Thursday Jan. 1
After
staying up late watching CNN (who I felt did the best job in TV coverage)
to roll in the New Year across the country. This is the night for
amateur party drunks, so not the best night to go out and about.
I do think people are getting better about that. It's not like I
have never done that stupid stuff. I can remember the time I drove all
over the road after a Halloween hayrack ride party in my youth. I could
be in jail to this day if I had hit someone.
Back
to tonight... I did finally hit the sack... as Terry was long gone after
the central time zone did its thing. We did go through several bottles
of cheap champagne. You do know Terry is a cheap happy drunk which is good.
I don't see that much as his normal drink is hot tea.
Last
night we were eating lots of goodies that we went overboard securing in
Parker at the Safeway store earlier in the day. Now today we can see we
have all this fun food left over and it is not the kind of items we should
be eating especially in the new year. We might have to hold off on our
resolutions for a few days so we can eat the goodies. Then start
the New Year diets. Now is that a plan or what?
Terry cooking up the goodies.
So you got it, I'm not in
the picture as I'm taking it... but you get the idea this is our living
room.
We tried to sleep in... on
New Years day but we got a call from Terry's nephew who called to say he
was watching Iowa footbal in a bowl game live on TV at about 9:15 AM AZ
time. We were still in bed knowing the Rose Parade was being recorded,
so no need to get up. We got up later and had a nice breakfast checking
the internet for email and such. Then fired up the generator and watched
the HD DVR recorded parade for two hours. Now awake Terry went out do the
black and gray tank dump thing. Won't tell you about the dump hose
connection that came apart and caused a little leak in that proccess.
A few choice (many) words passed Terry's breath I can tell you as I heard
him from inside the RV. We got over that and got the job done. Will get
a new connecter so that doesn't happen again.
After that we took the loop
to loop and came up with these pictures.
At the corner of Rice Ranch
looking east on HW95. Looking like the busy show times with people
actually standing at the crosswalk waiting to crossover to Tyson Ranch.
Looking west toward Tyson
Ranch at the stop light south of the interstate overpass.
Hello NASA we have (life)
as in traffic here. About time.
Now we are watching the Orange
Bowl as Terry is making supper. We're also eating leftover appitezers
from last night. Yes a couple of times a year we do watch football for
the entertainment value, not following a special team. If you want the
sports section of our electronic USA Today (www.newsstand.com)
paper each day it is yours. I have not figured out how to, not download
just that section each morning. The bandwidth in sports with all the pictures
is large and we are under a daily bandwidth fair usage policy limit with
our satellite service. Our service gives us much more bandwidth then
cell providers, but we still like to be conservative with our usage.
The USAToday paper is about
a 20-30M download. It is an exact copy of the paper product. I get
a price of about 50 cents a copy. Cheaper than the paper copy of 75 cents
and also green (no tree was cut down
for me to read it online). The paper download is well within our daily
FAP usage of about 375 Meg. We also get unlimited bandwidth usage
downloads during several late night hours each day. So if we need to get
a big software update we can do it late at night and it doesn't effect
the FAP (fair access policy) usage.
Anyway enough, the
game is tied and the munchies are tasty, so stop back later for more later...
Friday Jan. 2
It
is sunny and warm, and about 72, just the way we like it in Q in January.
The people out today in
Tyson Wells today.
Things are coming alive
more than we thought it would this year so far. It was late but things
are blooming. Quartzsite is still a big draw and its past history is still
serving it well as the place to be. There was even an airplane pulling
a banner for a RV dealer today. Now that is jumping the gun. The dealers
are pulling out all the stops in an effert to sell.
Tad, a good friend and fellow
instructor with Terry at the Rock Club has invited us to go on another
field trip tomorrow on Saturday. We have to be in Parker to meet him at
8:30 AM. These morning people are too much. We are going back up
northeast of Parker but this time to Planet Ranch with a very small number
of vehicials on this outing. To get there we will still need to go through
the very narrow and rough single lane Mineral Canyon road if you can even
call it that, to get to the larger road that heads off to the to the ranch.
We didn't get very good detailed pictures of just how, off road this was
last time, but we will try to give you a better idea of the road conditions
with our next post on this trip.
Stop back for the road trip
post when we get back.
While waiting, read more
about Planet Ranch it in an article in the Lake
Havasu Newspaper
I thought it was still a
working ranch. Wrong. Very interesting history and who now owns it and
who wants to buy it and why. Now I'm going on a road trip but of course
the rock club people are on a quest for rocks namely, Chrysocolla
which is in the area. Anyway looking to have a great outing with friends.
Saturday Jan. 3
(Wordsmithed
with some humor on Sunday Jan. 4)
(Do
a reread if not your first visit)
So
off we went north to Parker to meet the others up there at the unheard
of hour of 8:30 after we got up at 7:15 that's in AM. We made it
there by the meet time. It was a good thing it was a warm 50 degrees
as we left to get in the truck to head north on HW95. Terry had his
hot tea and he made me some decaf coffee.
Now
a
flashback of thought about this early morning thing... Me
thinks as a night person getting up this early sucks. Morning people should
chill out, roll over, and get more time in bed in the morning. Now that's
just my opinion you see. Morning people were born on Krypton and beamed
down to earth in the middle of the night. For the last few years
of my woring life I chose a schedule to be at work at 7:30 AM so I could
get off early. That was in Iowa and in the winter a commmute to downtown
Des Moines took awhile. So now when I wake up all I have to do is wake
up and know I don't have to that anymore. A smile comes over my face and
I rool over and fine tune XM radio to CCN to see what I'm missing.
The
drive was right up my alley, as I love driving on back roads. More and
more hard to do in a long box non 4x4 dually. . This truck gets stuck in
wet grass, so not the best in wet sand or gravel. Duallys are know for
poor traction.
As
you can see we spent some of the drive in canyon washes.
You
would not normally think this is driving in Arizona, but it is.
The
county had graded some of these back roads and filled in some of the washed
out sections since were tere last week. But much of the treck was on new
roads for us, after taking the cutoff to Planet Ranch. I thought this would
be nice and smooth but it turned out to be just also going down more canyon
washes. You do not want to be caught in any of these if it rains.
It was a little cloudy and there was some concern about that, but we lucked
out and got out with the sun shinning for the most part. Just a little
shower will make all this unusable for days. And with no cell service who
are we to call for help.
At
last we reached the entrance to Planet Ranch and the hills which contain
hopefully the gems. The continuning road into the ranch is closed, but
here just outside the ranch was where there had been a town of several
thousand people in the past for the mining opperations.
Tad
told me this had been the post office.
We
climbed up a true 4X4 trail (we left or big dually behind) I rode
with Tad and Terry and others rode in the back of the other Ranger 4x4
pickup. You can see which of us were able to make it up the hill to where
we started the gem quest. Now as they say when hunting morel
mushrooms you don't know where this is, and we won't give you exact
directions. Will we... After reading this delete this from your
bookmarks.
From
the hills and our dig you can see the flat now dry ranch ground below.
You
have to do one of these field trips to see the faces of the rock hounds
when they think the are close to finding the gems they seek. I'm
(Ron) just not that interested in that, so people watching is more my thing.
But as you can see Terry is! When they find the mother load they
tend to jump up and down and wave their arms! Not a pretty sight.
Speaking
of that I had to express to Terry he was getting close to showing a plumbers
butt during his digging excitement. Who cares when there are gems to be
found was the look I got back from all, as they were looking past his butt
to what he was unearthing.
Above
is a view of Planet Ranch from our dig site on the hill. There is a road
that also runs northeast out of the area (we came in from the west), and
I asked if there was bridge over the river, Tad informed me the river for
about five miles runs underground in this area so no bridge needed. The
wonders of this planet are everywhere is you take the time to search them
out. Who would think many miles back it the the outback of the Arizona
desert you could find huge old mining towns and once vibrant farming ranches
now all played out.
The
city of Scottsdale, AZ bought the ranch years ago so they could get the
water rights for their city 150 miles away. The gate has a sign with the
city logo on it. They don't have to actually transport the water just have
the rights to the underground water, so they get more water from the (CAP)
Central
Arizona Project canal. It's sort like city of Los Angles buying up
all the land and water rights in northeast CA many years ago. Water is
more
precious than oil. In case you missed yesterday's above blog, see this
link article in the Lake
Havasu Newspaper about all this. Growing and learning about our
surroundings, what us humans try to do. And now the Intrenet makes it so
much easer for more of us to do just that. What a great time we live in.
Later
on the way back heading west and then south to Bouse we spotted this Segauro
Cactus with a large nest in it. Wonder what built it. All in all a fun
day was had by all in the six vehicles in our little group. Thanks Tad
for showing the way.
Now
for a sneak peak of things to come we spotted this on our way back to our
BLM boondocking home at La Posa North.
The
Big
Tent is going up...
Sunday Jan. 4
On Monday we head back up
to Parker (40 min drive) to get the fluid and filters changed in our Allison
truck transmission at the Chevy dealer. The color of the transmission fluid
was getting dark when they checked it, when we had them change our engine
oil last week. They are not expecting us until 10 AM. From my above post
you can see I don't want to get up early for these things if I can help
it. They said that time would be just fine. They don't seem to be that
busy, and would get us right in when we arrive. You do remember last
fall when I posted they took over 8 hours to put on new tires and do a
front end alignment on our truck. Seems they have a new service manager
(wonder why) and she seems very accommodating. I brought up our past experiences
and we all had a good laugh over it. I told them the old service guy offered
pillows for us to use in the waiting room. And where I told him he could
put those. So they know where we are coming from and that we expect a better
service experience this time. I am confident it will be.
Monday Jan. 5
Off
we went to Parker for the Transmission fluid change appointment. But before
we left I wanted to open the hood and wipe off the dust so they wouldn't
think we were slugs who didn't keep things clean. At that time Terry pulled
the dip stick on the transmission and showed it to me ... looked pretty
red to me like it should, not the black they had shown us last week.
Might just be the morning light, so didn't think MUCH more about it, or
if we had been ripped off with a bait and switch when they showed the good
and bad color of our transmission fluid before. We talked about it
one the way up to Parker and decided in either case it was time for the
fluid to be changed and ALL the filters to be replaced anyway and at a
good price. They got us right in and before long after $275 we were out
of there and headed to Safeway for more food shopping. We got out
of the there at a all time low of $50.
When
we got back we spotted this real off road camper in the the La Posa North
guard station area.
These units seem to show
up in Q each year as this is a magnet for everything RV known the world
over.
After
loading our two fresh water containers in the back of the truck deiced
to just go up to the Pit Stop in town and pay 5 cents a gal. to fill. Cost
$1.50 and if we go on down a few miles to the BLM free water site it is
almost a wash as to the cost for fuel to do it either way.
Stopped
at Tyson Ranch and walked some of the vender sections. You can see the
BIG TENT in the background is now up.
Tyson Wells is always a popular
area for venders and at a good location. This season is now different much
to our surprise. It is full of sellers who have their booths stocked to
the hilt with merchandise to sell. So get on down and buy. If you don't
purchase this junk, I mean treasures, who will? I should say we did
find some interesting items and will be going back several times to walk
the isles and do our buying selections.
Our good friend is back and
looks like the summer sun might have produced a few more wrinkles since
last year.
Looks like he is collecting
in his make a wish coin collection plate. Might be people are so giving
so they hope they don't ever have to look like him.
Take care and stop back next
time for the turtle selling vender pictures.
Anything and everything is
sold in Q. LATER...
Terry was at his rock club
board meeting and just called and is bringing home from Micky D's $1 menu
a double cheeseburger, fry, and hot fudge sunday. Times two. Junk food
while watching Ohio and Texas in the Fiesta Bowl. Now that's what you do
when you have a full fridge and don't want to cook. We are certified,
you don't have to tell us that. After all we are in Q for the winter...
that's required.
Tuesday Jan. 6
Now
the rest of the story.
Yes you can buy turtles at
Tyson Wells.
Didn't ask the price and
none was shown.
Now don't miss the famous
Too Crazy Ladies booth on the south side of Kuehn Rd. in Tyson Wells.
Just a quiet day in Q, Terry
worked on the building project at the rock club and is now putting a pot
roast in the oven from 1/2 of a chuck roast we got at Safeway for
$1.27 a lb. Told him to put in lots of carrots.
See
where we are at right now. DataStormUsers
map ID 98
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