Back in Quartzsite Arizona
I trucked my way to Quartzsite this morning. I was so happy to be heading there that the 60-mile drive to downtown Quartzsite felt like it only lasted an hour.
On the way there, on Highway 95, about halfway between Yuma and Quartzsite, there was a brand-new border patrol checkpoint set up and operating. I had never seen it before, so it was new to me. I was shocked, amazed, and thrilled beyond belief that President Trump isn't even officially President yet and the border patrol is already doing its job…. Vaya Con Dios boys, Vaya Con Dios.
It's nice to be in town, but it sure is crowded, or at least there are a lot more crowds than I'm used to dealing with. I had no intention of being here during the Big Show, but when I decided I wanted to take pictures of boondockers, that gave me more of a reason to come here; in fact, it gave me a mission that made being here a lot more interesting than just hanging out for a few days.
There are endless places to boondock, so I figure I'll move around while I'm here to get a different view of things. It looks like there are not going to be enough clouds around to give me a pretty sunrise and sunset. It appears that more cloudless blue skies are in my future, but at least I had one nice sunset at the VFW boondocking area, and that one was totally unexpected, so there's always a chance, I suppose.
Usually, the only time I take pictures of boondockers in Quartzsite is if there is something different about them—a strange-looking RV, Mucho solar panels, or something homemade. You can see it all in Quartzsite. It attracts the rich and the poor, the weird and the normal, and to me, they are all interesting.
theboondork
I pulled into the first official BLM boondocking area before I got into town. It’s called Roadrunner. I've stayed here before, and I’ll probably just spend one night.
Like I've said before, I want to emphasize that even though this looks like an RV Park, it's not. It's thousands of acres of desert where folks can boondock for free, but you have to provide your own utilities—your water and electricity, find a place to empty your holding tanks, and find a place to take your trash.
It's called boondocking, and all of the RVs in this picture are set up by their owners to take care of all of that and keep them comfortable and happy the whole time they're here, which may be a couple of weeks or several months.
In some of these pictures, you will see what looks like a road, but it's not. It's just desert that's been driven over thousands of times, making it look like a road.
Unlike staying at an RV park, when boondocking, you can park wherever you want, in any direction you want. I try to park so I get the most sunshine on my solar panels.
Some folks like to park close to their neighbors who may also happen to be there friends. Other folks like me try to park farther away so I don't have to listen to their arguments, their music, their barking dogs, and their noisy generators.
I normally don’t stay here during the Big Show, and all those people in the background are the reason why. But this picture shows that even on the busiest days of the Big Show that I can find a place to boondock far enough away from folks that their noise doesn’t bother me.
Remember I said most folks like to park close to pavement? this is a good example of that. Highway 95 that I came here on from Yuma is about 200 yards off to the right, and I still managed to find a little privacy away from the crowd.
humans are herd critters, and for reasons that I will never understand they love to live right next to each other….I guess it’s the safety in numbers thing.
I feel there’s safety in numbers also if those numbers are .45 and .308