Build it, and they will come.
I got on the road this morning at about 7 a.m., stopped at London Bridge to take a few snapshots, and had an uneventful drive into Parker, Arizona.
I stopped at Walmart, bought a few things, and decided not to stay overnight at the Bluewater Casino but to drive to Quartzsite. I pulled into the first BLM-dispersed camping area, Plumosa Road, and settled in for the night.
I never had the opportunity to wash my clothes in Lake Havasu, so I guess I'll try both laundromats at Quartzsite again. They can’t stay crowded forever, or can they?
Quartzsite should be pretty much cleared out of "Big Show" people. Plenty of people will still be there, but they will mostly be the normal winter population. Quartzsite is pretty well set up to handle that amount of people without everything being overloaded, which is why I don't mind going back there.
There are other reasons why I like Quartzsite. Propane is the cheapest. I've seen it for a while, probably because there's plenty of competition in Quartzsite to keep the prices low. The city dump is free, so I always have a place to get rid of my trash. Water is fairly cheap, at 25 cents a gallon or 5 gallons for a dollar. And, of course, camping doesn't cost anything, and there are plenty of different boondocking areas to try out to find out which one you like best... I pretty much like them all, but Dome Rock is my favorite. But it is a long drive from Dome Rock to the Walmart in Parker.
Theboondork
I always liked this kind of old van; it reminds me of the 1980s, when everybody was customizing vans, including myself.
Before customizing shops started putting raised roofs on vans, you could buy a fiberglass raised roof and put it on your stock van yourself.
It took a lot of guts or a lot of missing brain cells caused by the overuse of alcohol to sit in your driveway and cut the roof off of your van. I cut a hole in the roof of my van to put in a vent fan, and even that was traumatic.
There’s been some cloudy days giving me a better chance at sunset pictures.
I got to the London Bridge at about 7:30 this morning, and since it was cloudy and in the mid-60s, it was pretty chilly. I was the only tourist here, but there were a few early morning walkers on the path along the river that goes for miles.
I really liked this picture, don’t know why, I just do.
The walk along the river is paved and lined with restaurants, gift shops, motels, hotels, and everything else that tourists visit places like this to see.
The star, of course, is the London Bridge itself, which never ceases to amaze me at the foresight it took to buy this bridge in London, disassemble it, put it on boats, and send it to America. Truck all these stones out to the middle of a godforsaken desert where nobody lived, hoping enough people would come to see it to pay for the millions of dollars this endeavor cost.
I admire people with the money and the chutzpah to take the chance of building a bridge in the desert, knowing that if their wild and fanciful ideas don't work out as planned, they will look like complete fools to the entire country.
But the London Bridge did work, and even better than they had dreamed, and it is well and truly proof of "Build it, and they will come."