SOME THINGS YOU SEE IN THE SONORAN DESERT

BREATHTAKING SUNRISE

TWO HUNDRED YEARS OLD SAGUARO CACTUS

SAGUARO CACTUS 200 + YEARS OLD WITH 5 FT.  PERSON WHO WILL NOT REVEAL AGE

SAGUARO CACTUS? APPROXIMATELY 10 TO 20 YEARS OLD WITH  MOUSE HOLE - eek!

I BELIEVE THIS IS THE HEDGE HOG CACTUS

 LOVELY UNIDENTIFIED DESERT PLANT

A HUGE ANIMAL FOOTPRINT!  

CANADIAN FLAGS, SOLAR PANELS AND ATVs

ROCK HOUNDS ALWAYS ARE LOOKING AT THE GROUND
NOW, THIS IS ANSWERED PRAYER.  TO THINK HE WAS ON LIFE SUPPORT LAST MARCH AND APRIL!  

SILLY DOGS PLAYING

SILLY WOMEN RESTING AFTER A HARD DAY OF HIKING -NOTE GUARD DOG ON DUTY

SURPRISING SUNSETS ABOVE THE RAIN CLOUDS

FRIENDS ENJOYING AN EVENING CAMPFIRE AND CONVERSATION

 Ahhh, the life of traveling in our motorhome, traveling the U.S.  

Priceless

As priceless as your comments!  Be sure to leave one.  

God Bless your journeys through life.  

RAIN IN THE DESERT! AND ANOTHER DAY AT THE BIG TENT

I cannot remember the last time I was happy that it was raining.  But tonight is just that night.  Why?  Because dust is everywhere here in the desert surrounding Quartzsite, Arizona.  The motorhome looks pale rust in color. The Miata's finish looked dull. 

Well, at least I know the Miata will look better.  As soon as a gentle rain came to the desert, I took a pan of warm soapy water and gave my baby a bath.  Now, the rains are rinsing it. And to top it off, the sound of the rain on the roof of the motorhome is like a concert.  I love it.  

I learned this method from a camper from Oregon when we were in California for Christmas.  What a great way to conserve our water resources.  

I have heard and read that the smell of a desert rain cannot be surpassed.  The rumors are true. Ahhhh.

Of course friends and family in the Indianapolis, Indiana area cannot do this since the low tonight is to be fourteen degrees and the high tomorrow will be around twenty-four.   

Almost two weeks ago we made our first trip to the big tent for the annual RV and travel show, we looked and made notes of the things that interested us.  Today, after many eliminations, we made our purchases.  Now...we are finished.  We even have a list for next year.  They are items that we decided to consider over the next year. 

We did join Escapees today. 
Escapees was founded July 4, 1978.  There are now over fifty chapters in the US, Canada and Mexico.  Discounts at RV parks are just a fraction of the benefits of a membership in Escapees. 


Education is also a benefit of membership.  We are seriously considering attending the Escapade in Gillette, Wyoming this summer.  

Last night we were finally able to attend the campfire and chat with some of the Escapees that are camping around us.  Of course, tonight's campfire was rained out. Tomorrow?  More rain.  I will finally have an opportunity to spin yarn and knit on my circular sock machine!  Woo Hoo....  (John cannot drag me out to shop!)

Thanks for stopping by.  We do enjoy and appreciate your comments.  

God bless and stay safe out there.  

QUARTZSITE'S BIG TENT RV SHOW

What a great way to start the day.  A nice hot cup of chai tea.  

Oliver and Olivia wanted to visit the desert before the sun was peaking over the mountains.   That meant I needed to leave my toasty, warm bed and brave the cooler desert temperatures.  

But then.......as they were taking care of their business, the sun peaked over the mountain just ahead of us.  Beautiful.  

Then I turned one hundred eighty degrees to see the first rays on the mountains behind us. 

Wow.  

What a beautiful time of reflection, and thankfulness for all blessings that God has heaped on us.  

Yesterday was a day of surprises.  After two long years of anticipation, the Big Tent and the Quartzsite RV and Travel Show was open for business.    

I had quite a time finding a parking place that would be close enough that John would not have a long walk to the tent.  Finally, I decided to let him of at an entrance then park the car.  It still took me about twenty minutes to find a place to park the car on the last row.  

We were to meet friends Val and Larry.  Two years ago they shopped in our booth at the Hoosier Hills Fiberarts Festival in Franklin, Indiana. Val volunteered to demonstrate spinning on my Schacht spinning wheel.  

Val and Larry live in Tuscon in the winter then travel in their RV during the Arizona heat in the summer.  Hummm what do we call those that travel north?  It sure is not snowbirds!  

We all headed into the big tent to shop for all things RV. NOT.  It is not all things RV.  We were disappointed to see so many booths occupied by vegetable peelers, hair straighteners, food choppers, etc.  Our expectations were unrealistic.  

How is this for a R.V. conversion?

Last night as I was trying to fall asleep it dawned on me.  The joy of Quartzsite is not the shopping. It is  sitting in the warm desert sun, feeling the healing wash over our bodies.  

It is all about reconnecting with friends, making new friends, listening to RVers with many years of experience share their knowledge.  It is not often that we can meet with others who blog about their travels and their RVs.  That is the joy of Q.  

With that, I leave you to have a wonderful Sunday.

God Bless!

  
  

QUARTZSITE IS NOT QUARTSIZE

What a HUGE area with a small town that in January,  expands to many miles in all directions. Quartzsite hosts the largest RV show and gathering in the country.  The website estimates that there are usually between seven hundred and fifty thousand and one million people people in attendance.  Now, that is a large crowd.

We arrived twelve days ago to attend the rock and mineral show that is held two weeks prior to the RV show.  The town was far from crowded.  Booths were not crowded.  We expected the crowds to roll in by the hundreds.  So far, the campgrounds, the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) areas and resorts all seem to have plenty of room.  

I wonder if the lack of people is the result of the cold snap we have experienced the last few days.  Have no fear, I think as the weather continues to improve, we will see more and more people. 

This photo was taken on a much warmer day last week.  I was in shirtsleeves, knitting socks on my antique CSM / Circular Sock Machine.  Notice that there is not another RV to be seen in the picture.  The closest was about a third of a mile away from us.   

We are parked between Saguaro Cactus. Saguaro are very slow growing cactus. A ten year old plant might only be an one and a half inch tall. Saguaro can grow to between forty to sixty feet tall. When rain is plentiful and the saguaro is fully hydrated, it can weigh between 3200-4800 pounds.

The Saguaro is the largest cactus in the United States. 

 

The sunsets in the deserts are beautiful.  The mountains take on colors that leaves me breathless.  Of course the most beautiful sunset was the evening that fellow RVer Sandie Dixon and I had to make a quick trip to Lake Havasu  for a prescription refill.  I am sure that there will be more beauties before we regretfully leave here then end of the month.

The winds have calmed down and the temperatures have risen to a balmy forty-eight degrees.  Since there is this "heat wave," Oliver, Olivia and I went for a walk.  In the short twenty minutes that we were gone, I saw three RVs with flags.  

I need a much faster shutter speed to clearly capture the Maple Leaf of the Canadian flag and others.  Here are the three I found.  

We have met many RVers that we follow their blogs.  It is great to put a live face with a name and a blog title. The first morning we were here Jim and Sandie Dixon of Where are the Dixon's Today.  Sandie was one of the mighty prayer warrior's who supported John and I through his hospitalization with respiratory failure then his short return to the hospital for congestive heart failure, just before our departure in December.  

I hope to meet and thank more of my Blogland friends and thank them for their prayers, thoughts and kind words of encouragement. 

Oliver and Olivia, the fur kids, have been making many new friends.  The funniest combination is Duchess, the Doberman and Oliver the Shih Tzu. Like Quartzsite, Duchess is not quart size!

  

Talk to you later.  There is much to do and see here in Quartzsite and you will be the first to hear about it.

God bless you with His blessings and please be safe out there.   

 

WHAT A DOOFIS ! I AM REALLY IN TROUBLE TOO

I cannot believe that I left my memory card out of the camera on two separate occasions.  But, I did. 

Above paragraph is yesterday's.  Today, I returned my memory card to my camera and reviewed past photos. Well, guess what.  All of my photos are there!  I, for some reason, cannot get them to show up to add them to both Picasa or straight to the blog.  Soooo.....

All the photos that you will see in today's blog are from the Internet.  

Our stay at Guajome County Park in San Diego County and Oceanside, CA was a treat.  The sites were large and our site (19) had vegetation around three of it's sides. In site twenty was Jojo (NancyJo) and her friends, Cathie, Cathie's daughter Becca and Wendy.  Wendy and Jojo graduated from Taylor University together.  Cathy is Jojo's business partner.   

It was fun to see Wendy again.  One of the last times we say Wendy was at the girls softball game.  It rained and the game was called.  The girls were frisky and since it was pouring and from third base to the home plate was a big puddle, the girls decided to run and slide to home plate, on their stomachs!  There is no need to explain the condition of the girls uniforms.  We were thankful that it was the last game prior to graduation.  

Opps, I digress.  Guajome County Park is a nice place to camp with electric (30 amp), and water hook-ups.  There is a dump station at the exit.  

There are so many trails to explore.  I walked many of the trails, but was unable to walk all.  One of the trails actually leads to the beach at Oceanside, eight miles away.  All trails are also suitable for bicycles.  The park is also dog friendly as long as you clean up after the fur kids.  

Part of the park system in San Diego is the Rancho Guajome Adobe County Park.  On the grounds is a seven thousand square-foot, twenty eight room hacienda. It is located on twenty-two hundred and nineteen acres.

The seven thousand square feet would not have been so much a problem, but the lay-out would.  This hacienda was built totally around a courtyard. 

What you see in this photo is one side of the hacienda.  This area contained the office, the master suite, a formal entry (Zaguan) with a staircase to the observation "tower," and sewing room.  The parlor, the office and the store.  

In total, the hacienda had seven bedrooms, a school room, a dining room, kitchen, bakery and pantry.  I loved the bakery with it's wood burning oven (horno).  
 
 

Note the thickness of the adobe walls.

As a parent, I cannot imagine not having children's bedrooms so far from the master suite.  

Children's bedrooms  and the school room

One side, the side directly opposite the photo above, is where the servants and the mayor domo were lodged.  Then behind these quarters we found the carriage courtyard and the blacksmith shop.  

Now, let's think about this.  This hacienda is seven thousand square feet.  It would take seventeen and one half forty foot motorhomes placed in a square to equal the hacienda.  

I will stick with my home on wheels, thank you very much!

Radar equipped airplane

The next day, we ventured further into San Diego and visited the aircraft carrier from WW II through Desert Storm.  

Again, these photos had to come from the website of the USS Midway.  

As I looked at these airplanes and thought of the thousands of airmen, whether Navy, Marine, or Air Force.  Then I thought of the thousands on the ground that have fought for our freedom.  I just remembered the phrase "what cost of freedom."

What a contrast from our first Naval air planes to the more modern.  And these are only the planes that were stationed on the Midway.

Docents are retired members of the Navy that served on the Midway as a crew member.  I could see their love of the ship as they shared their knowledge and experiences of this majestic ship.  

Tomorrow ( I hope ), I will share more of our experiences of the past week.  If I don't I am sure that my friend Kay will be on the phone, once again telling me to stop having such a good time and write this blog.  

If any of you, (ahem, hint, hint) have any idea why I cannot download the photos from my camera to my computer, please, oh please, let me know. 

Otherwise, please feel free to leave comments.  I do enjoy hearing from you all.  You too Kay.  

God bless you all.  Safe travels and watch out for that flu bug.  I am reading that it is a nasty one.