I spent most of the day Thursday preparing to move to Quartzsite. Donna had a number of errands. She rode the scooter to take a piano lesson from the teacher she had when we lived in Mesa. Then she stopped at Bed, Bath and Beyond. She must have enjoyed shopping there since she spent more than an hour in the store. When she returned and dropped off the goods from Bed, Bath and Beyond, she rode over to Sprouts and bought groceries. She came back from Sprouts with the scooter loaded. The under-seat storage compartment was full, she had a full grocery sack on the hook between her knees and a full backpack – $125 worth of groceries.

Grocery getter

Then she walked across the street to WalMart and bought more! From WalMart she stopped at the salon in the strip mall for a mani-pedi. – a treat to herself for getting her edited manuscript back to her publisher. I walked over to the nail shop to retrieve the groceries.

Friday we were up and at it by 8am. I finished packing  a few odds and ends, then dumped and flushed our holding tanks. I put the wheel on the trailer jack. This made hooking the trailer up to the coach really easy. We rolled out of the RV park at 9:30.

While we traveled west on I-10, I was looking at the price of diesel fuel at truck stops. Near Tonopah, I glanced at the fuel gauge. I couldn’t understand why it looked like we had more fuel than when we left. Suddenly I realized this fuel gauge reads opposite of our old coach. I thought the fuel level was nearly full. Not so – it was nearly empty!

We had just passed a truck stop with diesel fuel at $3.71/gallon. The next exit was a couple of miles down the road. I took the exit and backtracked to the truck stop. I put $300 worth of fuel in the tank (80 gallons) and got back on the road. I was panicking about the fuel level because fuel gauges aren’t the most accurate instrument. Having never filled this tank, I didn’t know if we would be out of fuel right when the needle hit “E” or not. Eighty gallons of  fuel in our 100-gallon tank put the gauge near the full mark, so we probably could have gone another 120 miles or so.

About 10 miles east of Quartzsite, we started seeing groups of RVs boondocking in the desert. Some of the groups had signs – they obviously had pre-arranged a meet-up in the desert. Others seemed to just gravitate near each other. This is common. Although people take their RVs to the desert to get away from it all, they seem to still want some sort of association with other RVers out there – maybe there’s a sense of safety in numbers or just a need for social interaction.

Before we knew it, we rolled right through Quartzsite. We saw the big tent on the south side of I-10, near US95. This is where the vendors will be concentrated over the next 10 days. We pulled off of I-10 at the Dome Rock exit, about five miles west of town. We drove slowly back towards Quartzsite on the frontage road on the south side of the freeway.

We saw clusters of RVs and checked the access roads. The roads are just trails in the dirt and rock of the desert. I didn’t want to pull into a road that I couldn’t get turned around on. Backing the trailer onto the frontage road would be a real pain.

We found a likely looking spot and pulled off the road. I temporarily parked and we got out to reconnoiter the area on foot. After hiking around for about 20 minutes, we had a plan. We rolled a few hundred yards south of the road and parked the coach on a fairly level ridge top. We’re situated with the coach facing east, bringing the morning sunrise through the windshield. Our door and awning face to the south. It’s a nice spot. We don’t have anyone within 100 yards of us, but that could change as RVs are still pulling in and looking for a good site.

Our little piece of desert

View from our door step

Donna fixed a chicken wrap with avocado for an afternoon snack, then we rode the scooter to the big tent. Friday was still a set-up day for the vendors – the show starts Saturday. We walked in and looked around. It seemed like we were the only ones previewing the show. It wasn’t completely set up yet, but Donna bought a hand-operated food chopper (salsa maker) from one of the vendors. When we were leaving, a security guy asked if we had vendor badges. He told us we couldn’t be there without them. We thanked him and left.

The Texas Star – a really cool old Flxible bus converted to an RV – is one of our neighbors.

Last evening, we had cocktails outside and watched the sunset. It was very peaceful. After dinner, we continued with another episode of Breaking Bad. We are so totally hooked on this series.

Cocktail hour

Today, we’ll head back to the big tent and maybe look around town as well. Other than that, we have no plans.

Sunset at Dome Rock