Heading to Quartzsite

Wednesday, Jan. 25

Leaving Pahrump

We had a lot of miles to make today, so we were up and moving fairly early.  I brought in the slides on the RV and shifted the levers to bring up the leveling jacks when Joe thought he heard a strange noise underneath the RV.  So he crawled under to check it out, and he was lying on a sprinkler, which suddenly decided to come on.  Needless to say, he got a shower before he could get himself out of the spray.   Dave was sitting in his drivers seat waiting on us to pull out, so he got the full show.  He even asked Joe to repeat it because he enjoyed it so much.  I got a wet leg out of it, which is the only picture I got.  Joe said he got a wet everything.

Finally we got on the road, heading down around Vegas again, through Laughlin and Bullhead City, where we stopped and had lunch, and on to Lake Havasu City.  We missed a turn coming down AZ 95 and ended up back in California, so we had to go through Needles, then back across the Colorado River, to get back to Hwy 95 again.  Coming into Lake Havasu City, we had a nice view of the river, and the town.  We've only been to this town once before, and it seemed to have developed a lot since then.

You can see from the palm trees that it was pretty windy here, and the wind pounded us all day.  The drive along the river through here is very pretty, lots of campgrounds on both sides of the river on this road.  As we started getting closer to Parker, we were driving right beside the river.

Quartzsite

We arrived in Quartzsite around 4:00 p.m., a long day, and about 300 miles -- to many miles for us retired folks. We fueled up at the truck stop, and the cashier got so confused she tried to pay me the $140.02 for the gas Joe pumped.  It took a while to sort all that out -- a long while.  When she started to hand me the cash, I said to her, "What are you doing?"  I should have kept my mouth shut -- we would have come out almost $300 to the good.  But I didn't, and after a co-worker, then her supervisor showed up, I finally got out of there.  We drove on through Quartzsite and out into the desert to find our campsite.  We were ready to be off the road, and it was still windy.

Thursday, we drove down to the big white tent to check out all the "bargains."  Walked and walked, bought a few gadgets, then went back to camp and enjoyed a campfire until it got too cold (our campfire didn't put out a lot of heat).

Friday we went back to the shopping area.  Jeff and Brenda were driving over after work today, so we were waiting on them.  Brenda is the shopper so we knew we would be back down here tomorrow.

No matter where we travel, there are no better sunsets than Arizona has to offer.  Quartzsite gave us a beautiful one.

With Brenda leading the way, we hit the shops again on Saturday.  She walked our legs off, and Joe and Jeff went looking for a place to sit.  Kettle corn is one of Brenda's vices, so she's enjoying some of that treat while we shop, and Jeff had a little ice cream while he waited on his wife (who had all the $$).

Today was Jeff's birthday, so Dave and Mazie hosted a fish fry and we celebrated around the campfire.  Dave's fish (crappie) was awesome, Brenda brought an ice cream cake with her, and a grand time was had by all.

Sunday we went back to the shops for last minute things, then drove around Quartzsite a little to some of the other tents.  Then back to camp to pack up and head down the road.  One of our purchases was a power band that is supposed to help maintain our balance, so Jeff and Brenda both demonstrated their new talents.

 

And Brenda finally got to pick up some of her own rocks!

Finally, it was time for goodbyes.  Jeff and Brenda had to head back to Mesa so they could go to work tomorrow.  The Johnsons and the Froeschkes headed to Salome for 2 nights so we can run up to Alamo Lake and check out the crappie fishing tomorrow -- for future reference (although we do have fishing poles with us).

We retired 2 years ago last week -- January 22, 2010 was our last day of work.  The next day we were in Quartzsite with the Dave and Mazie, and Jeff and Brenda, so this was a nice retirement anniversary reunion for all of us, or, in other words, back to the scene of the crime.