Week ending Feb 20, 2020 Quartzsite LTVA

Friday morning we packed up the trailer and dumped the sewer before heading to Quartzsite La Posa LTVA. 

Saturday we went for a 4 mile loop heading east, then south, and then returning to the trailer.

More saguaro here than at Yuma

Stone pattern

Sunday morning we walked across the highway to the LTVA section on the west side, closer to the hills. 

hills to the west

We found a nice little spot over there that we might move to in a couple of weeks.

Monday morning we went into Quartzsite to do laundry at the Main Street Laundromat.  It is conveniently connected to the Main Street Eatery.  After starting our laundry we had breakfast.  Reasonably sized portions.  The server (manager?) warned us that coffee might be limited as the water was out.   Never twigged with us, but when we checked our laundry, it had stopped.  It started filling, but didn't finish.  Fortunately the water came on shortly, and the manager put money in the machines so that we didn't have to pay twice to get our loads done.  Chatted with a few other people doing their laundry on the same row (lots of machines). 

Tuesday we went for a longish walk to Chocolate Mountain Gold Mine and Stamp Mill.  The route from the trailer across the highway into the LTVA on the west then north on the west side of the LTVA until we cut across Tyson Wash, a wide wash running south from Quartzite,  to the mine was 2.80 miles. 

There were two sets of structures on adjacent hills, two little volcanic cones.  The one on the north is known as Q Mountain, as it has a Q made of white stones on the northeast side facing town. 

Q

Quartzite from the mine

There is a trail to the top of Q on the south side, but we passed on it today as it is already a long trip.

hike to top of Q Mountain

After checking out the north structure, we headed across the hill to Chocolate Mountain, walking up the road to the structures there.

tiny flowers

These ones are more elaborate and in much better condition.

Chocolate Mountain Gold Mine

LTVA from Chocolate Mountain

what is NO BO? read the fine print

On the way back, we cross-countried.  Consequently, we flushed a hare, the first one we have seen in quite a while.

Wednesday we headed northeast toward a road running southeast from the LTVA area north of us. It is about 1.5 miles away, with no ATV trails headed in that direction.  We crossed a couple of wide areas that looked like they would be good for camping, with no trailers.  A couple of ATV trails ran perpendicular to our route on these areas.  About .4 miles short of our target road (the only in that area on our GPS topo map) we came to a road with trailers parked along it. 

little monument for flagstand

We headed southeast on that road.  The campsites were spread out along it for quite a distance. 

 dead end sign

At one point we encountered a couple of fellows out desert golfing.  They had shot along the direction of the road, and one of them was looking for his ball.  We told them 'you are the reason we find golf balls out in the desert'.   The warned us not to get too close to an RV off to the side.  They had made that mistake, and the fellow came out and told them to stay away or he would shoot them.   They told us there was an ATV road heading back west to our area of the LTVA, so we carried on.  We stopped at a site that looked like a good place to camp, and heard some birds in the shallow wash beside it.  They were quail.   A short while later, we figured we had gone far enough south, so figured out the direction to our trailer.  We lined up a point on the hills to the west and headed cross-country toward it.  After a bit we could see a tethered kite that we recognized seeing east of us from the trailer.  We came out on the LTVA road about a half mile southeast of the trailer, so weren't too far off target (about .2 extra miles of the 2 miles back to the trailer). 

Thursday we went into the library in Quartzsite to do our Windows 10 updates.   When the download on John's machine stayed at 1% for an unusual time, he checked the internet and discovered there were problems with the 2020-02 cumulative update, so we disconnected from the internet.  After lunch and picking up a few groceries, we drove out through the northeast LTVA area, heading down the road we had targetted on Wednesday.  We got about 3.25 miles southeast when we came to the sign marking the end of the LTVA.  It turned out to be almost due east of where we turned back cross-country to the trailer yesterday.  Interesting that our RV GPS has all of the BLM roads out here in its data, and dispointing that the Arizona topo GPS file only has the main ones, and doesn't have the BLM road numbers even for those.