theboondork's RV blog

Hunkering down

12/6/2020

Clicking the pics is easy. Dealing with the aftermath is devastating.

Yellow flowers that always look to me like mini bananas to me.

Since the biggest holidays of the year are coming up in a few weeks, I've been giving some thought to where I should be hunkered down to ride them out.

Unlike during the Thanksgiving holiday, I didn't have lots of options when it snuck up and left me with very few places to go. Now I've got several reasonable alternatives, and only my procrastination and indecisiveness keep me from figuring out what to do.

I could stay right where I'm at, I've grown to like this spot, but I would probably get bored sitting here until New Year's.

I might spend 40 bucks and check into an LTVA for two weeks, which is near the top of my list of things to do. But it ties me down for two weeks, and I wouldn't say I like being tied down if I can help it.

I could go to Wickenburg, Arizona, and stay at Box Wash; I love that place. Or I could drive down the road a ways from Wickenburg and stay in Congress on some BLM land outside of town. I really like the old 1800s cemeteries there.

I could stay in Dateland, Arizona, on Interstate 8. It's nothing more than a truck stop with an RV Park, but there are some cool things about it. You can get a world-famous Date milkshake, and there are some old deserted World War II Army Air Force bases in the area that are interesting to explore. And best of all, train tracks are running right next to the RV Park that allows excellent opportunities to get close-up pictures of trains going by, and I do love trains. But I would get bored after a week, so it's not a good place to hunker down for the holidays.

I could hang around Ajo, Arizona, out at the old Rodeo Grounds until the holidays are over; it's one of my favorite places for peace and quiet. However, it's not all that quiet when the Air Force and Marine jets fly over going to the nearby bombing range, but I do enjoy taking their pictures as they roar by, and like my dad used to tell me when we were living on Air Force bases... "It's the sound of freedom,".... So the noise doesn't bother me... Generators bother me, Air Force jets don't.

Or I could keep easing on down the road to Tucson, where I'm planning on being by the middle of January anyway for the Rodeo. But that would mean I would have to stay there for a long time, like a month or so, and even though there's a lot to do there, and I have the boondocking area almost all to myself when I've been there, it's still a long time to be in one place when there are so many other places I would like to spend some time. But with all the events going on there, it has become one of my favorite places to be.

But no matter how much I think about it, it won't make any difference in the end. One morning I'll wake up, look out the window, and say to myself, I think I'll leave today, and I'll be off to wherever I feel like at the moment, knowing that wherever I end up, I'll be happy because there are no wrong choices.

theboondork

I think this is some kind of a Yucca plant but I'm not sure.

Crowds at the dome rock area here in Quartzsite.

Dome rock, and some jeep trails.

6 Comments

Judith

12/6/2020 08:14:57 pm

Ah, a plethora of choices. I suspect something will percolate up and you'll take off for a new place. Still, it's nice to have choices.
And what ARE those yellow flowers that look like bananas? I know you know. You're just being cagey.

Tom

12/6/2020 08:54:28 pm

Yes, an old buzzard will always find a place to roost, it's just a matter of where. You've got me figured out, Cagey is my middle name, those little mini bananas are flowers from certain types of Aloe Vera plants.

Tom

Linda

12/7/2020 01:46:37 pm

When I was going to Arizona for the winter, I'd buy a seasonal pass for the LTVAs. That meant I could come and go to any of them all winter as my mood changed. If I totaled 10 weeks of stays over the six months I was in that area I would come out even. So I could stay for two or three nights, go somewhere else then come back again. That also meant I had a place where I could dump and fill and get rid of trash without extra expense even if that's all I chose to do on the visit. To me, that was another way of spelling freedom. None of this I have to stay two weeks to get my money's worth.

12/7/2020 05:14:18 pm

You right Linda, that seasonal sticker is the best, and most economical way to go if you're going to stay generally in that part of Arizona. And I can see in the future when I stop traveling as much, buying a seasonal pass for the LTVA's and an annual nonresident sticker for the New Mexico state parks and splitting my winter between those two states.

But right now I still have those happy feet that want to keep moving fairly often and since I have no desire whatsoever to scoot across the border to California, that pretty much has me always heading east when I'm in Quartzsite, and since I'm heading east, and Colorado is northeast, I might as well make that eastern direction part of my winter travels which is why I usually end up in New Mexico. Before I head North to Colorado.

But I do love my freedom, and I'm all for anything that enables me to stay as free to move about the country as possible. Which is one of the reasons I don't like to tie myself down with a weekly or monthly rate at RV parks in less I absolutely have to for some reason. But paying daily rates is so outrageously expensive I feel like a fool doing it.

But if I decide to spend my winter staying west of Phoenix and just running around the southwest part of Arizona, using the LTVA's that are scattered almost all the way down to Yuma would make perfect sense and is probably what I would do.

Thanks for the input Linda, it's always good to hear from someone that has driven the road before.

Tom

12/8/2020 02:40:23 pm

That pass is also good at a couple places in California like the one near Blythe that few people even know exists.

12/8/2020 03:00:59 pm

You must be right because I'm one of those people that didn't know that. Maybe because I tend to stay away from California, and have for many years.

I used to go there, in fact I was discharged from the Air Force at Travis Air Force Base just outside of San Francisco, as was, I believe all Airmen coming back from Japan at the time. I also went to Disneyland about 30 years ago. But California started rapidly going downhill as far as I was concerned and there was nothing there I wanted to see, and nothing I wanted to contribute my tourist dollars to, so I've lost touch with most things going on in California, including unfortunately, good things like boondocking places.

Tom

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Hunkering down

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