Quartzsite, AZ
Now, let's see, where were we...

We pulled into the B-10 campground in Quartzsite on Monday, did some exploring of the town on Tuesday, including hitting the humungous flea markets (such as the Main Event on Main Street, and the Tyson Wells Flea Market on Kuehn Street):



Pic #1 of Tyson Wells



Pic #1 of Tyson Wells



Welcome to Quartzsite!!

On Wednesday, we moved into the Tyson Wash area of the La Posa BLM land area. We found us a nice little "isolated" spot (well, as isolated as one can get surrounded by snowbirds, LOL)



About 15 minutes after we unhooked, we got to meet one of our neighbors - a gruff but friendly old guy named Roy came over to greet us. Like many folks we've met boondocking, it turned out he was a musician as well ("ya don't mind if I make some noise with my guitar, do ya?"). Mike was only too happy to point out that I was one as well (tho' I wasn't really sure about revealing that - this is "country" area, and I'm not sure I'd fit in, but what the hell...), so we agreed to go over and "jam" with him if and when we were around to do so.

On Thursday, we drove down to the Imperial Dam BLM area to take a look around there. The spirit of that place was more like Slab City, in the respect of folks being allowed to run their businesses and stay as long as they wanted there. But it wasn't as pretty as La Posa (I thought).

A trip through the Imperial Valley, and we ended up in Yuma. It wasn't as small a town as I thought, but folks there were pretty friendly (a nice congenial mix of seniors and Mexican immigrants - WAY different atmosphere than what I witnessed in San Diego). The KFC lady was kind enough to give us easy directions to the local Walmart when we stopped for lunch, and even at the super-crowded Walmart Supercenter, folks went out of their way to say "excuse me" or "pardon me" - DEFNITELY something I didn't have living in CA all my life.

Outside of that, Yuma seemed pretty much like Santa Clara, CA - full of chain stores and auto dealers lining the main highways, with LOTS of mobile home and RV parks instead of overpriced suburban real estate.

On our way back, along HWY 95, outside of Stone Cabin, I stopped and took even more pictures:








I took this picture because I, initially, thought this was a "Stone Cabin". I eventually came to find that not only was it not a "Stone Cabin", but that the "Stone Cabins" were about 5 miles off the highway, off of dirt roads. We decided to leave that for another time.

On Friday, we ran some errands in the morning and relaxed in the afternoon. Mike heard Roy picking on his guitar in front of his rig and went out to join him. I eventually followed with my guitar. Roy taught me a few tricks (he can do lead and rythym at the same time!!), and while it was obvious that I wasn't a country musician, I was able to play along and enjoy his company.

Today, we're hitching up and moving on to Parker, where we'll be staying at the Blue River RV Park (right by the Blue River Casino). The T-mobile access map says there's no cellular internet connections there, so the next update on our travels will either happen in Williams, AZ (sometime next week), or Vegas (which we should hit around the first week of February).

See ya then!! :^)
- posted by Bigstarlet @ 9:36 AM

 
Quartzsite, AZ
Today has dawned bright and beautiful in BLM land...

I've never camped among cactus before, so this pic was quite a thrill.

Sorry if it's a bit big...



Nothin' like a caravan to spoil your view of the mountains, but, hey! This is public land after all



Batteries are running low...I'll upload some more pics later...


- posted by Bigstarlet @ 4:32 PM

 
Quartzsite, AZ
Well, outside of the quick little Christmas greeting, I haven’t updated the Travelblogue since we left Sacramento. There’s been several reasons for this: 1. We spent a month in the Bay Area, and it was less for touristy reasons than to visit family and friends (it was around Thanksgiving, after all, and we also offered to help two of Mike’s best friends move). 2. We spent ANOTHER month in Slab City, which, again, while it was beautiful and all, and certainly a unique, and for me a singularly life-changing experience, as you are about to find out, it was primarily to rest our weary bodies and heads, not to mention giving our finances a much needed break (it turned out we had spent half our travel budget just from hanging out in the San Francisco Bay Area, paying for overpriced RV parks and going out to dinner with friends among other things; we decided that, as much as we enjoy the company of our family and friends, we’ll be crossing that destination off our future RV travel destinations – we were natives there anyway, so the place is primarily nothing new to us and we’ll be moving to Reno when this is all over, so we’ll be three hours from said family and friends – huzzah!!) . 3. In some of the places where we stayed, the signal for our cellular modem was either slow, unstable or just non-existent (just getting online in Slab City was a chore that involved figuring out which time of the day was best, how to work out running the laptop using the house solar power without running down the house batteries, among other things). Therefore, posting pictures was a bit tricky at best (I think I got lucky on New Years Day, when I posted my performance pics on my OTHER blog).

Anyway, enough with the excuses, here’s what we went through!

From November 15, 2003 through December 12, 2003, Mike and I resided in and around the Bay Area proper. First stop was a night in the Vallejo Walmart where, despite the no overnight parking signs posted everywhere, we were not disturbed (well, we did try to make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible, and parking in what was technically the Food4Less parking lot probably helped). Next was Larkspur, so as we could see my brother and sister in Law in Mill Valley and my mom in Sonoma, as well as several of Mike’s best friends in Corte Madera and San Rafael. The park we stayed in was probably the most expensive we had been in yet: $35.00 a night, $230.00 a week for what was essentially a gravel pit with hookups, and no amenities, such as a shower or a Jacuzzi (the pool was closed for the winter). Laundry was the most expensive I had seen anywhere: 2 bucks to wash a load of laundry! EESH!!! What the park lacked in amenities and ambience, it made up for in convenience and scenery: The 101 highway entrances were a block away, it was a five minute walk to a mall where one found a Barnes & Nobel as well as a Cost Plus, and the Larkspur ferry was a 10 minute stroll away.

Plus the back wall had been knocked down so that folks could take their dogs out walking and/or jog on the abandoned railroad tracks in the back of the park and view scenery like this:











One day, Mike and I went bike riding up to Tiburon and I took the opportunity to stop along the way and take some pictures:




Two of my infamous trail pics – These went along the Marin Wetlands



Mt. Tamalpais



A trough in Corte Madera



A nice view of St. Quentin – folks STILL think it’s a hospital!





Some pictures of Tiburon taken from our vantage point

After a week in Larkspur, we spent a several days in Vallejo, primarily so as we could have easy access to Mike’s family and East Bay friends, and also be closer to San Francisco, in terms of driving. We weren’t all that impressed with the Vallejo RV park. Aside from being not much less expensive than the Larkspur one ($30 a night), we were kept given reminders that we weren’t in the best of neighborhoods (apparently, the hotel next door was populated with crack fiends and the like). Fortunately, we kept having people over, so our place looked occupied for most of the time we were there.

The day after Thanksgiving, Mike and I went to San Francisco for the annual “Bird and Brew” at our friends the Riggenbach’s cave, er, apartment. It was essentially 30 to 40 people chowing down on turkey and having scintillating conversation concerning anarchist and libertarian philosophy, among other things, in an area the size of a normal walk-in closet. Hey! you can’t beat a meal that looks like this:





Thanks Suzanne!!!!

Also while there that day: I took the advantage to shoot some street scenes for your pleasure:



Hiphoppers




Powell Street



Good ole Union Square



I thought this wailing harmonica player looked good enough for some, er, “fame”.

After Vallejo, Mike and I hung out in the East Bay, alternating between spending the night at the County Fairgrounds RV park in Antioch (so as to spend some time with Mike’s family), and boondocking in an old Montgomery Ward parking lot just off of the 680 freeway in Pleasant Hill. We ended up spending a good week living in that parking lot, which, as it turned out, was a pretty popular stop over spot for truckers as well as other travelers. Every once in a while, Pleasant Hill’s finest would drive by, but we just figured they were doing their job (tho’ we did get a little concerned when one of our friends visiting us at said lot for dinner was swigging some exotic liqueur right around the time a cop drove by. And while he did slow down, when Mike went outside to greet him, the guy just smiled and went on his merry way). At this time of the year, the Christmas Festival and Mart was happening at that particular mall, so I’m sure our patronage was appreciated. On top of that the “new Pleasant Hill downtown” (really, just a built up outside mall) was a couple of blocks away on the other side of the freeway, and, along with the plethora of both independent and chain restaurants and bookstores, a Peets’ coffee house had just opened!! YUMMY!!!

We were in Pleasant Hill just to help our friends Brian and Sharon move from their old apartment to their new house. Once that was done, we hightailed it to Lake Chabot Campgrounds. We had just realized how much cash we had hemorrhaged while staying in the Bay Area, and we were anxious to get out and into less expensive areas. But we had a few more people we need to see, and, well, it’s hard to beat this kind of scenery for 20 bucks a night on county grounds:






We spent 3 days at Lake Chabot visiting my friends Randy, Serena and Rick (Thanks Rick for all those CDs!). After that was done, we spent two days at an RV park in the wilds of Morgan Hill, off of Watsonville Road:




Mike relaxed from his travels, while I FINALLY got two weeks worth of laundry done, and went to see my OTHER friend Rick, and his friend Bill, in Aptos, where we did what we usually do at Rick’s place in Aptos: Power up the synths, the Tascam SX-1, the mikes and the guitars and jam over some loops. Rick felt we had some good song ideas going there. Hopefully, I should get some samples soon to provide for you of what we did!

After Morgan Hill, Mike and I raced to the Walmart in Bakersfield for our first boondocking experience outside of the Bay Area in a month. We were joined by other travelers and also took advantage of some really good, as well as inexpensive, Chinese food in that particular mall.

The next day, we raced through the Mojave Desert to our next destination, the Yucca Valley Walmart for yet ANOTHER night of boondocking. Along the way, I took some more of my infamous road pics:




The Walmart in Yucca Valley was actually pretty picturesque at night. I was kinda sorry that I wasn’t able to take a picture of the hills at twilight, but the next morning, I got to experience the Yucca trees across the street from the Walmart parking lot:





After that, it was Slab City or bust. And at 12:30 pm, we rolled into Niland off of Hwy 111, made a right onto Main Street, and drove 3 miles into a free thinkin’, free-livin’ paradise that starts at Salvation Mountain. We had a few false starts (including one guy who warned us about parking right by his urinal), but eventually we settled in Area 3, an area that wasn’t too populated and wasn’t too sparse, and afforded us views and sunsets like these:





This blog entry is already incredibly long, and I could go into incredible amounts of detail on how cool Slab City is, but well, this person could explain it better than I can. I’d just assume show the pictures and tell what happened.

The last time I was in Slab City, there was this godawful smell of rotting lettuce that permeated EVERYTHING, and even stayed in the trailer up to two weeks after we left the place. This time, no such smell occurred. We did get some nice breezes, and some FREEZING temps at night (darn! I guess I’ll have to keep those tank tops packed away a little longer), but one of the coolest things to happen in our first two weeks here was to experience the community Christmas Lights parade.

The following pictures don’t do it justice, but 5 of the folks who live here dressed their cars in Christmas lights and paraded around Slab City and Niland on December 23 and 24. It was a sight to see:




Another thing that happened was that Mike encouraged me to sing at Slab City’s outdoor venue, The Range, for jam nights. The crowd and the other musicians (Stephen, Sticks, Brad, Jaye et al), as well as the venue owner Builder Bill (everyone there is known by their CB name) that I was asked to sing at their New Year’s Eve Party.

As you can see, it was a swingin’ old time:






To say that this provided an epiphany for me was an understatement. I had no idea I could move a crowd until I came to Slab City. I felt really comfortable onstage, and since I am striving to be an entertainer of some sort anyway, this REALLY boosted my confidence. I'll definitely be looking into singing gigs when we get to Reno!

Despite a small two day side trip to El Cajon, Mike and I spent a good month at Slab City. The jams brought us closer to the people there, and got us a little more involved with exploring that community and the surrounding areas.

We got to visit the library started by the late Rosalie:





We also spent a day running around the Salton Sea:




Eventually, alas, it was time for us to go. We are seeing that this trip might be ending soon, and we wanted to get some more sites seen on our schedule. We said goodbye to all our new friends during the last Sunday afternoon jam that I sang at, exchanged addresses, phone numbers and emails (I also recorded some of those jams to mini-disc, so I’ll definitely need those addresses), and wished everyone the best of luck (especially Brad and the potluck/talent show on the 31st! Whew!) Brad came over later and had dinner with us, and we ended up recording one of his songs to mini-disc as well. I’m hoping, when I have time during our travels, that I’ll be able to do justice to his tune with some kind of backing arrangement.

On Monday, Mike and I hitched up, barreled down Hwy 111 through Brawley, turned onto Hwy 78, and drove through the Imperial Dunes. We had been there before, but I wanted to stop and take some pictures, so, we pulled out onto the lookout along Hwy 78 (which was stuffed with RVs and Toyboxes, but we still found some room to park) and I did a little snapping:




We continued on through a pass in the Chocolate Mountains. When the “Check Engine” light came on, Mike pulled over to give our truck “Hank” (yep, he’s named Ole Hank) a rest, while I did some more snapping:




After a brief stop in Blythe (where I ordered lunch from the slowest Dairy Queen I’ve experienced in recent memory), we waved California goodbye for quite a while, as we crossed the Colorado River into Arizona.

Mike had made reservations for us to spend a couple of nights at the B-10 Campgrounds in Quartzsite. The first thing I noticed as we drove through the desert: RVs parked all over the place! After the hoity toityness that was California, this was a rather refreshing change. Quartzsite was covered with tents and signs, the true persona of a perpetual flea market. I quite enjoyed it, and couldn’t wait to get some shopping done. But first thing we did was, after checking in and unhooking, was to scout for the LTVA facilities outside of Quartzsite. Oh Boy!! My first experiences with real, live cactus!! WOOHOO!!!





Mike and I spent the next several days getting our selves organized, going shopping (DON’T go to Big Market, DO go to the General Store), exploring the Main Event flea market (I bought two pairs of sunglasses and a small backpack purse), and getting more info on BLM land usage (we couldn’t just camp and pay per day, we had to buy a 14 day permit for 30 bucks. Oh well).

Tomorrow, we’ll be hooking back up again and hanging out in BLM land for a few days. After that, it’s off to Parker for a week while we visit Lake Havasu, Parker Dam, and other points in that area. After that it’s Williams, where we’ll see the Grand Canyon, Flagstaff and Sedona. If we get a signal there, I’ll fill you in (we should get one in Williams, at least).

In the meantime, I’ll do my best to maintain. Two months is an AWFUL long time to be incommunicado…

- posted by Bigstarlet @ 1:15 AM