We spent one night in the Escapees Kofa Ko-op using our privacy curtains to keep from looking into our neighbors windows before we moved here to the Pilot Knob LTVA. Here’s the views from our side windows now.
Is it any wonder we’ve come to like desert camping?
Yet we are only about eight miles from Yuma, Arizona, with all it’s sights and amenities. The best of both worlds.
TTYL,
Linda
We spent all morning yesterday packing up and saying goodbye. About noon we pulled out of our campsite at La Posa LTVA near Quartzsite, Arizona, for the last time.
Then we got in line there to dump our holding tanks. It was a long line. By the time we did that, filled our fresh water tank, and dumped our trash it was 1:30 p.m. So we decided to skip the book exchange and move on down the road.
It’s a good thing we did. We pulled into the Escapee’s Kofa Ko-op park about 3:15 and their office closes at 3:30. They assigned us to their last available boondocking spot for the one night we planned to be there. We forgot we were supposed to register but not park so we could go buy groceries. By the time we remembered we decided to stay parked. Instead we did laundry and I hit their library for some new books. Everyone we saw while doing those tasks was friendly. Most said hello along with their smiles and we chatted some with other people doing laundry. I felt really welcome there. It’s a very nice park; I could see coming back for a longer stay.
As the evening went on some people left the boondocking area to move into the full hookups area then more people came into the boondocking area. We could have been number four on the list for hookups but, since we only planned to stay one night, we decided not to bother.
This morning we left there about 10:30 a.m. to run the rest of our errands. WalMart, of course, and Love’s to buy diesel. The diesel was less than $2 a gallon. That’s the cheapest it’s been since we hit the road. Then we went over to In N Out for lunch.
Then we headed west on I-8 back into California to check out the BLM’s Pilot Knob LTVA. At the agricultural check station they asked where we were coming from and Dave said, “Yuma.” They sent us on our way. Apparently anything you buy in Yuma is acceptable; we could have bought more fruit than just bananas.
Then we turned south on Sidewinder Road. What is a sidewinder, anyway? Isn’t that some dirty, low-down something or other? If so, why you would name your road that?
That brought us into the Pilot Knob LTVA which is another permit area. Since our previous permit is good until the end of the month, the camp host here just waved us on in. Permits for the BLM’s Yuma District are good everywhere around here. We bought the first one in Imperial Dam and used it in La Posa. We bought this one in La Posa and are using it here. It’s nice to be able to check out the various areas without always having to buy a new permit. I don’t think we’d stay here otherwise since the only service you get here is a dumpster. Lot’s of people stay in these LTVAs all winter. It’s only $180 for a permit good for seven months ending in April. Summer is free but I’m not sure anyone stays here then since it takes a LOT of solar panels to run an air-conditioner in these barely insulated rigs.
We moved to Pilot Knob primarily in hopes of getting a better Internet signal. My T-Mobile phone has five bars. Dave’s AT&T phone has five bars. Our Sprint aircard is just as slow here as it was in La Posa. Bummer. Maybe it’s time to break down and buy into the Verizon system. That’s what we intended to get when we wound up with Sprint because a guy Dave trusts said Sprint was the best thing at that time because of their deal with All-Tel. It’s not turning out to be such a good deal for us. Of course, we don’t know whether Verizon would have been a good deal where we’ve been traveling so far, either.
Anyway, we here for however long we decide to stay. In case you want to come visit our GPS coordinates are N 32.74085, W 114.76034. You might want to check in first, though, to be sure we didn’t move on in search of a better Internet signal.
TTYL,
Linda
It has become a tradition among those of us camped near Quartzsite, Arizona, with the Escapees Class of ’08 for Mike & Julie to go out exploring then come back with the name and location of a restaurant we should all go to. This time the place is called the Desert Bar. It is literally out in the desert north of Parker, Arizona. The site used to be a mine and the current owner is building a major complex there all off the grid. So far it’s a bar and grill all powered by solar panels with water from his own well. Come along as we go out for lunch.
You start by traveling four miles of road clearly labeled “primitive”. Our group went in three trucks. Other went by other modes of travel.
In the parking lot you have the opportunity to go to church. Since the bar is only open Saturdays and Sundays, some people may use this church to ease their consciences. We went on Saturday but these four members of our group checked out the church on their way in.
This covered bridge is the access to the bar itself. Those towers in the background are the cooling system. Wetting the tops cools the air passing through them down into the rooms below. The weather the day we were there was perfect–needing neither heating nor cooling.
Nearly everything on the premises is built from scavenged materials and those that aren’t are picked to blend in with those that are. Check out the faucet on this sink in the ladies room. The stalls are made of recycled hammered metal.
Here’s our group ready to tackle that four mile primitive road back out again.
The Desert Bar is a place you go for the atmosphere and the experience. Anyone passing this way should go there at least once. But take a truck not an RV.
TTYL,
Linda
La Posa LTVA is in the desert. The nearest town, Quartzsite, is a small town. If you need to do major shopping you need to go the a city. The nearest, Yuma, Arizona, is about 90 miles south on Highway 95. So, once Lee and Mary Jane came to protect our class graduation site from potential intruders, we headed to Yuma.
More or less. First we visited a bit with Lee and Mary Jane, then Jeri & Terry showed up so we visited some more–long enough for me to sunburn my neck. I need to pay more attention to my time in the sun.
So it was after 1:00 p.m. by the time we pulled out of our campsite. Then we needed to wait at a desert road for an Allegro Bus to cross. I wished it was Steve & Carol in Bessy Bus but it wasn’t. Then we stopped at La Posa’s service center to dump and fill and get rid of trash.
By the time we got to Yuma I was HUNGRY since we didn’t eat lunch before we left. So we made In N Out Burger be our first stop. One of the ways this place lives up to its name is by limiting your choices. Do you want a hamburger, cheeseburger, or double? Onions? Fries? Soda pop or milk shake? What flavor? That’s it. If you want something else, go somewhere else. But, what they have is so good, people line up at all hours of the day to get some. At the drive through, they have someone outside taking orders to help move the line faster. They really do get you in and out quickly.
Then we tried several gas stations before we found one selling propane. For those of you headed this way, Barney’s at the Fortuna exit from I-8 sells propane.
Then we went to the Escapee’s Kofa Ko-op to camp and to check it out as a potential future place to stay. We were really looking forward to a couple of nights of full hookups to get everything fully charged without having to think all the time about what electricity we are using. Except their office closes at 3:30 on Sunday so all we could do there was boondock until they reopened on Monday. It looked like a nice park but I had my heart set on hookups so we moved on.
We went to the Cocopah Golf Resort instead. Much more expensive than Kofa but very nice. Except they have their roads labeled backwards so all the one ways go the wrong way for getting into and out of their sites. And their idea of close to the laundry didn’t match ours. But we could have all the electricity we wanted. So we plugged in my Segway to recharge it.
The next day we ran errands.
We went to Arby’s for lunch and I ordered extra sandwiches to have leftovers. Dave says this is expensive grocery shopping but he sure eats those leftovers.
Then we went to Plaza Coin Laundry where we did six loads of laundry in a couple of hours. They have no machines out of order there; instead they have machine labeled, “My day off.”
Then we went to WalMart for groceries.
Then we went to Outback Steakhouse for our 42nd wedding anniversary dinner. Outback is not as good as Timberlodge but the steak itself was wonderful. I missed my traditional wild rice soup, though.
Then we went looking for a place for me to get a haircut. We found a SharpCuts but it had closed for the day.
So we went back to Cocopah for the night.
I badly need a haircut. It’s hard to comb wet hair this length after my morning shower. It curls around my ears in weird ways then sticks out when it dries. Then I remembered we have shore power. I used my hair dryer! For the first time in the six months we’ve been traveling. I only use it when my hair is too long to let it dry naturally and so far I’ve been getting it cut often enough to not need to dry it.
Then I went over to the park’s library to exchange books. There were two women in there. Each one was working her own jigsaw puzzle. They didn’t even look up. Apparently they are not friends.
Then we went back to the SuperCuts we found last night and I got a really good haircut. I like it when the stylists at the cheap places are good ones.
Then we went back to the coin laundry. We are missing a hand towel. They hadn’t found it, though.
Then we went to IHOP. Dave is a waffle freak and he likes theirs. Today they had a new offering: coffee cake pancakes. I tried the apple streusel and they were really good. This place only serves half the meat we are used to getting at IHOP, though.
Then we went to Target to buy a towel to replace the one we lost. We don’t carry backups of things like that so losing something we use regularly means shopping for a new one.
Then we went to Best Buy so Dave could buy a new backup system for his computer. He’s been backing it up to his iPod but since he bought a new camera the iPod no longer has enough capacity for all his photos.
With all our big city shopping done, we headed back to Quartzsite. We’ll come back to Yuma sometime and do the tourist things here. We saw signs pointing to lots of the ones I have on my to-do list but we would need to stay more nights to do them all and we’d prefer to be camped someplace cheaper when we do that.
One the road we saw a silver pickup truck with a purple scorpion on the side. That menacing look was spoiled by the bumper sticker that said, “I heart my beagle.”
Around here they have worker buses. These are school buses that have been painted white. You can tell they are worker buses because they each pull a flatbed trailer with two port-a-pots on it. They take the workers to and from the fields.
I guess I’ve been south long enough for new behaviors to develop. When I saw bus #16, my mind said, “diez y seis”, which is Spanish for sixteen. I don’t understand most of the conversations going on around us but some of my high school Spanish is, apparently, coming back to me.
Robert says I don’t take enough pictures now and he’s right So these are for Robert. The first is the “bridge to nowhere” and the second is the canons at the entrance to the Yuma Proving Grounds.
The turnoff to the Proving Grounds also says you can turn there and go 6 miles to the Imperial Dam Recreation Area. I wonder if that would be a better route than taking S24 was?
We passed a guy wearing just shorts and cap stopped by the side of the road. No one had yet stopped to check on him. Is this a case of “No shirt. No shoes. No service.”?
We saw a pickup truck pulling a double load. He had a trailer of off road toys behind his fifth wheel. I wonder if his truck is rated to pull, or more importantly stop, that heavy a load? And if he understands the implications of turning that complicated a setup? But, we got safely past him so now he’s only a potential danger to himself and others.
And now we are back at the La Posa LTVA where IYQ arrived while we are gone. So we all sat outside and talked until the sun went down and it got suddenly cold. It’s nice to have warm shelters to go into when that happens.
TTYL,
Linda
It’s been a week since I posted here. Yes, we are fine. I’ve just been too busy reading and doing other things to write. I have lots of new websites and blogs I am following and they take more time than I had anticipated. Plus, we are now in La Posa LTVA near Quartzsite, Arizona, where the Escapee Class of ’08 will have our graduation gathering so we keep having visitors. It’s fun meeting other class members. But, yesterday I didn’t finish my “morning” computer stuff until 5:20 p.m. Part of that is we don’t have the high speed connection we got used to having so every download takes longer.
Here’s some of what we’ve been doing for the last week.
We finally made a departure checklist and started using it. It helps. We don’t always do everything in the order listed but at least we get everything done. I print them from my computer. The first day we make a check mark by items as we complete them. The next day we turn that check into an X. The third time we use them we circle the X. The fourth time we cross the item off. Then I print new ones and we start again. I need to print some today.
WalMart has their online prescription refills system relating to my prescriptions as messed up as I had feared and we were not able to get the pharmacist to straighten it out. We couldn’t make her understand that what we see on our computer is not what she sees on hers. She insisted they are all there on hers so I should be able to see them all on mine. Maybe next time I’ll bring my computer into the store to show them what I see.
In places, I-8 runs so close to the border with Mexico we could see the fence. It’s pretty ugly.
There’s a rest area in the Imperial Dunes Recreation Area. Here’s the dunes and some dune buggy riders. The border fence is just on the other side of those dunes.
Nearby is the BLM LTVA field office with lots of people boondocking near it. That would be a safe place in spite of being this close to the border because it is so well patrolled.
Going up S24 toward the Imperial Dam LTVA area we passed lots of farm fields. If I tell you the products without adding proper punctuation we get, “Lettuce date lemons.”
Imperial Dam is one of those places where you can met friendly people. One guy told us there would be a parade of decorated vehicles about 6:15 and another told us there would be Christmas Carol singing at 6:30. We didn’t realize this place in California is on Arizona time so we nearly missed the parade and did miss the caroling because we were eating supper then. The parade went by too quickly to get decent photos but here’s the best one we got.
And here’s what camping at the North Mesa area of the Imperial Dam LTVA looks like in December.
Lots of elbow room but lousy Internet. We checked out the Coyote Ridge area but it was much the same. So when we went into town to buy groceries, I talked Dave into going north on Hwy 95 to La Posa LTVA instead of S24 back to Imperial Dam LTVA. S24 is lousy driving; we actually saw them plowing the mud off that road. And La Posa is closer to a town so the odds of getting good Internet reception are better there.
We went through our first Boarder Patrol road block check. The guy looked in our window, asked if we were both U.S. citizens, and waved us on. It wasn’t nearly as interesting as I thought it might be.
We are now at the class graduation site, protecting it from non-class members until someone else from the class comes to relieve us. That’s probably going to happen Sunday. Our whole class writes our plans in chalk so we can erase them easily. Apparently, we’re all commitment phobic. I think it’s mostly that there so much new stuff for us that we don’t yet know how to plan where we’ll be when. We make lots of plans, we just don’t follow them very well.
We had Christmas dinner here, just the two of us. We had turkey, potatoes & gravy, and cranberry sauce. The pumpkin pie was not edible. We need to learn how to use our convection oven.
Other than the pie, life is good.
TTYL,
Linda
