After five glorious days at the American Girl Mine boondock, we hated to leave, but had an appointment on Thursday, February 28th at Lazy Days for another try at fixing the leaking hot water heater. We packed up on Wednesday and made the drive back across Arizona on I-8 and once again checked into the Tuscson KOA resort. I concentrated on getting laundry done at their pristine laundry room and we prepared for an early morning at Lazy Days next door. The trailer went back in for repairs, the leak was declared gone and we drove back to our campsite for another night. Just before bed Greg checked and the leak was back! We decided to e-mail our service tech and hitch up the next morning and haul the trailer into the service lane without an appointment and tell them to figure it out!
The next day Lazy Days decided to have the Airstream trained tech work on it. He found a leak in an unusual place and we spent most of the day waiting for them to track down a part. It was declared fixed again and we could start using the hot water heater again. Yay, hot water! It was after 3 pm by then, but we didn't want another night at KOA, so we decided to head north out of Tucson and brave the Phoenix rush hour. Not a good move! But, by 7:30 we were settled in an I-10 rest stop west of Phoenix for the night.
We wanted to get someplace familiar and boondock for a few days to check the weather and make plans. After a short drive further west on I-10 we reached Dome Rock Road outside of Quartzsite. This makes the fourth(?) time we've boondocked there. There is always good connectivity there and a place to dump and take on water in town. The other boondockers were spread out enough for some privacy. Greg got some more fat tire biking in while checking out the old mine sites.
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| Our boondock site off of Dome Rock Road was nicely separated from other campers. |
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| Our Sonoran Desert surroundings were unusually green during this wet winter. |
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| Checking out the old mine prospects. |
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| Quartzsite offers many career specialties! |
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| Remnant walls from a miners cabin. |
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| Lots of flowers in bloom! |
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| Ocotillos in bloom |
After three nights there, on Tuesday, March 5th, we decided to drive over to the Mojave Desert Preserve in California. The weather looked a little cool, but it appeared that there would be a warming trend. We could start at the lower elevations of the huge park and work our way up into the mountains. It was sunny and warm when we drove into Quartzsite to dump and fill extra jugs of water for more boondocking. Then we drove up to Parker, the jumping off point for our route. After stopping there to load up on groceries, we checked the weather forecast and found that it had changed since the night before. Now we had an ominous storm building off the Pacific coast that was going to drop the temperatures and dump rain! Boondocking in the desert in the rain with chances of flash flooding was not a good idea.
It appeared that we could drive north up to Lake Meade, near Las Vegas, and check into the Boulder Beach campground and avoid the rain and cold. Then we could decided where to go next. Crossing the Colorado River at Parker, we drove north to Lake Meade and found there were a few sites left in the campground. Typically national park campgrounds have no hook-ups, so we dry camped again for two nights. The weather forecasters blew it, and we wound up being in training rainstorms washing over the area. It was cold and rainy, what we thought we were going to avoid.
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| Lake Mead Campsite |
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| Our view over the lake |
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| Our neighbor's RV - a work of art! |
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