Quartzsite, AZ - Out on the Desert

Time to head out towards Palm Springs. We plan to stop in Quartzsite tonight and on to Palm Springs tomorrow. It rained a good part of last night and when we got up, it was still raining. I checked the radar and saw that there was a small hole in the rain coming up so we got ready to go. We also ran over to say good-bye to several neighbors since we won’t see them until the end of Feb when we return to close on the house we bought.

The rain hole came, we moved to an area where we could hook-up, ate breakfast and headed out. The traffic was lighter than a weekday on the road but the road was still crowded. We only had a few hours to drive and it went fast. Soon we were at Quartzsite for the night. We found a place out on the desert to camp, put out one slide, had lunch and took a walk into town.

We will be back here for the RV show in 14 days but right now they are setting up for the rock and gem show which starts next Saturday. We stopped at several booths to see their merchandise.
We were told that many of the rocks come from Brazil.

It never occurred to me that you could own a fossil yourself. I thought that all fossils were in museum. Shows how little I know. Here are some cool fossils. But, there is no place to display a fossil in an RV.

OR - are these ‘made’ fossils? Check these out - all of them on the table are quite symmetrical, have the same 3 objects on them and have very regular lines going through them. Seems that they are almost too perfect.

Or, am I too cynical?

I liked this globe but it’s difficult to do the globe since it changes so quickly.

I’m sure that there will be lots of rocks and gems here during the RV show so we’ll tour some more.
It had rained quite heavily here last night and there was still running water. There is a road running right through this wash, much of it is covered by water and sand now. We walked through this wash several years ago when it hadn’t rained for a while. Note how the water is running over the road and how the brown water to the right has found its own channel and is rushing through it.

We saw this U-Haul truck and learned a bit about geography. We love the read the U-Haul trucks.

We found another type of sale around the corner. At first we wondered where they found all these skulls. Did some one wander the desert and found them that way? Or did some rancher had a bad year? Probably neither - these are probably from the beef packing plants where they slaughter cattle for sale. Not only do they sell the meat but they sell the skulls also. Then someone puts them out in their backyard to weather and then to the shows for sales to customers.

Back at our campground we found this campsite. No RV near it but two fold-up lawn chairs were near a campfire ring. Someone must be planning on returning with their RV soon.

And, we found this cool little house with a porch on the side. I don’t know why this picture is blurry. I must have had too much Coke to drink.

Time for dinner. It sure gets dark out here. No street lights and no stores. Perfect. Lots of stars.