Quartzsite and It’s Cold !

"Take risks: if you win, you will be happy; if you lose, you will be wise."

Pulling out from one RV park and heading someplace else isn’t always fast and isn’t always easy.  Our departure time usually depends on how far we’re traveling that day.  The trip on Saturday was a mere 140-ish miles.  That’s not a long day but sometimes the shortest trips feel like the longest trips.  I think when we know we aren’t going far the hours just drag.  When we know it’s a long day, we just accept it.

On the road to Q

It was cold Saturday morning but not as cold as it was going to get.  I knew it was cold because there was ice on the car.  I figured that was a pretty good indication of what the weather would be like once I opened the door.

We had started putting things away inside on Friday.  The counters had been cleaned, loose items stuffed in one place or another, bungees secured, satellite antenna stowed, window sunshades removed, rugs rolled up and slides pulled in.  Some of the outside stuff still had to be done.   We had tanks to dump, fresh water to take on and the RZR to load and secure on the trailer.  We couldn’t do that until the morning of departure since we had to move the motorhome out of the site to drop the loading gate.  Then, since it had been such a cold, cold night the battery in the RZR had to be charged.  Of course, it did but finally we were ready to go.

Check out the ATV carrier on front

Traveling through any big city in the early hours of a weekday means you’ll hit work traffic.  We figured Saturday morning we’d probably not see much traffic but that wasn’t so.  Where were all these people going on a Saturday morning?  From Broadway in Tempe access to I10 was just a short distance away.  Then, we hopped on I17 to bypass the downtown area and five miles down the road we  were back on i10 cruising towards Quartzsite.  The farther west we headed the lighter traffic became.  It was a good day for driving.  The winds were low and the skies were blue. 

We arrived just about noon.  We were surprised to see the streets weren’t packed, parks had sites available and vendor spaces on Kuehn weren’t filled.   The Big Tent is less than a week away.  Where is everybody?   Many more RVers will start pulling in this week but it sure seemed like there were more here last year at this time. 

Our favorite consignment shop

After finding our friends and setting up camp we headed to town.  Our external propane bottle was nearly empty.  We knew we’d need it as we’d be running our furnace all night with the cold, cold temperatures around.  It was off to town.  I’ve often said it’s a small world.  Right there at the propane dealer was our neighbor from Tempe filling his RV too.  What fun!

The plan for Sunday was to be out exploring.  Even though there seems to be fewer vendors we needed to see if that was true or not.  It was true and more on that later.

One of many propane shops

This will also be a trial run for our new solar.  It’ll be interesting to see how it all works together.  I know there will definitely be times our generator will still be used.  I already plan on pushing that little generator button anytime I want to use the microwave or the curling iron. but will we need to use it to top off the batteries also in the morning like others have said they do?    We will see for sure. 

‘Tis life on the road.