Quartzsite | CasaRodante - Our House on Wheels

We had been at my mother’s for about a week. We have helped her transition, actually Roxie did 90%+ of the work, to a life of recovery at home. We cleaned out her pantry, 4 hour job, but got rid of 80% of it. Went through her shoes and purses, put them on an organizer but only got rid of 10% of those. We decided we would leave in the mid to late evening so we could beat some of the heat, much like we did on the way over. We were able to tolerate the heat there with the 30amp connection and we got to test out our A/C units too!

We got out of Sun City West around 7:30. We weren’t quite sure of the goal for the night but we wanted somewhere cooler. Going back on I10 was not going to make ‘cool’ easy. I was thinking of possibly staying at the Flying J truck stop in Ehrenberg, AZ. We did so in our February trip to AZ. But February weather is much different that July! As we came into Quartzsite Roxie asked about staying at one of the BLM areas we have done so before. With further thought that seemed like a very good idea. My thinking was it was not going to be very crowded and it might be a bit cooler since there is no asphalt near.

We got to the Hi Jolly BLM site around 11pm and it was 93°. Better than Barstow on the way out at least. We could see another vehicle or two way in the distance but that was all that we saw. We didn’t go too far in, checked we were level and stopped. Put down the tongue jack a bit, set the truck parking brake, disconnected the umbilical and we were set. We turned on the fantastic fan, opened all the windows and let the breeze go. It did start cooling down but slowly. We didn’t much care as we were tired. I slept very soundly and I think Roxie did too.

Here we are in the AM:

It started getting hot right away. Time to leave! We had a quick breakfast at Steaks and Cakes in Blythe and continued west. It wasn’t getting much cooler!

As we kept on trekking we came across Chiriaco Summit. Roxie wanted to look at the dry camping spots that they had behind the General Patton museum. We looked at the spots and it is nice to have such free spots for travellers. We also decided to stop and check out the General Patton museum itself. It is something that we always say we should do sometime so this was ‘sometime’. We found it to be a very interesting stop. Not just Patton memorabilia but all branches of the service. It shows a relief map of the area with all the camps that were in use for the summer training. Patton chose this area of California, Arizona and Nevada for training troops to fight in Africa. This was very good preparation for what they were going to encounter. If you remember another post, they used the Salton Sea for amphibious training and that is what introduced the barnacles to the Salton Sea. Time to stream Patton from Netflix.

Here are some shots. Something you don’t see every day, a propeller on a vehicle with wheels:

Then a statue of the man himself:

We got back in the Air Conditioned truck and headed down the hot road. We started looking for lunch around Indio but ended up eating at Ruby’s Diner in Cabazon as we did in an earlier trip. We filled up on diesel at Morongo and headed to our RV spot for the night. We had to be there by 6pm or we would be in the overflow area. We didn’t want to do that. The GPS said 2 hours but this was going through LA and we had 4 hours available. Did we make it, find out on the next entry…

Well, roughing it as well as you can in an Airstream. I have felt guilty at times when I see the people in their tents scrambling around to take care of everything, especially if it starts to rain! I get over my guilt pretty quickly though.

This was our first full day (Day 12) at the Hi Jolly BLM north of Quartzsite. We got up late, because we didn’t have to do otherwise. I started tinkering on the portable solar setup I got. I made an adapter to go from the panels directly to my trailer umbilical The guy that sold me this did not recommend this as he felt directly to the batteries is the way to go. But if you know me you know I do not always take advice. After I got it all wired up I connected things and watched the Tri-metric in the trailer. I saw 13-14v and POSITIVE amps! It was working! Over the period of about 5 hours of sunlight I recouped about 10% of my batteries (200aH). I am pleased. I now have to figure a way to secure them so I don’t mind leaving them out when we go.

However leaving them out this day was not an issue. We did not go ANYWHERE! Well, except for a short bike ride around the BLM area. This is pretty rare for us, not going anywhere. I think we were so tired of going place every day on the trip that we just needed some downtime. It was great.

We got up the next day, again not early, and broke camp. Hooked everything up and got on the road. We were going to see about camping at a location I read about in a blog entry. Corvina Beach campground in the Salton Sea State Recreation Area. We stopped off in Blythe for lunch at 11am (local) since we were still on Arizona time. Leaving Blythe I decided we would take hiway 78 southbound which took us along some farming, over a mountain range, across some sand dunes and into the Imperial Valley. Then it was a short jaunt up hiway 111 to the site.

For some reason I went straight south out of Blythe instead of heading west to catch 78. This was most fortuitous for us. We had just done 2 nights of dry camping so we wanted to fill up on fresh water and dump the grey. We passed a city park (Miller park) and I saw a sign that said something about ‘dump’. I circled around and found it actually said “Don’t Dump Waste” right near a grate with fresh water spigots (there were actually 3 of these). I lined up the trailer to fill it with water and we did so. I then tried to call the City of Blythe to ask if it was OK to dump grey as I don’t consider it waste (that is the black tank). I could not get through to them so I made an executive decision.

I turned the trailer around and dumped the grey. It didn’t take long and I was at ease in doing so.

As we headed north in the Imperial Valley I knew we were going to go through Niland. What is in Niland? Salvation Mountain! I have been wanting to go here for years so we too a little side trip.

It is very interesting in every sense of the word. Check out their website to read about it. It is something everyone that everyone should see once, if you have a desire to. Below is a photo gallery of it. On the way out we saw a guy ride by on a regular bicycle that had been elongate about 6 feet. Then we saw a small sedan with couches on top and about 15 people piled in. We heard on of the volunteers tell some people that they should come out and camp, volunteer and then go take a bath in a local hot spring. Wow.