Quartzsite, Arizona

I know it has been awhile since I last posted on the blog and we have taken a few short trips. Fran & I went to Pine Mountain, Georgia back in October for a few days and Hershey, PA for a few and then there were several weekend trips to a local state park, but I went off on a 3 week getaway with my friend Shane Fedeli. Shane & I went to Quartzsite, AZ back in January; it was a 3 week trip. Shane's wife Kelly said last year she had enough of Quartzsite and Fran told me one trip for her was one too many. So Shane & I came up with this bright idea if the wives don't want to go then us men must look upon this as an opportunity to get the hell away. So we did.
Shane departed his house around noon on Jan 16 and drove to Columbus, Ohio, spent the night and drove on down to our house by 11:00 the next morning. I had an auction that morning and I got home by noon, we were off again and on the road at 1 PM. We drove 17 hours from my house to Forth Worth, TX about 900 miles.
The next morning which was about 3 hours later we departed again with our friends Rick & Rosie Archie in their bird and Michael Cain, his dog in his bird and we drove another 700 miles in about 14 hours until we reached the Cattleman’s Steakhouse near Fabens, TX just a few miles east of El Paso, Tx. Spending the night at the Cattleman’s has become a tradition with Birders; anyone and everyone with a Blue Bird Motor Coach traveling through South Texas have stayed at the restaurant overnight. Dinner at the Cattleman’s was great but boy did it get cold, it was spitting snow that morning when we left towards Gila Bend, AZ. Now driving a Blue Bird bus and being with 2 or 3 others one will stop at a Wal-Mart a time or two along the way but with this group of folks I think we hit every damn Wal-Mart in South Texas, New Mexico & Arizona before we made it to Quartzsite. It's a good thing we did because the nearest Wal-Mart from Quartzsite was nearly 40 miles away.
Quartzsite Arizona if one has never heard of it or been well let’s just say it’s a different place. The average population is about 3000, but during the winter months there are about 100,000 recreational vehicles that land there. Once you top the hill heading into Q you can see the reflections off the windshields of RVs for nearly 20 miles in both the north and south of I-10.