QUARTZSITE, AZ (updated 3/15/2007)

.

A great blog: http://lilli-travel.blogspot.com/

It’s Nowhere, Arizona—until November. Then more than a million devotees of RVs roll in from all over for swap meets, socializing, and the sunset-painted sky.

The town’s not quite dead but is doing its damnedest to look that way. The mid-July temperature is a solid 118. Shops on Main are boarded up. An amber wind lifts tattered flyers over flat roofs and out to the desert. Humming “swamp coolers” strain to refrigerate a few of the 2,300 residents, who wait for winter. Eight months a year Quartzsite, Arizona, isn’t much more than a vast empty RV park, rectangles of dusty land gridded by neatly spaced wooden posts.

Then, like a mob of chattering starlings settling into a too-small tree, the snowbirds start landing in November. By mid-January, the mechanical car counter at the Interstate 10 exit is ticking off 26,000 vehicles a day. Within weeks 175,000 RVs cram inches apart into 79 trailer parks, onto front yards, and spill out seven miles on either side of town. Every year more than a million people reset their internal navigation and drive from Everywhere, North America, to this western Arizona dot on the map. Luxury motor homes, fifth wheels, cab-over campers, trailers, and converted school buses plunk down on the same patch of land.

“You haven’t had the full RV experience until you’ve been to Quartzsite in January,” says Phyllis Frey, of Livingston, Texas. She and husband Ron have been traveling full-time in their RV for three years. “It’s a sort of pilgrimage,” she says.

……………………………………………………………..

Many of the RV parks in Quartzsite are pretty cramped but a couple of  the newer ones seem to give you a little more space.  Howerever if  you are willing to boondock just go a few miles out of town and you  can have all the space you want. Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006

………………………………………………

If you stay on LTVA land, there is fresh water and a dump available as well as trash.  If you are parked out on the free BLM land, there are services that come around to pump out your tanks, and other services that deliver fresh water (expensive).
There is at least one place in town where you can dump, get water propane -- it is on the east side of SR-95 north of Main Street.  Sorry, don't remember the name, but it's easy to spot.

……………………………………………………………..

New 12-4-2006

LINKS for that area:

rvtravelonashoestring@yahoogroups.com

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0101/feature6/index.html

http://www.desertusa.com/Cities/az/quartzite.html

http://www.californiadesert.gov/index.php

http://www.slabcity.org/

http://www.bafrenz.com/birds/TXtoAR.htm (a good day by day diary, especially of the RV show)

……………………………………………………………………………………..

at the Slabs

Posted by: "RayHound" therayhound@yahoo.com therayhound

Wed Nov 8, 2006 6:22 am (PST)

At little warm yesterday, 94 in the shade. But Roger
Woods had the wine and I had the ice VBG

*****************************************
BOONDOCKING in the BOONIES with BROADBAND

Join my group, THE BEST SOURCE ON THE INTERNET for
RV Internet By Satellite info http://tinyurl.com/5fjyd

RayHounds new website, up but under construction http://www.RayHound.com

RayHound's Location http://map.datastormusers.com/user3.cfm?user=66

Because I live in a Bus and am called a BusNut, some people
think I am nuts, but the bus is only part of the reason.

Residentially Challenged - "On the Road Again" in the RayHound
A 1975 35' MC 5B Coach #7227, under construction "On the Road".

"Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well
preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways in the RayHound,
totally worn out, shouting..."Some Beach...what a ride!"

SKP 85642 - FMC 364202