Tuesday

The day began with me trying to check my voicemail where I work. I was unable to get out with my cell phone. I figured it was the result of our campsite being out of the range of the cellular antenna. There was only one antenna in the area and it was on the other side of town.

I decided to go for a walk around the campground to see if I could find a cellular hot spot. Even though I was able to get the signal level up on my cell phone I was unable to place a phone call. As I walked I came to the beginning of the trail that goes to the top of Q Mountain. I had planned to hike to the top of the mountain sometime during our stay, so I figured there was no time like the present.

The walk up the mountain was okay until the very last stretch. When viewed from the side, it is easy to see why the trek becomes more difficult as the trail nears the summit. The incline of the pathway gets steeper with each step toward the top. I tried to get to the top too fast and by the time I reached the summit I was seriously winded.

Looking over our camping area from the top of Q mountain

Once at the top, I had to sit down to catch my breath. I enjoyed the view from the top as my breathing returned to normal. I stood up to take a few pictures of the thousands of recreation vehicles spread out all over the desert. The 360 degree panorama was a fantastic sight to see.

I tried to make a phone call from the top of the mountain to no avail. This bothered me because I could see the cell antenna from my lofty vantage point. The signal strength was at a peak, but the phone just acted as if there was no service available. So, I figured I should get back down the mountain.

I came up the mountain before anybody in our camp was out and around. So, I wanted to get back so I wouldn't hold up our group from getting out into the flea market area. As I started down the steepest part of the trail I found that my legs felt as if they were made of rubber. It was an uncomfortable feeling that dissipated as the angle of the walkway decreased. The walk back seemed to be longer than when I was going the other direction.

When I reached the campground I was ready for a chance to sit sound for a while. As I walked toward our compound I saw Tom talking to his neighbor. He had an Australian Shepherd dog that was a fun and friendly dog. As I approached the dog came over to me wagging her stubby tail. Then she leaned up against me expecting to be scratched behind the ear. I did what was expected for a short time. When I stopped, the dog began barking in an excited manner as it ran back to its owner.

Setting up my handie-talkie

I made it back to our motorhome to have breakfast before heading into town. Before leaving for town I set up our handie-talkies for the day ahead. It seemed as if everybody in the area was using the same type of devices to keep in touch with each other. So, I selected the feature that would quiet any other chatter on the channel we would be using. It seems to have worked.

When we drove into town we headed for the RV show as our place to start. We entered the big tent to see the RV accessories show. I saw the usual RV stuff that would be expected in a show like this. We passed by a trio of musicians playing Inca style music. I liked what I heard and bought one of their CDs.

We have a small folding table we’ve carried in our RV for most of 20 years. Our table is made of redwood and it is the only one of its kind I've seen until this trip. Now, I’ve seen smaller plastic versions of our redwood table, but I’ve never seen a wood version. Well, now I’ve seen a very nice wood-style folding table about the same size as our table. While our table is made of redwood, the folding tables at the show were made of oak with a light white stain finish.

There also was a larger round version of the table that folded up for storage. I would like to have bought one of the larger tables, but we just don't have enough room for a table that size. The thing that surprised me was the fact that the price of the small oak table was the same price I paid for our redwood table twenty years ago.

As we walked around the flea market we saw the usual and the unusual food booths. One food stand that caught our attention was a place that sold barbecued turkey legs. The legs looked and smelled very good, so Tom and I decided to purchase one each. The food stand also served a great plate of chicken fajita nachos. This is what Kay and Nora had for their midday meal. The man serving up the turkey legs was a fun person to talk to. He posed for a picture of him holding up an example of his labor.

This man was the turkey-legs chef

After lunch we took a tour of some of the motorhomes that were on display. This RV show may be considered a big show, but it doesn't hold a candle to the motorcoach show at a Family Motor Coach Association convention. The motorhomes were dirty from the constant desert dust that covers everything. The worst thing, in the coaches on display, was the sand and gravel that was ground into the floors. I mean gravel deeply gouged into the hardwood and deep sand scratches in the tile. The bottom edges of all the curtains were discolored by dirt.

Motorhome on display makes nice place to take break

There was a country and western band playing music as we looked around the various motorhomes. I'm sure they were doing their best, but sometimes they would hit a hard note or two. When we left the RV show it was decided that we should go for a ride.

This band was doing its best to entertain at the RV show

As we headed for the car, Kay bought a small table-model, wind-powered wheel. Then Nora decided to buy the larger, three-wheeled model. The wheels are very colorful with brightly colored spokes.

Tom and Nora wanted to show us an old, knarlly saguaro cactus west of town. The route we took was along the frontage road heading west on the south side of the freeway. It didn't take long to reach the old saguaro cactus; we stopped to take some pictures. Kay and I were dwarfed by the size of the old multiarmed saguaro as we stood next to its pleated trunk.

We didn’t count the arms

I didn't count them, but the cactus is said to have 47 arms. We were told that it takes 60 or 70 years for a saguaro to grow its first arm. After that subsequent arms can grow much sooner. The old 47-arm cactus is thought to be about 150 years of age.

After seeing the old cactus, Tom wanted to show us an unusual development out in the desert. The place is called Rainbow Gardens. We rode a few miles into the desert when we came upon this colorful and interesting tract. The development is made up of lots where each lot is separated from the others by walls made of a very colorful type of brick made in Mexico. The bricks have a surface that is made up of bands of colors of the desert, including the colors of a sunrise or sunset.

The lots had the brick walls around three sides with one side open to the street. The surface of each lot was covered with gravel in the beginning. Some people left the gravel while others put in desert landscaping with sand, rocks, and of course cactus. Each lot is arranged such that there is a complete set of RV hookups on opposite sides of the lot.

Colorful brick walls were around each lot

Some people had gone together to buy a lot to put two RVs, one on each side, with the middle of the lot being shared as a common area. Others had an RV using one set of hookups with a small factory built home on the other side of the lot. Then there were the people who bought a lot to build a conventional house with landscaped yard. The price of a lot started at $23,000, making it inexpensive to get started in a home or to establish a place to escape the northern winters.

After driving around the Rainbow Gardens for a while, Tom went back to the road and we headed farther out into the desert. As we left the development we saw some men on ATVs heading out into the desert. Tom waved at them as they went by. We didn’t know it then, but we would see these guys later.

Tom pulled off of the paved road onto a road that had a sign warning that the road was primitive, not maintained, and required a high clearance vehicle. That was a pretty good description of what we experienced. Tom had been on this road before and knew of an old stone house that he wanted to show us. The house was visible in the distance shortly after turning down this road.

Stone house in the distance — Notice four- footed-drive vehicles

I had read earlier that there are many abandoned stone houses in the desert around Quartzsite. They were the homes of prospectors and miners who worked the mineral deposits in the mountains and desert near the houses. Most of the stone houses are nothing more than sturdy shells left to tell their story.

When we reached the stone house three of us piled out of the car to take pictures with Tom remaining in the car. The house actually was made up of two separate stone structures, each of which had a very simple floor plan, as in one room. The buildings themselves were somewhat impressive and pretty in their own way.

We all explored old stone house

The walls were made of mostly big rocks from the surrounding desert held together with copious quantities of concrete. There seemed to be no attempt to match the colors of the rocks. The colors ranged from plain brown rocks to rocks of red and pink. Some of the stones were sparkling quartz in various shades of pink and white. Sizes went from small to quite large. As we were exploring the old house, out of the desert came the men on ATVs we had seen leaving the Rainbow Gardens. They waved as they slowly drove by Tom's car.

There was evidence that a small family of birds called this place their home. The ceiling of the house was only about six and a half feet high and it was actually the underside of the roof. Up between a rafter and the ceiling was a small bird nest. So, even though the house appeared to be abandoned, it still was a home of sorts.

Our desert guides, Nora and Tom

When we were finished looking around the stone house I figured we would go back the way we came and return to the campground. Tom had something else in mind. He continued into the desert on the primitive road. As we drove away from the house there was a sign similar to the last sign we saw. This sign had the word "WARNING" on it and said that the road was primitive, not maintained and required a high clearance vehicle with four-wheel drive.

The road into the desert was about to get much more primitive

The sign was correct in that Tom occasionally had to use the lowest-geared, four-wheel drive to get across some desert washes and ravines. One ravine was steep enough going down that I thought there might be a chance of the front of Tom's car digging into the other side. It was close, but the Explorer began to rise up the other side of the ravine just before the front bumper could dig in. However, the trailer hitch dragged a couple of times as the car climbed the other side of a ravine.

A family of saguaro

This drive made it possible for us to get an up-close-and-personal view of several saguaro cacti. At one time our four-wheel steed wound its way slowly through the desert brush with branches leaving their mark on both sides of the vehicle. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was primitive road and what was just desert. I found this ride to be great fun.

It was about to get better. Tom continued on across the desert with a plan to find the ruins of another stone house. We came to a point where Tom turned off the crude roadway to drive up a hill. The hill was small but steep. Tom had to put the Explorer into four-wheel drive granny gear and drive slowly up the hill. When he approached the top he decided to stop because the hill was steep enough that he couldn't see what was ahead.

I got out of the car to see what was ahead and to take some pictures. Tom made a very good decision, as on the other side of the crest was a 10 to 12 foot vertical drop-off. That sure would've set off the air bags if we had continued over the summit of that small hill. It probably would have ruined our whole day as well.

Tom picked a good place to stop at the top of the hill

Tom backed the car down the hill and returned to the road such as it was. He then drove over to look at another stone house. The house was more of a ruin than the house we saw earlier. However, the ruins showed that this house had a more sophisticated structure that included a fireplace. There also was a stone structure, on one side of the ruins, that had a person's name spelled out with stones; the name was Robb.

The ruins of an old stone house

Stones spell out the name Robb

As we wound our way across the desert we could see the ruins of an old mine on the top of hill ahead of us. At the top was a small ATV with a person walking around the area at the top. As we approached the bottom of the road that went up to the abandoned mine, the ATV came out on the road in front of us and headed in the direction we were driving.

I figured we would follow the ATV and head on back to camp, but noooooo, Tom had something else in mind. Now I don't know if he had planned it or if this was a spur of the moment decision, but Tom turned up the very narrow and steep road to the old mine. There was a short section of the road where the shoulders of the road were non-existent and dropped off on both sides. Also, the road was very bumpy with good sized rocks strewn on the roadway.

When we reached the top there was an area that was too small to make a normal U-turn to go back down. So, Tom had to do the forward-back routine about three times to get the car turned around. This was an exhilarating experience, I was wired. I couldn't believe Tom would come up that road. The size of the parking area at the top of the hill looked bigger after getting out of the car.

A very small parking place

We all got out and walked around looking over the valley views before us. There was a mountain between us and most of Quartzsite. We could see the thousands of RVs spread out across the desert east and south of town. Our vantage point also put us above most of the old mine. We were looking down on the entrance to the mine shaft. There is a large wooden structure with big wheels mounted in the structure.

Looking over old mine entrance toward RVs east of town

I tried to take a picture that would express the exciting position of the car. However, I was unable to get such a picture because the area at the top of the mountain was so small I could not get back far enough from the car. So, I did the best I could and took several pictures hoping that one would catch what I was experiencing. Kay walked down to the bottom of the road to see if she could find a place to get a dramatic photo, to no avail. After descending back to the primitive desert road, Tom stopped to pick up Kay

The trip down was less exciting than the trip up

From the ruins of the old mine, Tom found a back way into the campground. We returned to our compound very tired. Tom found a note from his friend Larry on the door of his motorhome. Larry is a friend from Canada that Tom met a few weeks earlier in California. We set up our lawn chairs and talked for awhile about our adventure on this day.

One of the wind wheels purchased earlier in the day

I tried to make a phone call again and found that there just was no cellular service available. I finally broke down and called in to work on a pay phone. I got my messages and took care of some business. I was just getting finished with my call when Nora came over to use the pay phone. They were unable to get out on their cell phone as well.

A cactus plant in our campground

I went into the campground office to inquire as to the quality of the cell phone service in the area. I was told that the service is normally very good and was in fact good until the crowds arrived at the same time we came to town. Then it became clear to me as to why the cell service was so bad. The local cell was simply swamped with to many calls and attempted calls. I tried to make a call about four to six times a day. I was only successful twice during the week we were in the area.

Our camping area just before sunset

I barbecued some turkey burgers for dinner. After dinner Kay and I sat outside and looked at the stars. There are many more stars visible here than where we live in Silicon Valley. In some cases I have a bit of a problem finding certain constellations among so many stars. While we were looking toward the heavens, Kay spotted two satellites going overhead. She also saw one meteor shoot across the sky. I saw the satellites, but I missed the meteor.

It had become a bit chilly, so we decided to go inside. This gave me an opportunity to read some of the material we had picked up on our forays into the market areas. We were very tired, so it felt good to go to bed early. We found it unusual that we were going to bed at around 8:30 each night. Our visit had been very tiring, but really a lot of fun.

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