Week ending Feb 27, 2020 Quartzsite LTVA

Friday was a quiet day, watching curling.

Saturday early morning we started getting a bit of rain.  Then mid-morning we go a lot more.  The little washes between the rows of trailers started flowing.

water in the shallow wash beside the trailer

Instead of turning on the TV we listened to Quartzsite KBUX radio.  It is tailored for us baby-boomers with 50's and 60's music.  Unfortunately, you can only get it within about 20 miles of Quartzsite.   By noon, the clouds had cleared off quite a bit. 

Sunday we walked out to the stone cabin we had seen from Chocolate Mountain.  We parked near a camp spot we had picked out to move to in about a week, but found someone had occupied it.   There were a few spots still holding the rain from yesterday.

 

creosote bush flowering

stone cabin

deer tracks

maple leaf quartz

Monday, we did a walk east and south for just under 6 miles.  A few flowers, perhaps as a result of the rain.   One bush, a Baja Fairy Duster was very prolific. 

Baja fairy duster

flower next to quartz

little yellow flowers

 And a few birds.

woodpecker

cactus wren

cacti boxing ;)

We followed a pink ribbon trail with a faint ATV track back west to the trailers. 

pink ribbon

Back in the LTVA we saw an interesting custom-made trailer.

semi-trailer conversion

In the afternoon we tested our sewer tote, walking the first load the 1/4 mile to the dump station.  Since that worked well, we took a second load hitched to the truck.  Joan walked behind for about half the way to make sure our cotter pinned wheel didn't come loose.  It worked fine.

Tuesday we retraced our route from soon after we arrived here, going NE to the road running southwest from the north LTVA.  Then, we followed it NW toward the north LTVA entrance, arriving just short of the garbage bins in that area.  We saw an RV with a hitch platform at the back, folded up.  We chatted with the lady who owns it.  She had ordered it from Amazon, and found it useful for carrying stuff.  It even held a teak chest that took 3 people to load it, so it can hold a good sized load.  We were thinking of getting one to hold the sewer tote, putting it in the truck hitch.  Joan did some measurement with her walking pole.  When we got back to the trailer Joan found that the top of the platform would be a few inches above the low point on the flow through tailgate.  There are likely ones a little smaller than this that would still be large enough for the tote, but fold up below the low point on the tailgate. 

Wednesday morning just as the heat was getting up to a nice temperature during breakfast, the propane for the heater ran out.  Good timing, as we planned to go into Yuma today to fill two of our three tanks, get another two weeks of u-pick grapefruit, and some groceries.  We chose Yuma rather than Blythe and Parker, which are less than half the distance because the propane and grapefruit are the cheapest around.  Probably not quite worth the extra distance, but close enough for us.   The trip took a little extra time, about 12 minutes, because there was a section of the highway with one side closed for crack tarring. 

Thursday, we drove a few miles south to the road that heads west to La Paz Valley, an unincorporated hamlet about half a square mile about 5 miles south of Quartzite.  We parked in the Roadrunner 14-day BLM camping area next to highway 95, and walked the 1.5 miles west to the area.  Along the way we noticed a BLM marker with an unusual icon on it.  It turned out to be for the Arizona Peace Trail, a new trail which crosses here on Old Yuma Road,  the western boundary of the LTVA north of here.

AZ Peace Trail sign

In the hamlet, there are two large RV parks there, and a fair number of residences.  At the end of the roads, there are signs indicating who lives down each road. 

list of residents down the road

more residents

 

At the west edge of town, our topo map points of interest lead us to the Eightmile Well.  We couldn't figure out 8 miles from where. 

Eightmile Well

Hard to imagine  there were cattle ranging here.

cattle loading chute

 

After we got back to the truck, we drove west to Old Yuma Road, and followed it back to the LTVA rather than driving back up the highway.