quartzite

Click the pics if you must.

Christmas in Tombstone.

I went to Walmart and bought a few groceries in Benson, which is the big town in the area, even though it would be considered a small town in most places. But there's not much going on in this part of Arizona, so there's no need for big towns, which you won't see until you get to Tucson.

I also filled up a 5-gallon propane tank at $3.75 a gallon, which is just about double what it was three or four years ago. The cheapest place I see propane nowadays is in Quartzsite, maybe because there are so many RVs there, and since they all use propane, there's enough competition to keep the prices down.

 I talk about all the boondocking in Quartzsite, fairly often making it sound like boondocking is all there is. But the biggest business in Quartzsite is RV campgrounds. There must be at least a dozen open during the winter season. and it appears that they stay full most of the time.

Which is strange to me, considering you can boondock for free. But many folks either can't or don't want to cut the cord and live on generator or solar power. But to me, the best part of boondocking is not how you power your camper; it's the freedom of parking where you want, coming and going when you want, and enjoying being out in nature instead of being squashed up awning to awning with 100 other people while having to listen to your neighbor's TV.

But that's the beauty of Quartzsite... You get a choice. You can drive a mile off a dirt road in the desert and camp with hardly anyone else around. You can camp near a dirt road and get as close to people as you want. Or you can drive into town, stay at an RV park, and live just like you would at an RV park anywhere in the country.

Another choice is to pay $40 for a two-week stay at a BLM long-term visitor area," LTVA." And there, you will have access to dumpsters, dump stations, potable water, basically everything except electricity, where you can test out your boondocking abilities while still having access to the essentials. At the LTVAs, you still have a choice of how close or far away you want to be from your neighbors, and you can definitely get farther away from people than you can in an RV Park.

So, I'm looking forward to returning to Quartzsite one of these days this winter. My only rule is to avoid the place when the "Big Show" is happening, which I believe is January 20-28 this year; there are just too many people.

Tom

Schieffelin Hall. One of the largest, still standing, adobe buildings in Arizona.

A plaque outside Schieffelin Hall.

Cow Tongue Prickly Pear cactus. These look more like a Cows Tongue than any other Cow Tongue Prickly Pear cactus I've ever seen.

This pickup truck with digital camouflage on it is so well camouflaged I didn't even see it. I was just taking a picture of a building never knowing there was a truck there. because all I could see was a ladder floating in the air. So I don't know why I'm showing this picture since you can't see the truck either.

So you can just ignore this picture, unless by some miracle of nature you have special eye-balls that can see this camouflaged truck, in which case the military will pay you millions of dollars to look at pictures and identify the location of camouflaged vehicles.