Still Out In The Desert

Yep, we’re sitting out here in the desert with no plans to leave anytime soon.  I’m still not liking the “Navy showers” but it’s a small price to pay for all this solitude.

We don’t do a whole lot here but it seems like we’re in the car going somewhere every single day.

We had to make a trip to Quartszite to have a new inverter installed since ours wasn’t charging our batteries anymore.  Thank goodness for the extended warranty.  A bill that would have been over $1,000 ended up costing us only $150.

We’ve been to Parker several times for our grocery shopping and we’ve been to Lake Havasu City a few times for Rod’s dental appointments and bigger shopping.  The other day we went for Rod’s dental appointment and Jim & Ellie decided they didn’t want to go.  I drove around looking for someplace that had free wifi while I was waiting for Rod but nobody did.  The McDonald’s and the Starbucks neither one had wifi.  Weird.  Guess it’s not that big of a city after all.  I drove back to the dental office, parked the car and Rod came out.  What great timing.  We then went to Chili’s for lunch since we had a gift card (thanks again to John & Erica).

We even made a trip to Yuma one day and crossed the border into Mexico for a few needed “supplies”.  No time to stop and visit anybody as it was a quick trip.  Well, except that it took us over an hour in line to get back.  By the time we got back to our place it was well after dark.  Have you ever tried finding your home in the middle of a pitch-black desert??

Border crossing

One of our sunsets

And one of our campfires

We’ve had a few visitors to our “Compound” since we’ve been here but nobody stays for more than a few days.  Rollie & Gina were here for a few weeks but left to visit their son in California before he deploys to Afghanistan.  They’ll be back shortly.

Rollie cooking up some pork loins

Gina coming for the potluck

Doug & JoAnn came for a few days along with Fred & Jo.  We had a couple of potlucks with them.  I cooked up a bunch of salmon and now I have room in my freezer for some other kinds of meat.  YAY!!

Jim, Jo and Fred

We did get to finally meet Angela & Don from Vancouver Island in Canada.  I’ve “known” Angela online for several years now and we just missed each other last winter so it was good to meet this time.  We had lunch with them and Jim & Ellie in the “big” restaurant here in Bouse and then they came out to see where we were all set up.

Angela and Don

Mike & Janna’s cute little dog named Emmie

I took this pic the other night of the moon rising

So, we don’t know how long we’ll be here…

Out In The Arizona Desert

We made it out to the desert after traveling 1100 miles.  We drove a few hundred miles a day except for Sunday when we just had to have a down day so we could watch the football playoffs.  We’ve been traveling with Jim & Ellie and they like football as much as we do.  None of us root for the same team and NONE of our teams are in the Superbowl so we’re all still friends. 

While out here we don’t have any hookups.  For my non RV’ing friends, this is called “boondocking”.  We don’t have any electric hookups, no water hookups and we have to store our waste in our holding tanks.  We have a 2,000 watt inverter and a generator to power that. 

It takes quite awhile before we have to go to town to empty our holding tanks.  There is a city park here that charges $10 to dump our tanks and fill up with fresh water.  We went ahead and dumped our tanks because we had to fill up with propane anyway.  We figure we should be good for another week though.  Since this is all new to us too, we don’t know what our limitations are yet.  I didn’t want to experience this if we had to give up a whole lot and I didn’t want to pretend we were “camping”.  So far the only thing I don’t like is having to take “Navy showers”.  That’s where you get wet, shut off the water, soap up, shut off the water, rinse off.  Not a big fan of that but it’s a small price to pay for all this solitude.

Last stop to fill up with water before the desert

When we got to the desert the only ones that were there were JB & Brenda and Mike & Janna.  We scouted around until we found the perfect spot.  After putting up the satellite dish and leveling we headed over to JB & Brenda’s for Happy Hour and dinner.  They had prepared a feast for us.

Our sunset on the first night there

Soon after our group grew to fourteen!!  It’s such a beautiful spot out here I can see why others wanted to come.  Rollie & Gina,  Glenn & Sylvia and Mike & Pat all came on the same day.

Everybody was digging in to the buffet at Ellie’s birthday celebration!

Yummy cupcakes

A special one for Ellie

Rod and I have only been on one hike since we’ve been here.  It’s been so cold lately and then the wind kicked up bad so it’s just no fun to be out in it.

We found several beautiful saguaro cactus here

We also found a power pole but I don’t think it has any power….

Rod decided to take care of some dental work that really needed to be done and the closest place to have it done is in Lake Havasu City which is an hour and half drive from here.  Oh well, it had to be done.  He’d been putting it off long enough.

One of the perks of turning 62 (Ellie) is that you can sign up for a card to get into all the National Parks for free.  You pay a one time fee of $10 and they give you a what I call the “Geezer Card”.  Ellie & Jim decided to tag along with us to Lake Havasu City and while Rod was “relaxing” in the dentist chair we went over to the BLM office to get her card.

She looks so proud, doesn’t she??

The BLM office was somewhat of a museum with tanks of live snakes.  There was even a Gila Monster.  It was really cool looking at these things through the glass.  I had never seen a Gila Monster before.

Gila Monster!

Rattlesnake!

California King Snake

Another perk about going to Lake Havasu City

So, that about catches up to what we’ve been up to lately.  Mostly, potlucks, Happy Hours and shopping trips.  I think we’re going to move from our site again because we found another one that we like even better.  Although we love the spot we’re in right now it’s kinda soft and our front jacks are sinking into the sand below the rocks.

We can’t even see our “neighbors”