The Oxford dictionary defines an oasis as a fertile spot in a desert where water is found. It can also be described as a peaceful area in our everyday lives. That is where Betty & I find ourselves in Arizona this month.
Now that we have added a solar system to our motorhome, we are able to sustain our own little fertile spot in the desert, without the need of a noisy generator to power our equipment. When we arrived in Quartzsite, we chose to stay in one of the four large, long-term visitor areas, comprising thousands of acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM – the equivalent of Crown Land in 
Canada) open land with no assigned camp spots. There is a paved entrance to each of the four, and we paid $40. total for a 14 day stay, allowing us to dump our tanks and fill up with fresh water as often as we need. There are other BML lands where camping is free. However, then you have to pay to dump & add water, so we thought $2.86 a day to camp isn’t a bad deal! (BTW, I think they have seasonal rates that are even cheaper!)
Attached to this post are some pictures of our current surroundings. One is a 
panoramic 180 degree shot from the roof of our motorhome, and another 
shows the other 180. One shows Betty on our patio, with the seating area, BBQ stand, and fire pit on the dusty sand of our “yard”. As mentioned, there 
are no assigned campsites, so you can park as near to the road, or as far away as you wish. Because few of the paths through the desert lands are graded, only adventurous risk takers drive long motorhomes or trailers to the farther spots down the atv trails. Regardless, at this time of year the distance between units provides both privacy and quiet.
Apparently, January in Quartzsite is a different place, with the number of campers swelling into the hundreds of thousands. Many groups organize rallies during that time, to take advantage of all the added pop-up vendors. Lots of folk bike, hike, or ride ATVs in the area, and all are a friendly bunch. The atmosphere both in the desert and in the town of Quartzsite is very laid back, with more than a few hippies that never left the 1960s. LOL
To add to our adventure, yesterday Betty convinced Charlie & me to go with her on a day trip to see the London Bridge. Now I know what you’re thinking: “Wow, these must be rich jet-setters who can fly to England and back the same day!” But no, we actually drove our little Smart car 60 miles up the road to Lake Havasu City, where Robert McCulloch (of McCulloch chain saws) bought 13,000 acres of land, and then for $2.5 
million bought the London Bridge from the City of London, and relocated it to his desert oasis. The Colorado River is dammed south of the town, so it is a unique experience to see large palm trees, green grass, and beautiful green golf courses in the area, which is all surrounded by jagged mountain ranges.
The two oases described above are quite different from each other. One is a lush, commercial district, while the other is an uncommercial, undeveloped corner of God’s earth. Both have their appeal, and both provide fertile areas for renewal. Whichever direction you go, we hope you can find a peaceful area in your everyday life.
Cheers!
The words of Glen Campbell’s sentimental, melancholy song roll through our heads, as Betty & I make the journey from the desert at Quartzsite to the booming metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. The song is about leaving and going somewhere new, and that is what we are doing. While I had previously flown into Phoenix for a conference, I have never really been there – just from the airport to the hotel and back…
And it’s not that I’m unfamiliar with writing. I majored in English in university, but have almost exclusively written funding proposals and formal business correspondence in the past 40+ years. Journaling, or otherwise writing about myself, or our family life, has not been a consideration. (Yes, I was taught not to start a sentence – let alone a paragraph – with a conjunction like So, And, or But, but times have changed and grammar is a little looser now. BTW, if you ever watch a home reno show on TV, almost every sentence started by the architect, interior designer, etc. starts like: “So this is the look we were going for…” Whatever! I could write a whole blog post on how life is one continual conversation now, through a variety of media. Starting a sentence or paragraph with “So” just links what you are about to say to your ongoing life story, but I digress… LOL)
Betty & me keep in touch with our family and close friends during our travels. The content is not set up as “Google searchable”, so unless you know the exact address, you won’t find it. One of my goals is to improve my photography, and it turns out the blog is a good vehicle for adding and describing what we are seeing on the road. That provides a great amount of fodder for the mill.
Major holidays for us have always been times for family gatherings, so it was a bittersweet experience for Betty and me to be thousands of miles from our children and grandchildren during the Easter weekend. Despite how much we enjoy the hot weather and unique scenery, we miss our family, and were so relieved to be able to see them all together for Easter dinner through the marvels of FaceTime. There is no doubt it was the highlight of our weekend!
On arriving in Phoenix, we chased off the Quartzsite desert dust by treating our motorhome to a full service wash and hand dry, back to its sparkling full body paint job. Yeah! We then checked into the Phoenix Metro RV Park, in close proximity to all local attractions, and took advantage of the on-site laundromat and swimming pool to freshen up our clothes and ourselves.
Feeling refreshed we went on a tour of the town, although it was a very quick visit. The attached downtown pictures were taken by Betty from a moving car in moderate traffic, so please excuse the shaky framing… As we exited a tunnel into the downtown, I 
was reminded of a Christian Worthington painting we have in Winnipeg, showing Lazarus transitioning from darkness to light – a very dramatic image. Because we were leaving Phoenix on Easter Sunday morning, Betty & I attended a Saturday evening service where we were again inspired by the recounting of Jesus’ transition from death to life. Hallelujah! He is risen!
Our next stop was the Lake Pleasant Regional Park, just north of Phoenix, where we found another picturesque campsite with more dramatic backyard sunsets over the 
surrounding mountains. You may tire of seeing so many sunset pictures, but we continue to be amazed at the beauty of the land and sky as the sun goes down each night! Being Easter Sunday, we ended the day with a fabulous feast of lamb (with mint sauce, of course), potatoes and asparagus, all cooked on our trusty barbie, and paired with a bottle of Mouton 
Cadet, a tasty Bordeaux.
We are essentially boondocking for free in the parking lot of Mortimer farms, which also has a bakery, café, kids play area and country store selling meat, preserves, wine, and seasonal vegetables. The staff couldn’t be more friendly and welcoming!
with fresh tasty pastries. I picked up both grass fed and grain finished rib eye steak, and am really looking forward to comparing them at our next official campsite in Williams, Arizona.
those occasions on our overlandish adventure when an exclamation was more than appropriate. We have just returned from the Grand Canyon and are trying to put words to what we have just seen. In an unusual turn of events, words escape us both! LOL
Of course everyone who has been raves about this one of seven natural wonders of the world. Ya, ya, can the reality live up to the hype? Well, yes it can! I limited myself to 87 pictures from the southern rim of the canyon, which stretches 446 river km long, up to 29 km wide, and 1.6 km deep. This post only includes seven pictures, but we’re not yet ready to delete the rest!
to be seeing it differently each time. The way the light changed throughout the day; the variations in rock formations; the changing colouring and striations on the cliffs, all affected our visual experience. It was one “wow” moment after another for the 20 km we hiked today. Ya, it was a great workout!
On return to our campsite at the Grand Canyon Railway & Hotel RV Park in Williams, Arizona, we selected the pictures to add to this post, knowing that none of them fully capture the panoramic experience at the cliff face.
from Williams, others see the park via helicopter or mule ride down a steep path in the cliff. Some hire 4x4s to take them to the bottom, while others go white water rafting down the Colorado River at the base of the canyon. All of these are expensive propositions, and we have to admit to connecting to our thrifty Scottish roots and our fixed income.
We used the America the Beautiful pass purchased in New Mexico, so entry to this National Park didn’t cost us anything extra. We used our Passport America membership at the campground, so we received half off the regular price for accommodation. We left our motorhome in the campground and drove our Smart car through the park, so parking was always convenient, and when I topped up the tank at Pilot, I was able to use my Flying J card to get 6 or 8 cents off a gallon. A very economical visit!
moving on to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico, so don’t be surprised if you see more pics of this natural wonder. And don’t be surprised if you hear Bet exclaim again “That’s a frickken big hole!”
Today we decided to go back to the Grand Canyon to capture what we were told are amazing rock colourings as the sun goes down. Unfortunately, as Betty & I approached the park toward dusk, so did a big black cloud from the west. While we didn’t receive any rain, we also didn’t get the sunset light show we were anticipating.
In hopes that the sun would still appear, I set up the camera on a tripod facing one of the thousands of amazing vistas. In this post are a number of pictures taken from that single location.
again on April 30, 2020, and again November 3, 2020, so we’ll just have to hope for better sunsets then! LOL
large assortment of petrified wood, which looks amazingly like both wood and granite, but would surely break any chainsaw attempting to cut it. Millions of years old, it sits in a large area of arid land, which was once a tropical forest.
In the same park is the Painted Desert Inn National Historic Landmark. The many surrounding hills contain an amazing range of colours and shapes, as can been seen in the accompanying photos.
was more about selecting a free campsite half way between the Grand Canyon and Albuquerque, but the spectacular sights and the delicious chicken soup both turned out to be good for the soul, as well as the solar…
Ok, with supreme apologies to Dionne Warwick and the city of San Jose, I kept humming this 1968 song all the way from our campsite just north of Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Santa Fe this week. Unbeknownst to me, Betty was humming the same song all the way there also. LOL!
We had difficulty finding a campground in both Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and ended up in the municipal Coronado Campground in Bernalillo, New Mexico, about half an hour north of New Mexico’s largest city (Albuquerque), and an hour south of its capital (Santa Fe). Of course again we 
didn’t know what to expect, but decided to book a week’s stay in order to receive a discount and have time to visit both cities.
and firepit for $21./ night, including water and electricity, in a delightful little campground on the banks of the Rio Grande River!
appropriate for this angel!
The large downtown section of Santa Fe is a very cohesive, regulated area: You won’t find any fast food restaurants with their gaudy neon signs there. With no highrises, nearly all buildings are smooth earthtone adobe structures, providing a very calming 
impression: Santa Fe style. Artwork is everywhere, and there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of art galleries in the city. (I didn’t google the exact number, which I’m sure is available, but the volume of art is most impressive!) Again, attached are just a few of the many 
galleries we passed.
part of the community.
what we can currently carry and exhibit — Some very attractive pieces by extremely talented artisans!
enough to make the urinals in a seedy biker bar at closing time smell good! Turns out our china toilet was cracked all the way around the bottom of the bowl – likely from the extreme cold and bumpy roads leaving Winnipeg. Thanks to Joseph at Sierra Mobile RV in Port Isabel, Texas, we now have a sweet new throne. LOL.
When we arrived in Dallas, the connection to our new power hose reel was leaking, forming a 4” icicle from our motorhome to the ground. Also turned out not to be a bad thing, as everyone was encouraged to leave their taps dripping a little, to prevent them from freezing in the unseasonable temperatures.
as the brakes on our Smart car were totally seized up! (I think it had to do with the damp salty sea air that deposits rust on anything metal within minutes.) A call to AAA brought a flatbed truck from Brownsville, taking our little seizer (LOL) to a “garage” in Port Isabel. I use the term garage advisedly, because it looked nothing like Canadian Tire. Of course it didn’t have the overhead either, and Dan did an excellent job of getting us mobile again. Working outside, which was his usual practice, he replaced the rear brakes, but couldn’t look at the front brakes because it was too cold! He promised to look at them for free when it warmed up, and I said I’d bring it back then. I did and he did. If you ever need mechanical assistance in Port Isabel, Dan’s Auto Specialists is the place to go.
Last week in Albuquerque, we made an appointment at Camping World to have a tire pressure monitoring system (tpms) installed. Unfortunately, the new young “technician” (and I use the term advisedly) had no idea what he was doing. It took him 5 ½ hours to do a 1 ½ hour job, and he still didn’t get it right. After complaining to the manager, the head of the service department hooked it up, admitting that the young guy had never installed a tpms before. One of our transmitters is still not working, but I hope to have it fixed in Oklahoma City, at the latest.
almost impossible to leave our motorhome. Even though we kept all the windows shut, a layer of dusty sand is now covering everything inside and outside of our motorhome. Each of our slide-outs is covered by a fabric topper, which flapped and ripped in the wind. When the wind died down, I climbed up and taped the tears, but we now have an appointment to have them replaced in Oklahoma.
neither did the levelers, slideouts, lights and radio, water pump, to name a few things in our coach. I plugged back in right away and got the slideouts in and the levelers up and started the engine. We drove to the nearest rv service centre, but being Sunday, it turned out the service area was closed, requiring me to disconnect the car so that we could turn around and go somewhere else. We called a 24/7 emergency rv repair place, and got a recorded message. We left a message that we were on our way to their shop in Albuquerque, but when we arrived, no one was there, and there was still no one answering the phone. We decided to drive to Roswell, today’s destination, and are staying at a full-service rv park until we can go to a garage in the morning.
or February they would write to the tourism departments of each of the states we hoped to visit. Then in April or May they would receive large packages of material, including maps, tour guides, and campground information. They would pore over this happy haul to determine our route for July or August. It was a most enjoyable exercise!
With the advent of the Internet, there is a much greater volume of information available only seconds away. I guess that’s a good thing, but for someone with perfectionist tendencies, one can agonize for days over whether the ideal campsite has been chosen from the myriad available. Complicating the process are sites like Rvillage.com and Campendium.com, where people describe their favourite sites. Of course, everyone has personal needs & preferences, and what is great for one may be not-so-much for someone else.
often zoom in on individual campsites, with detailed descriptions of length, width, level, shade, grass, proximity to local attractions, etc. We can also read reviews written by other campers who have stayed there: The good, bad, and ugly.
land, allows free or cheap camping on many properties across the U.S. They have an app that helps in selecting an appropriate spot, whether you are tent camping, or driving a 40’ motorhome. We stayed 2 weeks on BLM land in Quartzsite, Arizona, and would definitely choose this option again, 
now that we have added solar power.
Lubbock. Surprisingly, our campsite comes with free 50 amp service, free water hook-up, and free dumpstation! As the sign says, there are only a few (maybe 7) large pull-through sites available on a first come, first served basis, but we had no difficulty finding a spot around 2 pm, after our drive from Roswell yesterday.
We still like to pick up local maps and attraction booklets at tourism offices, usually found when crossing into a new state. But one thing is for sure, there are a lot worse activities our there. Enjoy the great outdoors!
