Our Day in the Desert

For about 25 years, we’ve slept with a fan running in our bedroom.  Not so much for the air as for the “white noise”.  Since both of us worked shift work in power plants, it was a survival mechanism to allow us to sleep when we needed to.  Old habits die hard, but out here with no power pole to which we’re tethered, the fan had to go.  Quiet.  Real Quiet.  I wondered if I’d get to sleep at all, but somehow it all worked out and we slept fine.

We woke up at our usual time and turned on the coffee pot.  Ah, it worked!  Another boondocking hurdle successfully handled.  Next was letting the dogs out – I didn’t have to get dressed and put them on their leashes to take them for a walk around the RV park.  A new experience for these dogs – they just got to go outside.  I went with them in my bathrobe and slippers.  (If you happened to be at the first RV Dreams Rally and saw the “fashion” show, you might remember seeing me in a bathrobe “walking my dog”).  Fiction becomes reality?

After breakfast, Janna and Mike came by to pick us up for our walk.  As we started off, I turned back to take this picture of our rigs:

One of the sights from the walk:

We knew Mike and Janna would walk much farther than we’re used to, so we walked as far as we were comfortable and then came on back by ourselves and let them continue on.

After lunch, we all went into Bouse, the little town about 5 miles from our campsite.  They wanted to show us where we need to go to dump and take on water.  There’s also a transfer station to take our trash, which is free!  It will cost $10 to dump our black and gray tanks and fill the fresh water tank.

Janna wanted to go to the local library and the post office, so we followed along.  They have a sporty 2-seater car, so we followed in the Saturn.  Here’s Mike, watching Emmi while Janna went to the library:

After our tour of Bouse, the next stop was Quartzsite to see what was happening there.  Of course, lunch was first on the agenda!

A lot of the activity of Quartzsite is winding down, but there are still quite a few vendors set up with their wares, just not too many people browsing!

 

After wandering around and looking at a lot of “stuff”, we were ready for the ice cream break:

Then it was time to stop for gas for the cars and fill up Janna’s drinking water jug. We’re told the water around here is not good for drinking, but there are reverse osmosis stations around where you can buy good water for $.25/gallon.

Time to get back to the campsite, where we invited Janna and Mike over to help us break in our brand new fire pit that Jim built out of local rocks, and watch it get dark.

We’ve been asked by several people how long we plan to stay here – we don’t know!  We don’t have any immediate plans to leave, we might stay a week, maybe longer.   So far, so good!