canoepam@yahoo.com

Apologies for no new postings

It has been 3 weeks since I last posted, and I am still not quite ready. Posting from Death Valley itself is challenging due to the bad (well, almost non-existent) data service there, but that isn’t my real excuse. Turns out Lily, the cat who has been traveling with us for 12 years, turned very quickly into a critical care patient. We left DVNP, headed to Needles, CA and started calling vets on Friday, 19 February, after she showed distress Thursday night. In these COVID days, it is really hard to find a vet open on Friday and taking new patients! We expanded our search gradually, and we ended up with an emergency vet in Lake Havasu City, AZ. Blood work showed our fears were true: Lily had moved from having serious kidney disease to being in kidney failure. They gave her antibiotics, just in case, plus pain meds and bags of IV fluids we injected subcutaneously. After a few days it was obvious nothing was going to help, so we headed home. I just wanted to make it home before she left us, and we managed, though it took two fluid injections a day to get us there. We had her euthanized with our home vet on Monday. Here is the last picture I took of her, staring out the motorhome window at some bird. This had to be her favorite activity.

I am going off to cry a bit now. I will post more later.

I do love Death Valley!

After a long convalescence from my horrific attack of sinusitis, I am almost well again. It took prednisone and lots of OTC meds plus lots of sleep, a humidifier, and personal steamer, but I am probably as well as I ever will be in this climate. I love the desert, but the dust is a major irritant to me, so something bad happens most years we are out here. I put up,with it because I love this place so much. We spend at least a week in DV every year, and most years 2-3 weeks, so we have visited pretty much all the standard tourist spots. It is hard to come up with pictures I haven’t posted before, but I think I have a couple of unique ones this time!

Need to keep your distance from a Storm Trooper!

Yup, Kevin found a father and son doing cosplay in Golden Canyon, site of some memorable scenes from the Star Wars movies. Isn’t the little Jawa adorable? He was more than willing to put on his mask for a picture of his fierce side.

It just isn’t DV without Artists Palette, is it?

And then there are just more layers, this time close to our campsite.

It is really hard to grasp just how vast the landscapes are out here unless I throw a few people in the pictures for scale.

There is a guided horseback ride from the Furnace Creek stables every morning. They are headed down from Texas Spring here

Badwater Salt Flats are awesome and huge

We are camped at the far eastern edge of Sunset campground. You can’t beat $7/night (senior pass rate) looking east. The sun warms us early, and the bulk of the motorhome shields out “porch” on the hot afternoons. We also have a nice view of the Oasis at Furnace Creek Inn, a very upscale resort. I keep saying I will get lunch here some day (dinner requires dressier clothes than I prefer), but I haven’t done it yet. The winter sun and temperatures in the 70s in the day make just hanging around an awful nice idea.

Recovering from sinusitis and heading into Death Valley

We left Quartzsite on Sunday to drive the short way to Needles, KOA. It is a nice enough park, and a good spot to use for laundry and tank cleaning. However we didn’t do either! I was feeling truly horrid with massive sinusitis, something I am sadly too familiar with. Fever, chills, massive drainage, cough – uggh. In these times, we looked to find a drive-through COVID test site, just because, and we found a rapid test one in Las Vegas. So off to Las a Vegas we went! It is not really out of the way to Death Valley, and we go through it quite a bit. I got the test sample submitted, and we headed to Pahrump, NV, our traditional rinse waste tanks, fill fresh tank, check up on propane and fuel spot. We reserved 3 nights at Preferred RV Resort which is, not surprisingly, not a resort at all but filled with working folks and long term snowbirds. Not bad for the price, but not as nice as Lakeside. But we are just hanging here quarantining until I got my test results Tuesday (negative, as expected). My lovely ENT back home sent me a prescription for a prednisone 6 day dose pack, and I am feeling much better (but not well) here on the morning of day 4.

The drive to Vegas and then to Pahrump was awfully pretty with snow on the mountains. Sadly the pictures I asked Kevin to take out the window of the motorhome didn’t work for some reason. Highway 160 from Vegas is an interesting road crossing the mountains on a deceptively steep and very long grade. Luckily the 9% doesn’t last very long, but there are miles of 5-6%. This is where I end up appreciating the diesel, its exhaust brake, and the Allison transmission that does a lot of the hard work for me.

Kevin and I may not like the RV park over much, but Lily thought it was wonderful! There are pine trees on either side of us with doves in residence cooing. She has been enthralled.

There is a bird on the other side of the window.

We leave this morning for Sunset Campground in Death Valley. I know there won’t be enough cell data service to post, but I will buy WiFi access at the resort occasionally. The weather for forecast to be spectacular (highs in the upper 60s to upper 70s), and the weather at home is abysmal (lows well into negative numbers for 10 days) so we aren’t in any hurry to leave.

Sewing, a bit of cooking, and wildlife

It rained like crazy here on Monday, so we decided to go to Phoenix to do some shopping. Wow, did it rain! And snow! And sleet! There were quite a few cars in the ditches, and I pulled off the road for about 15 minutes to let the sleet/snow pass me by. We have had light rain a few times since too, but a good desert dweller never complains about rain. It has given me time to get some other things done. For example, I made an Instant Pot cheesecake using the famous “Cheesecake #17” you can find online. As usual, it came out great.

I also finished the third tumbler baby/lap quilt. The first picture is the teal/aqua one I did before that I didn’t take a picture of, and the second is with a dark blue contrast fabric. The patterned blocks came from a wonderful layer cake (10” squares) I bought on sale a while back. There are deep flowers, dragonflies in lots of colors, and some blenders, all with shimmery gold highlights. Sadly the gold doesn’t show very well, but it is much prettier in person. I have bought backing and 505 spray to sandwich at least two of the quilt tops I made on this trip, and I will start quilting them soon.

On Thursday we went to the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, driving on the dirt roads in the Yuma Proving Grounds to get there. Oddly enough the Army has been very good for the desert with the restrictions on activities along the roads, so it is a lovely section of “natural” desert.

Going through the Proving Grounds can be a bit interesting. We got to see an equipment drop by parachute, though we didn’t notice the aircraft that must have dropped them. There are 5-6 parachutes on the big item, and 2 on the small one. There is definitely a lot of training and/or testing going on. We have heard quite a few loud “booms” in the evenings, two of which had such a concussive force my motorhome swayed! The cloud ceiling was quite low, and that makes the shocks greater.

Another thing the Provong Grounds has is an urban combat practice zone set up similar to towns and villages in Western Asia, especially Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are small clusters around the area away from the larger “town.”

Just outside the western edge of the YPG is the Colorado River. It is mostly a slow moving irrigation canal here. You can see the heavily irrigated fields up west of the river in the picture below. They grow lots of alfalfa, some cotton, and even some produce from the cabbage family, though we didn’t stop to investigate.

The Colorado River isn’t too impressive here

We finally got to Cibola, and it did not disappoint. There are hundreds of Sandhill cranes, though this shows only a few of them.

There are a few other types of birds including this white heron of some type. This is zoomed in an awful lot, and I can’t tell exactly what species it is.

The best part of Cibola is sitting by the large pond that has hundreds and hundreds of waterfowl of all types. Click on the link below to watch a video, and make sure you turn your sound up!

IMG_4619

We are in Lake Havasu right now, picking up some Amazon packages and applying for our passport renewals. Mine expires in March, and I almost forgot about it! We plan on staying at Quartzsite until Monday, then heading to a private campground somewhere we can do laundry, clean the tanks, and shop. After that, we are off to Death Valley for a week or two. COVID vaccinations are still to hard to come by in Iowa to worry about, so we will just enjoy the warmth a while longer.

Kevin is actively looking at getting some lithium ion batteries for the motorhome, and that lets him have all kinds of fun. The plan is to put them in at home before our next summer trip.

Quartzsite 2021

We finally got our T-Mobile/Sprint hot spot, and it works soooooo much better than our Verizon hot spot here. I can post again! So be prepared for a LOT of pictures.

Monday we rode our bikes to the Big Tent for a funnel cake. I am addicted to good funnel cakes, and one of the vendors outside the tent has very good ones. I am a purist – cinnamon sugar only. This is the stand that is always set up on the west side of the tent.

The area around the Big Tent was remarkably uncrowded. There were numerous parking spots in the lots nearest to the tent at 10:30 in the morning, something unheard of in regular times. Pretty much everyone was wearing masks, and almost everyone was walking the correct direction on the one way aisles. Kevin went in to take a look around, but we didn’t stay long. My e-bike was all messed up, and it took a while to get the battery monitor reset. Otherwise it was a lovely ride from our spot in La Posa Tyson Wash into town, about 3 miles.

We have done a lot of just hanging around in absolutely gorgeous weather – warm and sunny. We also reveled in some rain on Wednesday and Thursday. It out a damper on our evening campfires, but it sure cut the dust which had been pretty overwhelming. Lily decided she had enough of life during one significant shower.

We went to Lake Havasu on Thursday to do our laundry (such excitement), and to go to a couple of quilt stores there. Sadly I couldn’t find the adhesive 505 spray I use to sandwich quilts, so I will just have to keep sewing tops until we get to Yuma next week. We also picked up some groceries since the shops are better than closer to Quartzsite.

Today was a much more enjoyable day. Terry and Betty Brewer took us on a 4WD trip along with Bill and Pam. We went northeast of Quartzsite on BLM “roads”. We took off on Paloma Road and followed some combination of 80, 82, 90, and 92 before we came to Hwy 72 and headed back. The trip was somewhere between 25-30 miles of back country, and it was a workout for our Grand Cherokee Trail Hawk. It was fully Class 2, with a couple of sections that were marginal, but Kevin and the Jeep made it fine. I admit I don’t want to do roads much higher rated than this one though. As a passenger, I really got thrown around. The country was beautiful though, and the scenery made it worthwhile. Here comes the photo overload:

Vistas were dry due to no monsoon this year

A great example of the Palo Verde tree and Saguaro shading and helping each other hold water

Part of the ride was near the hills with great views

Looking into the valley where US 95 runs

The ocotillos were turning the tiniest bit of green tint.

Coming close to the end with fearless Terry and Better in the lead

Probably enough now with the pictures. I will post some more sewing stuff next time.

Short post from Quartzsite with lousy data service

We got happily settled into our regular spot at Tyson awash LTVA. Not as many people here as usual, but the data service is still as bad as usual! This will be really short because of that.

We really haven’t done much but relax in the sunshine. Kevin has been printing a number of little things to help organize, and I sewed a small quilt top, 40×48”. Pictures of those later when I have better service.

I did get a morning shot. See Venus?

A nice evening shot. I know the focus isn’t great, but this photo had the most accurate colors. It was beautiful.

We will eventually go into Parker or Lake Havasu, and I will put up some other photos then. Now to “publish” before the data service goes out completely!

At KOFA for a bit longer

We spent yesterday afternoon probably like everyone else in the US – glued to the TV. I am still enraged at the domestic terrorists and their instigator, the man who is still the President of the United States. We had to turn on the generator for quite a while since we had the entertainment system on for so long. It is a real power hog, equivalent to the domestic refrigerator we have. Part of it is just the way Tiffin sets things up, and part is the way the satellite system keeps track of the satellites. The TV itself doesn’t use much power. By 4:30 we decided to go to Quartzsite again to pick up a switch for a 12v power distribution system Kevin is working on for the GPS and dash cam. Now we have cords running all over the place. Pictures will come when he gets it done. He’s been having fun with the 3D printer to make the packaging.

While we were in town, we picked up a pizza at Silly Al’s, a great pizza place in town. It is usually very, very busy so we called our order in. They have a great Philly Cheesesteak pizza, something I have never been able to get anywhere else. When I went inside to pick it up (masks required – nice!), we also got a growler of their Irish Red Ale.

Today I finished up a quilt top. It was so, so hard! Not for the design, but because it was a scrap quilt. I had to force myself to randomly pick a piece out of a box without making any selection except not to have the same fabric next to each other. I have decided I am not suited to scrap quilts! It drove me batty.

I used a 4” tumbler die with my Accuquilt to cut them. Sadly, I still have a 100 plus pieces! I am sure it will be loved by some child as a “I See” quilts since there are so many designs and colors in it. I also forced myself to sew the rows together randomly too, so you will note a few of the same fabrics in adjacent rows. Luckily the next two quilts I am working on are more more orderly and planned.

We did sit outside a bit today. While there were enough clouds to filter the sunlight, I still got one good picture of the hill behind us.

I am not sure how the data service will be in Quartzsite. Usually it is absolutely horrid because there are sooooo many people. However I had really good service there a few days ago so we will see. If I have good service I will try to post every 2-3 days. If not, it might be 5-7 days. We will see.

Enjoying the sunshine

It is very sunny here. The high temperatures are only in in the mid-60s, but it feels much warmer out of the wind and in the sunshine. We have needed to pull the solar blinds down every day to keep it from getting too warm inside the motorhome. I am soaking it up! I do use a hat and some sunscreen, but I am more lizard-like in my old(er) age, and I love the dry heat.

We took a great trip yesterday to two of our favorite 4WD destinations in the area – Horse Tanks and the King of Arizona Mine which gave its name to the area. Two friends, Vicki and Mark who are camped near us,drove their truck too.

In the desert a “tank” is a depression that holds water. While the four tanks in this area are natural, there has been work by the Wildlife Refuge staff to increase their capacity. The road is a good 2 track for about a mile, but it then deteriorates into a definite high clearance road; lots of rocks and washes. The road ends into a turnaround big enough for 4-6 vehicles.I only went to the first tank which was dry. It was disappointing because last year it had water and was full of life. Vicki and I found a good sitting rock and waited for Kevin and Mark to climb up to the other tanks. Only the uppermost tank had water.

Vicki’s little dog sat in a bag while we waited

We then went back to King Road and headed to King of Arizona area. We visited the Polaris mine area. There are a number of still active claims in the area with a few miners living on the claims. This one is very, very empty. You take a high quality graded gravel road until the last mile, with the last quarter mile being narrow and very rocky. The 4WD and high clearance were necessary then.

We did stop an old processing plant site along the way. We found it last year, but I couldn’t find out much about it. It was definitely for further processing the ore, and the leftovers were a white powder that has been washed and compacted.

Grayish white mounds of compacted something

The road ends into a big parking area with a gate keeping vehicles from going father.

Taken by Kevin at the mill. See me behind the red Grand Cherokee closest to the road?

I hung out at the Jeep soaking up the sun, while Kevin, Mark, and Vicki went closer.

The only surviving cabin. The middle has fallen in.

There were two windows in the cliffs below Portrait Mountain behind the mine.

We wandered around a while, had lunch, then came back to our campsite. We ended the afternoon by having a “Happy Hour” around the portable fireplace before having dinner. Nice trip!

This morning I pressed all the strips for my scrap quilt. I don’t like pressing, so I kept an audiobook going. Kevin was 3D printing something too, and that takes quite a bit of power too, so we ran the generator a couple of hours. We have solar panels, but they are mounted flat, and the shallow sun angle of winter doesn’t provide as much power as they get in summer. After we ate lunch, we drove into Quartzsite to look for a sunshade for our awning. There definitely aren’t as many people parked in the desert as usual, but I noticed more small rigs and tents than I have seen before. Parking in town was a zoo as usual, but we found a spot at the far end of “the strip.” Kevin decided on a burgundy sunshade since we couldn’t find a black one, so we are looking quite stylish now! It does wonders for keeping the brightness bearable. We had another Happy Hour around the fire pit, but with the breeze everybody wore jackets this time, even around the fire pit.

I think we will leave here a bit earlier than planned, probably Friday. Kevin is a bit worried there will be a big influx of people for the Rock Show beginning Saturday, and we don’t want to wait too long for the water and dump lanes. Our normal spot was available, and we chatted with a couple we know who are already there – Dan and Marge. They have been coming for 30 years!

And we are settled!

For at least the next week at least. We are staying on BLM land just outside the KOFA National Wildlife Refuge on King Road. It is a gorgeous place with the mountains very close. Prettier than Quartzsite, and a lot fewer people too! It is free camping, but with a 14 day limit.

And how did we get here? Let’s start with Albuquerque. Nice enough place for an overnight, but it was certainly handy for shopping. Kevin got the water softener bought, initialized, and set up nicely. I found the fabric I needed at a great little shop, Ann Silva’s Bernina and Babylock store. Interestingly New Mexico takes their virus precautions very seriously. We saw masks on everyone, and stores had stringent capacity limits. We intended on going to Trader Joe’s, but the line to get in was 20-30 people. Nope on that one. Then we tried an Albertson’s. Nope there too, with just as long a line. Our only serious need was orange juice, so I just picked some up at the Love’s Truck Stop near the campground. We did take a short car trip on the east side of the mountain up to Madrid. Lovely with snow that started showing up about 7000’. I wish I had taken pictures!

We left Albuquerque early, headed to Willcox, AZ. We stayed at a KOA there that was much nicer than the one in Benson where we stayed last year. Knowing we were headed for dry camping, we did laundry and stocked up on groceries. The freezer is again was full, and the refrigerator was pretty full too. We want to minimize shipping trips due to the high virus infection numbers in California and Yuma county.

We again took off fairly early. The road through southern Arizona is lovely. Sadly I didn’t take any pictures of the higher desert, 4000-6000’. It is full of plant variety with saguaros, ocotillo, palo verde trees, and others. I did get some of the lower desert. The vegetation is less dense, and it doesn’t have the variety found in the higher elevations.

The view from the big windshield is one of the big pluses for a Class A.

Since it was a holiday weekend, we really didn’t see much traffic. The roads were pretty good, little construction, and we just cruised along.

We made it to KOFA about 3:00. Ahh! It was sunny and warm, and I sat outside just soaking up the heat. It cooled off quickly in the evening though so the heater gets a workout still.

We didn’t do much on Saturday evening, just relaxed. We have some acquaintances staying at the next site over, so we chatted with them a while. Today we woke up late (6:30 mountain time is late to me!) and generally goofed off quite a bit. Kevin made a needle holder to attach to my seeing machine, and he is at work on a 12v power supply to get rid of a bunch of cords and cables around the dash. I did quite a bit of sewing, and I pretty much have all the rows put together for a scrap quilt made of tumbler blocks.

Scrap quilts are very challenging to my OCD, but I promised myself I will get some of my multitude of scraps used up. This is a decent start – 12 rows of 15 blocks. I will press them later tonight, and tomorrow try seeing the blocks together. I am using the (new to me) 830 sitting outside. Pretty nice way to sew!

Flexibility is the key to winter travel

We made it to Oklahoma City without any more weather-related issues. We had planned on staying two nights to see family and do some last minute shopping, but the weather gods didn’t agree. It turns out there is a huge storm bringing lots of snow heading to southwestern Texas right along I-10, our original planned route. There is another weather system with lots of snow heading through Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa. However I-40 runs through the middle of those, and it is clear! We haven’t ever been to travel this route at this time of year because it is usually stormy, but we re-routed to travel along that instead of I-10. You have to be flexible when traveling in the winter in a 32,000 pound motorhome! I just won’t travel in the snow, though rain and cold don’t bother me.

With the storm coming in, we cut our planned two day trip short and spent just a few minutes with my sister. I dropped off her presents and that was about it. We have both been isolating seriously, she because her son is special needs and there isn’t a safe alternate caregiver, us because we are heading into what is effectively a medical desert as well as a physical desert. I am pretty pleased with the towels. They are actually from one of my sons, but I did the embroidery. My son has a cabin on Lake Volney in Minnesota, and my sister and nephew have spent time there. Of course she got some of my standard hand made presents this year – bowl cozies. I posted pictures of those two posts back.

We spent the night at Mustang Run RV Park. It is great as a simple overnight stop because the sites are long enough, the roads are wide enough, and they have full hookups available in the winter. Not exactly a garden spot, but it is an easily accessed spot. We were heading west by 6:30 this morning in a heavy fog. Basically I-40 followed the same path as the front, and we stayed in a heavy fog for 300 miles! The advantage of fog is that there is no wind, so I was able to drive at a steady 62 mph the entire day unless we were going through construction zones. I like 62 because that is the sweet spot for our rig in efficiency. After all, we are retired so why hurry!

As we closed in on the New Mexico border, we finally left the fog to find brilliant sun gleaming in partly cloudy skies. It was a very abrupt change and let us get the first glimpses of the lovely mess country. Tonight we are in Tucumcari, NM at a KOA. Nice place with some long sites and easy access. As you have probably noticed by now, we value convenience over beauty when traveling to a destination. How do you like this picture of a scary tree?

We are less than 200 miles from our planned next spot in Albuquerque. We intend on staying there a couple of nights, buying some last minute things we didn’t have time to get before we left. I need some coordinating fabric for some quilt tops I have planned, and Kevin is replacing our busted water softener. Arizona has such hard water, we really need a softener. We will do our last big grocery shopping trip before hitting the desert too.

A few posts ago I mentioned our new slide toppers, but I didn’t have pictures. Here are a couple showing the color. After all, slide toppers are not terribly photogenic.