Quartzsite, AZ - Hi Jolly

Ah, we’ve finally busted out of Mesa. Not that we don’t like Mesa and we’ll definitely be back but we want to be on our way, to move on, to see new places, hike new trails, visit new museums, do something new. We’ve been in Mesa long enough and are beginning to repeat too much. However, we will miss the people we have met in Mesa. We had gotten some neighbors, Jerry and Ginny, in mid-December and had visited with them several times. Last year we had met Dolores and Smitty who lived across the street and we renewed the friendship this year. Frank and Dianne lived several lots down and we had gotten to know them also. That’s one of the few problems with being an RV’er, you meet friends but their journey takes them one way while your journey takes you another. You can only hope that you’ll meet somewhere down the road. When we left this morning, our neighbors all gathered around and there were hugs and good-byes and smiles. We hope to meet them all again.

We drove out of Phoenix on New Year’s Day, a great day to drive through Phoenix with very few cars on the road.

Our next stop is Palm Springs for 10 days then on to San Diego for a month. We’ve been both of these places but not long enough that the newness and luster have worn off. After that, it’s almost all new. We’ll get to draw new lines on our map, add new states to our archives, hike new trails, find new adventures.

However, we’ve got tonight in Quartzsite. Just for the night though, long enough to savor being camped out on the desert, to enjoy the quirkiness of the place, to peruse some of the shops and long enough to buy one of these:

(I’ve got to remember to tell Gary to take his hat off before I take his picture.)

Holy cow, what is he holding? It’s enough ice cream to feed a kindergarten. We asked for two flavors in a small cup - Blueberry Cheesecake for me and Mint Chocolate Chip for Big Gar. She piled in Gary’s flavor, then mine, then she added more of the MCC and then topped it off with more BC. It’s a mountain of ice cream - all for $4.00. Yep, we’re back in Thrifty Ice Cream territory. What a place to be. If there is a 10-star rating system for ice cream, Thrifty Ice Cream rates 12 stars. It’s that good. But what makes it even more spectacular is that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to buy it. There’s a reason why it’s called ‘Thrifty.’ And, the portions? They even have a special cylindrical scoop to ladle out those huge portions. Not one of those dinky little round ones. It’s so good and so cheap that some high-end restaurants have it delivered in unmarked containers.

Several years ago, towards the end of a hike in Palm Springs, I asked a woman on another trail where the best ice cream was. Rite Aid Drug Store she told me. A drug store? Huh? Yep, it serves Thrifty Ice Cream and has for years. Sure enough, in downtown Palm Springs we found the Rite Aid and it’s now an ap on our I-Phone. Another friend of ours who also knew the Rite Aid secret was terribly disappointment to learn that Thrifty ice cream in Rite Aid stores is not universal - they’d never heard of Thrifty Ice Cream in the Rite Aid in Memphis that she visited.

We also visited the Hi Jolly memorial in the Quartzsite Cemetery.

How apropos - a memorial for a quirky bit of history right here in quirky Quartzsite. ‘Hi Jolly’ is what the soldiers in the cavalry called Hadji Ali, a Syrian native brought over to the US to manage the desert camels. What desert camels you might ask. Seems that Jefferson Davis, who was the US Secretary of War in 1856 thought that camels would be just the ticket for transporting goods in the desert areas of the US. Cheaper than horses and they could carry more than mules. Perfect. In the first trip, 33 camels were bought in the Mideast and brought to the US along with several camel handlers, Hadji Ali being one of them. After a successful trip from Texas, where they landed, to California and back the experiment was dropped. It seems as if the other pack animals had problems accepting the camels (probably jealousy) and became quite fearful and jumpy around them. Also, about this time the lead proponent of the experiment, Jefferson Davis, left for another job and the experiment was dropped. The camels themselves were turned loose on the desert to fend for themselves. Many reported seeing them throughout the area for years and legends grew up around them.

Hadjii Ali then opened a freight business with some of the camels but that failed. He was later rehired by the army and worked as a packer for the cavalry, a scout and eventually became a miner in the Quartzsite area. On a personal note, he became an American citizen, married and had two children. When he was buried, his tomb was in the Quartzaite cemetery and in 1835 a memorial was dedicated to the Hadjii Ali and the Camel Corps. The memorial is made of local stones, in the shape of a pyramid with a copper camel on the top.

A plaque near Hi Jolly's tomb says of the camel experiment: "A fair trial might have resulted in complete success."

Legend has it that Topsy, Hi Jolly’s favorite camel was also buried in the bronze time capsule. However, other stories say that Topsy was given to the Los Angeles Zoo. Who knows?

Here are some other graves in the town cemetery.

Here’s my favorite, Tillie Lawrence. ‘She loved to dance.’

It was a splendid walk over to his tomb and back and, judging by the number of people who also made the jaunt, it is a most popular landmark in Quartzsite.

We returned to our RV out on the desert, fortified by the ice cream that we had found on the way, had dinner and enjoyed the sunset over the mountains with RV’s on the dark desert in the foreground.