Joan and John: Week ending Dec 1, 2016 Quartzite to Gila Bend

On Friday morning, we got up early and got already to go by 8:00. However, we needed to pay for an extra night before we left, since the office wasn't open on Thanksgiving Day. We took a short walk around the park and ended up at the office, where we noticed they had a sign about after hours registration. There was a slot in the door for depositing payment, so we got an envelope, enclosed $25 to pay for the night. When we returned to drop it off, we noticed the 'Mail In' sign that was there earlier was gone. The manager was in the office and was pleased to accept the envelope with the payment. Off we headed. We were planning on going through Arizona down highway 95 through Lake Havasu City to Parker, so we could avoid the agricultural inspection in California, even though the GPS-selected route through California was about 20 minutes shorter. However, we missed the turn, and wound up in Needles. The good news is that the route from Bullhead through Needles misses the inspection station south of Needles on I40. So we followed the GPS south on California 95, to Vidal Junction. There is an inspection station there, but it only handles traffic coming into California from Parker. Since we were headed into Parker, we didn't need to go through it, so our citrus made it intact back into Arizona. We stopped at Safeway to see if they had a bbq chicken pizza, but no luck. After filling up with diesel, we carried on to Plomosa Road BLM area north of Quartzite. After getting set up, and successfully getting enough internet on our t-mobile device to check e-mail, we went for a short walk across the desert. While on our walk, Dad and Mom called, and we had a short talk.

Saturday, we went for another bit of a walk. We didn't have much sun for the solar panels, so used the generator in the morning to watch the European Men's Curling final game. In the afternoon we cooked some lamb chops and a salmon steak outside on our little charcoal grill. John needed some practice, as it took a while to get the briquets up to temp, but the meal was good. In the evening, the wind picked up again, so we put our solar panel in the cabinet.

Sunday, we woke to sun. We did a 9.5 km walk in the morning. We headed along the south side of the wash, going east toward the hills.


Gecko


Greenwood

Thorn bush

Eventually we connected with an atv trail, then a good BLM road with another BLM road heading south. We followed the road east until we hit Plomosa Road. There was some interesting looking potential spots there that would be closer to the hills. However, the are 'day use only' roads. No camping closer to the hills on the west side of them. We could have gone over the little pass through the hills and camped on the east slope. We returned along the edge of Plomosa Road. There is an atv trail along the side that is pretty good for walking. We cooked some burgers on the grill for lunch.
Mid afternoon some clouds rolled in to cover the sun, so we put the solar panels away again. A bit later we got a bit of a rain shower. Then, just as we started to the generator to watch the Grey Cup, it started raining harder, and we lost the signal. We had to switch from high-def to standard-def to watch it. About half an hour into the game, the rain backed off to a bit of drizzle and we were able to switch back.

Desert Rainbow

Monday morning, we headed to Subway at the Pilot in Quartzite. We were planning on heading to Why, AZ, near Organ Pipe, that we visited last year. We checked the T-mobile coverage map and found that our device wouldn't work there, or anywhere nearby, so we decided to go only as far a Gila Bend, where we stayed in February this year. Instead of just retracing our route along I-10 to Buckeye, then hwy 85 to Gila Bend, we turned off at Tonopah. We parked to check the RV reviews for a park in Tonopah, and one in Wintersburg, a few miles away. Again, we weren't overly impressed, so decided to continue on, but took Salome Highway to Old US-80. We went past the park in Wintersburg, which was advertised as the closest place to stay next to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. No kidding, it looked like you could walk there. Once we got to Old US-80, we turned right instead of following the GPS recommendation to go left to hwy 85. The GPS didn't like that. A good part of the reason was that there is a warning that there is a bridge with clearance of 13ft6in. We have our trailer height set a little higher, so every possible turn it told us to take. We finally got to the point where it said there was a 13f5in bridge. There was a turn-off right at the bridge, so we stopped to look, and figured we had at least foot of clearance. We successfully made it under the warning bar before the bridge, so carried on slowly, and made it across. We really need to do an accurate measurement of the height of the trailer, as we are often detoured around places that are not an issue.
Once we got to Gila Bend, we found that the Holt Shell RV park no longer takes Passport America, since they switched from Chevron to Shell. Still an okay price, so we selected a site backing on to the hedge along the north side of the park. Otherwise, we could have another RV with their back window facing our back window. We picked lucky number 7. Not so lucky. The water pressure reducer on one side of the water connection leaked a steady stream of water. We confirmed the problem wasn't our hose by connecting to the water on the other side of the site. That stand appeared to have 2 working connections, so even if someone comes into site 6, they can have water too. It isn't likely that anyone will use that site, since there are only about half a dozen units in the park. The other problem we encountered was a wi-fi service that doesn't connect to the internet. Oh well, at least our T-mobile wifi gets a good connection here, which we had checked when we found that it wouldn't work in Why, or Ajo, further south.

Tuesday we walked along the main street looking for ice cream. The only market in town is closed. Apparently it opens occasionally, but doesn't last for long. One of the motels reminded us of the Star Trek theme in Vulcan.

The town has a nice little 9/11 park.

Wednesday, we did a little trip. We had commented that we didn't remember staying in this RV park in the spring. It just didn't look right. Near the intersection with I-8, we saw another Shell, with a Subway, and it had the Mexican Art store we had expected. We stayed in the wrong RV park next to a Shell with a Subway, because we came into town from the north instead of the east. We didn't remember there were two Shells with RV parks. Then we looked at driving to the Lava Flow trail in the Sonoran Desert National Monument, just east of Gila Bend. It is somewhere about 14 miles from the freeway on a gravel road. We went a couple of miles down a reasonably good road, and got to a narrow single lane high-clearance road. We decided it was too far to go on that quality of road. We headed into Maricopa, a town on the edge of the Ak-Chin reservation east of the National Monument. Just south of town, we were surprised to see cotton fields.

Bales of Cotton

Thursday morning we packed a lunch and headed south to Ajo. We didn't have enough time to really check it out in the spring as our focus for the day was Organ Pipe National Park. Just before getting into Ajo, we went through a pass in the Crater Range, with some interesting formations.

Crater Range hills

Once we got to Ajo, we verified that there is no T-mobile reception there. We stopped at the Visitor Center, and picked up information on the downtown walk, and the scenic driving loop. The downtown walk is about a 5 block loop, and just covers the buildings we saw last time we were here.


Federated Church

The scenic driving loop heads up through town into the hills around the old Ajo copper mine (the New Cornelia Mine). The mine is an open pit excavation over 1 mile in diameter. Ajo is named from the O'odham term for the red body paint made from cupric oxide. The mine was started in 1914, and ran until Phelps Dodge Corp. shut it down in 1984 due to a bitter year-long strike. After the mine closed, Phelps Dodge began marketing the company houses to snowbirds, billing Ajo as the place 'where summer spends the winter'.

After finishing the loop, we drove a few miles south to the village of Why. We had found on the T-mobile coverage map, that it has no T-mobile coverage. However, when we checked with our device, we were surprised to find we had good service.