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Published: February 25th 2012
Boondocking at Quartzsite
We spent 2 nights at Quartzsite AZ where thousands of rvers spend months camping for free. Quartzsite Arizona here we come!
We heard about this place for the first time when we bought the motor home last year. Apparently, a lot of "snow birds" like to flock there in the winter months and camp around the town in the thousands, but there seems to be a 'peak' season when the most people are there - around the time of the gem show(s). The dates are not always the same but this year the big Tucson gem show officially started Feb. 9th.
In Quartzsite there is a smaller gem show that vendors go over there for, before the Tucson gem show, and the same is occurring in Tucson before the big show begins which literally takes place ALL OVER THE CITY in many small to mondo sized white tents. I had been hearing about this gem show in Arizona for decades. This was my/our first opportunity to go there at this time of year. We heard it draws people from all over the world. And of course, the winter is a good time to be in Arizona. The nights were cool, even cold but the days very pleasant throughout our time in southern Arizona ~
about 2 weeks.
We had heard various things about Quartzsite - really just a little uninteresting town near the CA/AZ border - like that it's a dirty place, just a big flea market, & so on. We were there at the end of January - before the hoards of RV's we were expecting to see showed up. We went because some new friends (who had lived the full time RV lifestyle for 2 decades) said it was worth checking out & told us how to get to a certain encampment about 5 miles out of town. This encampment was a group of "Escapee" RV club members who like to "boon-dock" in their RV's in wilderness areas. We managed to find the camp after dark with good directions from our friend Tom. Fortunately, the wide dirt road was easy to see and we managed to pull in to a big area near another large motor home, though it was so late that all the lights were out in the camp. It was blissfully quiet there; the night sky impressive & the air refreshing! The lights of Quartzsite were down the hill and magically glittering in the distance. We camped there
2 nights. It was a nice experience being there with other (very friendly people - all "baby boomers") who appreciate the beauty, peace & big starry sky of the desert. We enjoyed seeing the 'sustainable' set up some people had with their solar arrays on their motor home rooftops, and one guy even had a wind generator. This is the best way to "boon-dock".
Quartzsite itself WAS kind of a big flea market and we were there before any gems showed up but it was worth the time to stop for a day and check it out and see what the "escapees" were about & what was happening in the town. We went shopping and picked up a few useful items in the 'show' going on in a big white tent. Before we left, I took the opportunity to spend a few minutes laying on the ground to reset my body's energy at the lower earth frequency that our bodies need. A great thing to do when driving a lot or spending time around many other frequencies as we do these days (cell phones & towers, wifi, portable phones, etc. etc.). All you have to do is lie on
Arizona Desert
north of Phoenix the ground and make sure what you are wearing & lying on is of
natural fibers so the earth frequencies can penetrate. I ALWAYS feel better after doing this!
Green Shrubs, Hills & Spectacular Sunsets
From Quartzsite we headed east toward Phoenix and stayed several nights at a place some other friends recommended called Shangri-la which is a nudist resort. The place was nice to camp at and we did some hiking in the hills among the many Saguaro (& other varieties of cacti). What has struck me about Arizona here and in other areas was the amount of green and the hilliness. I did not expect this. Besides the cactus, there are many green shrubs and some trees. In the summer, with the monsoon rains it gets greener, we were told.
The sunsets can be spectacular in orange and red and we saw a few like that. Near Mesa we stayed for a night in an RV park and were able to go for a hike at "Superstition mountain". This was a beautiful area. After sunset I enjoyed coming down the hills & hearing the yipping coyotes not far off.
'Those
Were the Days'!..... What a Show!
The next day we were off to Tucson and a large RV park about 1/2 hour from the city where William had arranged a free stay and a big concert. The concert turned out to be one of his best with around 500 people in attendance who all loved him and he sold the most CD's ever at a solo show. This was good cause we need a lot of money to fill up the motor home with diesel fuel! That is one of the standing jokes in his show at these venues now, as is the joke he makes about the diesel air brake - imitating that sound which makes people laugh!
We had a great time with our friends DJ who 'winters' at his home in Tucson and Margy who came out for the week from Sebastopol to visit while we were there. We had fun browsing around the gem show one afternoon, & with DJ's local connections we were able to get into a very popular Mexican restaurant in Tucson that was completely packed, without the long wait. Since we do not have a car in tow on this
Tucson Gem Show
William, Christina, and our friend Margy from Sebasotpol. trip DJ was very kind to pick us up and return us to the RV place several times so we could do things together. The one thing I regret missing in the Tucson area was the Arizona-Sonora Desert museum which was highly recommeded as a wonderful place to be with & experience the desert wildlife...300 animal species, & 1200 kinds of plants. We'll do that next year as William will likely be doing more shows in Arizona around this time of year.
Some Great State Parks are in Arizona!
From Tucson we went directly to the Kartchner Caverns State Park only about 1 1/2 hours drive east from Tucson. This was a nice park, really quite new, and another very peacful place to stay. We enjoyed a walk on trails in the surrounding hills and the next day went on a tour through the larger of two caverns. This is the largest & most pristine underground caverns we have ever been in. It was really quite amazing and the state of Az has done a superb job of preserving this natural wonder and keeping the larger one as a natural habitat for the bat colony that occupies
it 6 months of the year.
Due to time & cost considerations we did not go into the 2nd somewhat smaller cavern but heard it is equally wondrous. Wow! I must say ~ my favorite places to stay so far are in the wilderness areas and parks. Though the RV parks have many facilities and activities, I find them kind of depressing, and too much like parking lots to like. Besides that they are also in many cases way too close to cell towers - a feature I have been noticing more and more lately and finding that I do not sleep well (and other issues) in close proximity to them. The state parks or more rural areas we've stayed on the other hand, are usually better in this respect.
Our next stop and one that William liked most (as you can tell perhaps by the abundance of photos of it) was the National Monument just north of the Mexico border called Chiricahua which to my recollection was a sacred native place. The limestone rock formations that look like people or animals are really spectacular! We hiked from a look out point back toward the visitor center on
the echo canyon trail about 4 hours (with a few short rest stops). Fortunately the weather was cool! We learned some interesting things at the visitor kiosk about the geology & history of the area... much of which I have forgotten now almost 3 weeks later! But, something I do remember is that the mountains in Arizona have been named "sky islands" since they can be relatively tall considering how short the ranges are. This area was quite remote, surrounded by acres of cattle ranches and some residents of smaller ranches near the monument. The cattle have plenty of room to move around but the habitat not too green here.
They say at the monument that pollution from autos are a major factor that negatively impacts the limestone mountains there but as far as we could see the mountains were is quite good shape, & there was very little in the way of car travel out there! Hmmmm, sounds like the kind of government propaganda we've heard about other such alleged ecological problems.
We did visit another area before leaving Arizona which was about 30 miles or so north of Interstate Highway 10 in SE Arizona. We went
Dinner In Tucson
Christina, David John, William, and Margy. Great food and tequila in Tucson. to a state park there (forgot the name of it) that is in an area of hot springs. The park had 1 small hot pool and what appeared to be a man made lake or lagoon inhabited by various bird specie. We enjoyed sitting in the small hot (well o.k. warm) pool (but it was a pleasant 98 degrees or so) on the full moon and chatting with another couple who told us some 'tales' of their RV adventures and favorite places to go during their winter motor home journeys. They mentioned the many wonderful, and excellent facilities of State Parks in Texas (which we have subsequently found to be so true). But before we went there, we had to follow our curiosity and visit the amazing limestone white sands of White Sands National Monument in south west New Mexico.....
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sunny
non-member comment
places to see
If it fits in your schedule go N. and do the "string of pearls" national parks that stretch across S. utah - G. Canyon, Zion, Brice, Canyonlands, Arches - all close together and amazing. For slot canyons Escalante can't be beat. There are many historical monuments of native history from S. to N. Arizona too on your way up. Love, Sunny