January 25-26,2017 Quartzsite, Arizona

On our way south.

These are the views I woke up to this am at Davis, Camp in Bullhead City, Az right on the Colorado River.

No frost this morning on the car. We headed south to Quartzsite today. Another vanishing point road south along the border in California. Nice scenery along the way. The third photo down says Welcome to Earp, California on the side of the Oasis Minimart- the only building in Earp, California and then we entered Arizona.

In Parker, Az the sign says Winter Weather Conditions, drive with care. It was sunny warm and there were palm trees. My kind of winter weather.  The RV show in Quartzsite is supposed to be the largest gathering of RV’s in the world. We have stayed away from this only coming here in the later spring when there are almost no people. It is not as bad as we thought in the free BLM dispersed camping.

The bus in the free BLM dispersed camping. We are in the Sonoran desert so there are saguaros here.  We asre thining it might get more crowded over the weekend.

It is really pretty desert here.

John got me this great tablet for xmas. It is in a child proof  case with a bullet proof screen protector. Maybe I won’t break it. I don’t even have a smart phone so I am challanged learning android.  I finished the basket.  It is 11.5 x 11.5 x 2.5. There is a piece of fused glass in the center that I made with green leaf and blue/green iridescent glass beads. It sold before it was half done!

Today we went to the 34th annual Quartzsite Sports, Vacation and RVshow. There is a 69,000 square feet tent  exhibit area. And more outside, plus lots of new and used RV’s for sale.  It was packed and  was not as good as the FMCA rallies we go to. We looked at 5th wheels, trailers and class A RV’s (that is what we have).

The inside of a couple of the class A’s. Way, way too fancy for us. Disco lights, 4 TV’s. In the left photo top is a huge flat screen TV with a fireplace under it. There is also a dishwasher  and residencial fridge- all these  buses can only be used if it is plugged in, not out in the desert. The last shot is the side of one of the buses out here in the desert- 7 day weekends at Laaast!

John favorite part of the Quartzsite shopping is the Adult Day care spot. . . I rode my bike around the desert tonight around sunset, which here is around 6 pm- an hour later than California. We are loving that.

Beautiful desert sunset tonight.

John took this of me with my bike.

January 19-24, 2016 Shoshone, California to Bullhead City, Arizona

 

It was supposed to rain and have high winds today. We woke up to calm, 70’s and sunny. So I parked myself in my lawn chair in the sun and worked on my basket. The masterpiece is coming along.

Friday when we drove back to Shoshone it was raining and windy, it was that way when we drove into Death Valley too. Saturday was sunny, calm and 60’s in Shoshone so we hiked the 3 mile loop. There was snow on the Nopah mountians  above Shoshone. . Very rare to see snow here.

We went to the hot springs  in Tecopa, had dinner at the Bistro and listened  the Pablo Tecopa and the Dusty Butter band play.  Still raining. We went to Pahrump for supplies and the clouds were low and this is what we saw on the way back to Shoshone.

We saw the sign for the Groover Team on the way back from Pahrump. These guys are real estate. On river trips the groover is the toilet, so not sure I would want to use the Groover team to sell my house. These two new signs went up in Shoshone for the new habitats for the voles and the pupfish. They were both thought extinct but a small population was found and they made habitats and they are coming back.

A weathered soccor ball, a vole, drippy colors on the rocks and pupfish. It was kind of cold, windy, cloudy, hailed some today, bug cleared a bit for sunset. Will be very cold tonight.

We woke up to below freezng in Shoshone. The bay heaters under the bus went on to keep the pipes from freezing. This is frost on the hood of the car. We are heading south. In Baker we saw the Alien Fresh Jerky, and a sign for the Mad Greek, which we need to stop at one of these days, and The Bun Boy- must have been a resturant.  We teraveled past the Mojave National Preserve into Nevada through the town of Cal Nev Ari- which is in Nevada, but close to the other two states.

Clark Mountain-7,929 feet-with it head in the clouds, just North of the town of Mountain Pass, population 21 on the pass-elevation 4, 730. On the other side of the pass we viewed these peaks.

We went through Nipton, Ca, didn’t see the population there, but this is most of town, the Trading post, store, B and B, Hotel, cabin, tents, RV  park and camping, and help is wanted.  The road was red in Nipton, and past it is was red a ways into the distance. South of Searchlight, Nevada was another road into the vanishing point.

 

We drove through a large joshua tree forest too.

Sunset was pretty. You can see rain in the first shot.

We arrived at Bullhead City just at sunset and got a nice spot at Davis Camp on the Colorado River.

January 18, 2017 Death Valley, California

Today we drove up the hole in the wall road and hiked up Slit Canyon.

I added two green wraps to the masterpiece in progress.  The Hole in the wall is the pass between the two walls in front of us.

The little valley after the Hole in The Wall. Lots of cool looking rocks in this place.

View on the way hiking to Slit Canyon. John climbing the first grotto. Above that is another 20 foot dry fall that we did not want to climb so we climbed around it and up a steep skree slope.

This is looking down the 20 foot dry fall we detoured around. More cool rocks. The last rock is mostly what we were climbing around- it was really rough-like really course sand paper, the kind of rock if you fell on it it would take off flesh.

The canyon became very narrow. John climbing up another dry fall.

The canyon narrowing into the Slit.

We stopped at the 50 foot dry fall and did not make it up to the second and third narrows. Here is John climbing back down a dry fall. Cool rocks, a big horn sheep skull and some grass cascading like hair.

Cool holes in the rock, lined with crystals. Back out in the Hole in the Wall valley you can see over  the dirt, the wall, the badlands we hiked around yesterday and across  Death Valley to the snow covered Panamint mountains.

More cool rock things.

We had lunch in this grotto, over looking the Hole in the wall. The clouds were really dramatic. I took this shot with the dramatic filter in my camera to show them off.

View of the Hole in the wall and the second one has the car in it so you can see how big the hole really is. The walls are more of that Bonanza King formations with the spooking holes in it.

The clouds got even cooler on the drive back to the main highway.