Quartzite

Well, not quite to Quartzite yet. We are parked out in the desert on BLM land a few miles out of town. We arrived a day early for the Alpine Coach Association Desert Rat Rally and there are already more than fifty Alpines here! They are expecting over one hundred. We have not been to anything like this before. It should be interesting. We are especially interested in the "gearhead" session tomorrow afternoon when everyone shares their tips about dealing with any issues with our "orphan" coaches. (Western Recreational Vehicles who made Alpine coaches in Yakima went out of business last spring.)

We did all we could this morning to get ready. Filled the water tank (100 gallons) with fresh water; pulled in the slides; brought up the jacks; hooked up the toad; then drove over to the dump station to empty the gray (capacity 100 gallons) and black tanks (capacity 78 gallons) so that we would arrive hopefully able to stay a week. When you live in an RV, you certainly become more aware of the details of daily life and what is essential -- water, sewage, electric and propane -- as well as diesel for the rig! A certain amount of every day seems to be spent dealing with one or more of them.

The sun was shining brightly, the air was warm (it is so good to be back in sandals again!) and the sky was a brilliant blue as we left Newberry Springs. The one thing we didn't do while we were there is visit one of the pistachio stands (Forry's stash of pistachios was already pretty good.). There are lots of groves of fairly small young pistachio trees around the area. They have white bark and right now, no leaves. We heard that undeveloped land sells for $10,000 and acre if you are adjacent to power and further out it's still $1000 an acre. We saw a lot of deserted-looking homesteads with boarded up and calapsizing bulidings -- it looks like many people had dreams of making a living in the desert. It's hard to believe that those kind of land prices will hold up in today's economy.

Tomorrow, I'll try to get some pictures of all the rigs at the rally and the desert where we are.