fun experience to swap stories, potluck, tour each others rigs and learn how to modify them to make them easier/more fun/safer/smarter. We had folks from both coasts, Alaska, Canada, and the Heartland, too, plus a few other friends with other types of rigs thrown in to the mix.

Camped with similar RVs to learn, share experiences, and make new friends.

Campfire circle for drinking wine and asking advice from the gurus.

The other reason we came to Quartzsite last year was for the “experience”. Anyone who spends time on the road or the internet comes across reports of Quartzsite in January. I read about Quartzsite before we left home while researching this lifestyle. We like having new experiences and seeing things for ourselves, so when we realized last year's rally would coincide with the event, we decided to try it. If the crowds got to be too much, we would just leave. We had already boondocked three times in the area, but not in January, so we had a rough idea where to go.

One of the Vendor/Flea-market areas

Shade, Beer, and Music - an unbeatable combination!

Apparently, there are customers for anything!

Carrying loot back to camp.

Without going into a long history of Quartzsite, this small town started attracting winter visitors with a gem and mineral show many years ago, and what has become an event with hundreds of tents and vendors now attracts hundreds of thousands of RV's and their occupants. No one knows how many RV's are here but it is a massive event. Sometime in the last couple decades the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) decided to begin to control the huge number of RV's wintering over on their land and established Long Term Visitor Areas (LTVA's). The damage had already been done to the desert, so why not provide some services for a small fee? $180 gets you seven months in the winter with access to a dump, well water, and garbage pick-up. For $40 you get 14 days, and you can renew that as long as you want. Or you can camp for free in other areas outside of town, but then you have to pay a vendor in town in order to dump and get water. The LTVA's are a better deal.

Campsites are primitive, whether crowded or alone

Seniors have been flocking in for years, and the vendors have been catering to them. I've jokingly called this the Burning Man/Woodstock for the senior set. The problem is that the senior set is getting too old and disabled to RV or is simply dying off, and business is dropping at Quartzsite. We've spoken to vendors last year and this that have noted that business is slowing down, and they are hopeful that as the baby boomers retire, they will start attending. This year fuel prices are lower and RV sales on the rise but, we noticed fewer campers in the LTVA and a lot of empty vendor spaces. Even the Big Tent, the prime space for vendors had a dozen or more empty spots. The vendors we talked to said that business was slower this year. We noticed more vendors renting out electric wheelchairs and specializing in other “senior products”. We are some of the youngest people attending!

Lonely Bull Ride - Are the customers afraid of  breaking a hip?

Soft-riding ATVs are very popular on the trail and on town streets.

 So what is the future for this iconic event? Will the retiring boomers start to fill in the empty spaces and spend their retirement dollars here? Or will the great Quartzsite event slowly die off as it's attendees die off or settle down to live out the rest of their days? I suspect the latter. We boomers are notorious for creating our own way, and rejecting our parents ways. I think even in retirement we will be inclined to do our own thing.

Quartzsite grew up in the era before the internet and social media, maybe even before cell phones. Newsletters, books, and word-of-mouth spread the news about places to gather. Social media has changed the way we relate to one another and created a way to spontaneously connect both in cyberspace and in person. The younger generation of RVer's is leading the way in creating spontaneous community that organically arises in a location that may not be a gathering place the next time. Chris and Cheri of Technomadia found themselves on the Gulf Coast of Florida last winter in what they called a Convergence, other RVers spontaneously gathered in the same campground and created a loose community that ended when each RVer decided it was time to move on. Anza-Borrego State Park in California became a gathering spot for the Christmas and New Year's holidays for younger fulltime RVers. I expect there are other connections being made by various sized groups that I haven't come across on the blogs I read.

The new social network site RVillage.com has as it's goal a way for RVers to connect with one another through the internet and facilitate meet-ups on the road. As more baby boomers take advantage of this resource, I expect that we will follow our younger cohort into spontaneous meet-ups and away from an established event like Quartzsite. I expect that a drive to a smaller experience and more intimacy will also be a factor.


Last year the quirkiness and novelty of the event were fun. This year we enjoyed the rally more than the event. Next year? Who knows? I think that we would enjoy reconnecting with the people we met this year, but, I don't think there is much appeal left in just attending the big event. Cheap camping? Good friends? That we could do!

Back to Boondocking Basics in Big Q

January 21, 2015

Yesterday was moving day as we decided to leave our Rally encampment and seek quieter quarters. The Rally site was a short walk to the bustling Big Tent and Tyson Wells vending area, which was convenient for our shopping and eating walks.

Selling Doghats is exhausting!

The whole sales staff is asleep!

Seriously! A mechanical bull ride for the 70-year old RVers?

Adrenaline Hounds

Pot Luck at the View/Navion Rally

There are Vendors for Everything (that you don't need)!

Greg memorized the contents of all 12 hardware tents

Another Navigator waiting for his pilot.

Turquoise Beads

Full after 1100 AM when the beer and live music start

ATVs are very popular

The Big Water Filling Station

We enjoyed seeing old friends and meeting new ones, but the introversion calling is strong in both of us and knowing we have a few busy months coming up, we wanted some desert “alone time”.

Greg checking out used Class A "jumbo" RVs

The Rally with 30-something Views, Navions, and other Sprinter-based rigs

Hoping to serendipitously meet up again on the road with new friends, we said our goodbyes and drove to the La Posa South LTVA area, hoping to snag the great campsite we found last year at the end of the road. After a bit of a wait to dump and take on water at the only dump station for four huge camping areas, we drove south until we reached the BLM boundary. Our old campsite next to the Saguaro cactus was empty, but, someone else was set up right next to it, and boondocking etiquette called for more space between us and the next camper, so we turned around and found a branching off dirt track.


Loosely following a wash, and after passing a few other campsites, we found a good spot next to a scrubby mesquite tree. There is no one in sight to the west of us, so we have a clear sight line to the mountains, and an unobstructed view of the sunsets. Last night we were surprised to find it was warm enough to keep all the shades up and enjoy the desert and the stars. The previous nights at the Rally, we were shut up tight with Reflectix and insulated curtains, trying to conserve our heat. Apparently we are now at a slightly higher elevation and not in a cold sink. But, today the weather is turning. The sun is out, the clouds have cleared and the wind is blowing at 25 mph. Tonight and the next few nights will dip back to near freezing, so I guess we will need to close up better again.

Relative Solitude in La Posa South

Greg has been ready all week to get back to this part of La Posa so that he can bike around the ridge south of us like he did last year. So, off he went this morning for a few hour bike ride, just as the wind began howling! Wish I had that sort of dedication to fitness. I am content to stay inside out of the crazy, dry wind. The desert dust still manages to filter into the rig, coat everything and make me sneeze! We grilled out last night and stood outside and watched the sunset. Not tonight, unless we want sand coated food. Greg left the water jugs and grill out when he went to bed. I had to awaken him later when the coyote sounds got too close. Since our incident in northern Arizona last Fall with the coyotes chewing holes in our water jugs in the middle of the night, we are more aware of what they can do. Greg got up and moved the jugs and the grill inside.

Biking the Jeep trail into the New Water Mountains

Huge pile of Cholla spines collected by a Packrat family to keep away unwelcome guests

Big and old rainwater collection cistern 10 miles up in the mountains. Left from Mining?

End view of the Cistern and Corrugated Steel collector.

Lots of water in the cistern.

We are back to basics for the next week until our 14 day pass runs out Tuesday morning. Since we left Maryland mid-November we have been mostly on water and electric hookups in Florida, and Arizona. Florida doesn't have boondocking options, and we were hooked-up at Douglas, and Bisbee. Organ Pipe had no hook-ups, but water spigots close by, and solar-heated showers, so we got lazy and wasteful, or as wasteful as you can be in a small rig like ours! Quartzsite is boondocking, so we had to quickly get back in the habit of carrying extra water and conserving our water, waste tanks, and electrical usage. There is no water close by, so we have to carefully ration our jugs. Now that we are settled in our new, more remote spot, we would like to stretch our time to the full week without heading to the dump and water, but we are a jug short. (A jug short of a full tank? I guess some people think we are!) We have four this year instead of five, so we'll see.


Food-wise we are fine. I bought at least two weeks worth just before we arrived, and we only needed more half-and-half for Greg's coffee which we picked up in town yesterday when we moved campsites. By the end of this week we'll be down to carrots and cabbage for cole slaw, as all the more perishable vegetables will be eaten first. My tiny fridge and freezer groan when I first fill them up, but, they are just big enough to get by for two weeks.


We enjoy the challenges that come with the opportunity to live quietly and peacefully away from the crowds. The trade-offs are worth being careful with our resources in order to soak in the beauty and solitude of the desert. And you can't beat the sunsets...