A Couple of Gorgeous Days, Silly Al’s Once More, Moving out of Quartzsite

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday kind of all jumbled together. I’m talking about Jan. 29^th, 30^th and 31^st. The weather straightened up in Quartzsite, giving us what long-timers have been talking about, finally.

Our days were filled with lots of reading, lazing, a few trips into town, a bit of spending, eating out and some fantasy ‘window’ shopping. I told you about Bill and I climbing the mountain with Gerry and Melinda on Saturday, so the only thing we didn’t do that day was take Bill’s drone to the base of the mountain and get some sky-view shots of the apex and the flag.

But here is the tip top of the mountain captured on Monday

Also, I think I mentioned that we drove around Q Mountain Vista and saw many properties for sale. When four curious minds get together, look out, you never know what might transpire. We encouraged each other enough that we made a call to the realtor and made an appointment to view the property we liked. Just for fun.

Top of Q Mountain from the drones point of view

I had a great long walk, over 3 miles, part of it with Gayle, my big sister on Sunday morning. She and her hubby were pulling out Monday to go to Imperial Dam so we might not see each other for a while. It was a good time spent together.

Early in the afternoon, she texted and invited Bill and I to go to Silly Al’s with them as a goodbye dinner. I thought it was nice that she also invited ‘the group’ of our friends that they met at Pilot Knob over Christmas and a few times at Quartzsite. We all met around 4:15 and easily got a table for 10. Lots of laughs, great food and we left around 5:30 with full tummies and the odd doggy bag.

Even though the show in Quartzsite was officially done Sunday night and a lot of rv’ers left, the internet feed for us in our Suite still left a lot to be desired. I didn’t have the patience to fight with it long enough to post on my blog for a couple of days. Life was happening outside in the sunshine and I took advantage of it out of doors for a couple of days.

I'm not sure why the smug look but this was how I spent
a lot of these last two days

Monday, Bill called the realtor and made an appointment to view the property mentioned earlier and the four fantasy-filled friends met him in town. We knew it was a pipe dream, but sometimes if you don’t have those, nothing at all ever happens. These side by side lots were awesome with a park model on one lot and an rv shelter on the other. Oh well, we always have fun with Gerry and Melinda no matter what we do. Even if it is dreaming the impossible dream.

                                                                 

The rest of that beautiful day was more reading, dozing and relaxing in the sun. I can’t believe after all those windy days, I was grateful to turn my face into the breeze on this hot one.

Bill and I hosted Happy Hour at 3 and the gang joined us and toasted to our last day, our last Happy Hour at the Q this winter and the good times we’ve had. The stories continued and it was nice to see the 3 dogs starting to get along. The ‘party’ broke up around 5, time for dinner and another beautiful sunset.

Bill and I packed up what we could before it was time to turn in. That left it really quick on Monday morning to finish up, grab a bite to eat and get on the road. The hardest part was saying goodbye to our friends, but we know we’ll see a couple of them before the journey home again.

All packed up and ready to go

Leaving our good friends behind

The Whites' and The Rousseaus'

We made a stop at the Extreme Clean Truck Wash off I-10 at Ehrenberg, Az and got both the truck and the Suite washed.

Shiny like new, ready to go

This is something we knew we would take care of before much longer. While waiting, we popped over to Wendy’s beside the Flying J and ate things for lunch that taste good but are not so good for me.

 I’ll have to work it off this week. We had to share with Clemson of course under the watchful eyes of these birds. Pesky things!

Beautiful sights

We arrived at Banning, California around 2:15 and started the 9-mile trek UP the winding 2-lane highway 243 towards Idyllwild. It didn’t take long to realize that I wasn’t going to like this route. A quick glance at my confident driver

 told me that he wasn’t crazy about it either. However, we took it slow and made it to Poppet Flats Rd. to Silent Valley Resort and we were set up on our site by 3.

Snow covered mountains and turbines galore

Looking over the cliff - sneakily

Huge rocks on the trek up to 4000 elevation

Arrival at the park

 There were a few disappointments when we started learning about this ROD park. We were quite anxious to get into a park after boondocking for a month. You know, full hookups, longer hotter showers, all the electrical you need without worrying about sunshine providing solar power and not having to think about how full the tanks are getting and where do you need to get water. It sounded really good.

Here, in this park, we have all that. We have a great site, facing the east south direction so I’ll get as much as sun as the sky provides. The temperature was 66F when we arrived and before long I was changing into shorts to cool down. The park is very pretty, what we’ve seen of it and it was a bonus that we were able to pick our own site. I like that especially.

Just a few pictures here of our fun drive to the park.

check out the low elevation
We are now at 3500 '

It didn’t take long to realize that we did not have any cell service on our Roam Mobility. Strike One.

Our own fault, but we neglected to pick up bottled water before we came as we understood they have a store and we were arriving in good time. We were informed upon check in (on a Tuesday) that the store, the Lounge, the Restaurant, the Family Centre and Snack Bar are not open Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Strike Two.

Strike Three hit when Bill tried to find the co-ordinates for his satellite dish. After way too long fiddling with this, we still were unable to get a connection. We missed our Tuesday night shows. This Strike hurt our social calendar!

Anyway, the biggest disappointment is the phone service. Luckily, we have good Verizon wi-fi so I was able to email family and a few friends so they wouldn’t worry about us.

Tomorrow, we’ll have to take the truck down that drive and perhaps this time take advantage of the beautiful scenery over that cliff. We need to head into town and pick up a few groceries, including bottled water for our pooch.

Just a few of the many pictures I took today

Tonight, we’re watching Jag re-runs from our dvd collection and we’re happy. I hope your past few days were good ones.

Thank you for reading and feel free to comment anytime.

J-e-l-l-o Plans, Strong Winds, No Reliable Internet Yet, Q Mountain, Bloggerfest

 Friday, Jan. 27^th in La Posa South was a day we had plans to climb the Q mountain with Gerry and Melinda. Meet at 10 and climb to the flag.

The Q mountain, flag at peak

We woke up to 37F and a strong 19-25 mph wind minimum. I had bundled up early and went for my walk around 8 am. Melinda and I met at one point, the conversation was brief as we shivered inside our jackets “It’s really c-c-c-cold”.

Bill asked “do you really want to climb that mountain today?”. No, not in this wind and by 9 it was still only 45F. Let’s do it another day. Jello.

While waiting for Bill to get cleaned up, I dug out the wigs that I’d purchased last summer. I was in a playful mood, so put them on with the encouragement of Gerry and Melinda next door. They didn’t recognize me the first-time I went over. Too funny. We had fun for about 30 minutes and then it was time to get serious.

Patsy and Gerry in our new dos

Instead of climbing the mountain we drove into Q to pick up some eggs for the Bloggerfest here at the pavilion on Saturday. I wanted to devil some up. At first, we drove to the bank and withdrew some cash, our CPP’s were in, yay! Who says we’re living paycheck to paycheck? We’re not, are to, are not!

The Roadrunner market was next for the eggs, bread and a few other things including post cards. Next stop was the Post Office to buy stamps to mail my post cards. This was disappointing as I stood in a long line for about 15 minutes only to discover she had no International stamps. Are you kidding me? Jello again.

From there we drove to the Chamber of Commerce on Main and I picked up a large map of the town and its vendors drawn and detailed by Paul Winer. He is very popular in this area. Paul runs the Oasis Book Store and is also a talented musician.

We thought we’d maybe stop and have a quick walk through the Big Tent again but the full parking lots turned that plan around. More Jello jiggling. We were back home again by 11 to relax for the rest of the day. Happy Hour was at George and Suzie’s where the wind was blocked pretty good. Tucker was happy.

The surprise at H.H. was when Melinda spotted a road runner coming up through the wash and ran behind us. 

He blends in with the gravel too much!

With Bill’s camera I was able to capture him but they’re not perfect photos. Our first roadrunner! Beep beep!

Supper was barbecued pork chops and salad and for someone who doesn’t normally care for them, I have to admit they tasted pretty darn good with some bbq sauce on them. I was hungry.

We read a bit and watched some tv until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The internet connection was soooo slow again, so I didn’t even bother trying and went off to bed around 9:30.

All cozy inside

Another good book

First thing I did when I got up Saturday morning was check the temperature, the internet and then the winds. 

Looks like we're good to go!

All 3 were pretty good but only to get on and read blog posts. No way could I check Facebook or read emails. I know things are happening back home and I’m not able to read about them. It is frustrating even though I know it is short term. The Jello is still jiggling.

We confirmed with Gerry that we would make the climb today and then nipped into the Big Tent for the last time, getting there just at opening. We had one thing in mind and that was to pick up some long telephone charging cords. Got a good deal and headed back home.

All bundled with warm clothes, good shoes, water, walking sticks and cameras the four of us went to the base of Quartzsite Mountain. Let’s do this! And do it, we did. From a distance, it didn’t look so scary. Twenty steps in and up, oh my goodness!

Gerry and Melinda reach the top

Well, we did it and we are all proud we did it. Each of us realized very quickly that we are not very fit. 

The 3 Mountaineers

No matter how much walking I do in a day, the type of exertion that it takes to climb a mountain on sandy loose gravel is a whole different ball game.

We toured around after the climb through Q Mountain Vista which is an rv home park. Lots of places for sale, some not worth looking at and others very nice. Found a nice corner lot with an rv shelter for $52,000. Not bad. By this time, with multiple calories burned, our tummies informed us that we were hungry for lunch and we checked out Carls’ Jr. for the first time.

The view was worth the climb

They have very good burgers, if you are interested. Bill and I each had a combo, burger, fries and medium drink and it was just a tad over $15. That is pretty fair pricing too. We’d go back.

We got back to the Suite in time to let our deserted little pooch out for a leg stretch and piddle then gathered our chairs for the Bloggerfest at 1 pm. Lorne and Sue from A Place Called "Away" hosted the event this year and it was a pretty good turn out with approximately 40 in attendance.

The sun was shining and we all took turns talking briefly about our blogs. The questions were “who are you, how long you’ve been writing a blog, why do you write, and is it work or play”. It was interesting to hear the different tales behind the bloggers.

Yuma keeping an eye on the other 4-legged visitors

Dee from Gone Rv’ing suggested a name for people who are not bloggers but people who read blogs. We all thought it was original to name them Blurkers.  (Blog Lurkers). It is a good thing! We need you Blurkers out there!

Lorne Green wraps the group chat portion up

 There were snacks to munch on while we mingled and put a face to a name we’ve only known on line. It was a pleasure to meet Doug and Yuma of Miss Adventure Travels and Jim from Jim and Barb's RV Adventure. Business cards were shared and Bill and I packed up my empty devilled eggs tray and our chairs around 3:30. Thank you Lorne and Sue for such a great job with the gathering.

We walked back in time to join Happy Hour for a while at Gerry and Melinda’s. My sister and her husband also joined us for a bit on their way back in from the Big Tent. It was nice to see them again and catch up on our travel plans.

We sure didn’t need dinner tonight so instead I’m sitting here doing this and Bill is reading his book. I was blown away when at 6:30 I was able to open my 13 unread emails as well as Facebook and even open my daughter’s two latest posts, Two Cents. YAY!

What I didn’t say to the group at the pavilion is that many of our family do read our blogs, Bill’s parents, 5 of our 9 siblings, 5 of our 6 children and possibly 1 of our 9 grandchildren as well as many friends back home. This is a real treat and even though they don’t post, they do like or comment on Facebook when we re-direct it to our home pages.

Okay, there are fireworks again this evening over Quartzsite, we assume, and a warm-looking, mellow sunset. I hope you had a great day. We did and we are exhausted tonight.

                                    

Thank you for reading, I’m anxious to follow up on many new blogs tomorrow after meeting so many wonderful people today.

Your comments are always welcome!