Quartzsite AZ
I had never heard of Quartzsite until recently. It seems the largest consumer RV show in the country (or so they claim) is held each year in Quartzsite. The town has a permanent population of maybe 4000, so it is pretty small. But it has lots of Bureau of Land Management territory around it. That makes for inexpensive camping, even if it is all boondocking style. There are also many, many commercial campgrounds in the town. Being almost into California, it makes for an interesting location.
There is a group of people who frequent one of the popular RV web sites who own the same brand of motor home that we have, and they congregate in Quartzsite every year for the RV show, and to hang out together. It’s a great group and there is a lot of interchange of information about our unique “beasts” and some very knowledgable people who will help with issues or problems.
I believe we had 40 or 41 different coaches here for the gathering. It was hard to keep track with some coming and others going throughout the week. As of today (Wednesday, February 1) we are down to just two RV’s left. It will be a much smaller group around the campfire tonight, for sure!
Last week was cold and had a bitter wind blowing for much of the week. Not so much fun, but it cleared up over the weekend and the temperature yesterday was 72 and a near perfect day. Today looks to be just the same. I remember being in El Paso in the desert and it got to be monotonous how gorgegous each day was with the sunshine (and very hot in the summers!). But it’s not a bad way to spend a winter day.
I’ve done some upgrade work on the RV with some chassis improvements and replaced the near useless tank sensors with a See Level system that works much better. The guy who builds the chassis hardware basically installed it for me, with me mostly watching and handing him the occasional wrench. I did the tank gauges myself, and It was a chore to get access to them to mount the sensors, but I now have good readings of what is going on. That’s not a major issue when you have full hookups, but becomes important when you are totally disconnected without moving the RV to a dump station and need to really manage the use of water and power.
And the solar system I installed before leaving Texas seems to be working pretty well. We don’t have enough sun to be totally off grid without tilting the panels to the south, which I really don’t want to do unless absolutely necessary, but we have greatly cut down on generator time (and fuel) with the system. So far, the maximum I have noticed is about 35 Amps with a controller rating of 40 Amps. I suspect it would max out a little later in the year when the sun is farther north, or if I tilted the panels.
From here, we’re going to Yuma for a few days (actually we will be staying in California on BLM land there) to do some touristy things, and then over to Tucson for more touristy things. Then back to Texas for spring break.
Quartzsite AZ
February 1, 2017
