Thursday, January 30, 2014

Off to Quartzsite

 

It’s our last day at Ogilby Rd,it has taken us a week to get all our running around done. We are at the same area we normally  park, we almost parked  next to the big wash, but there were quite a few rigs there so we moved  about 1km farther up the road. Ivan emailed the same night to tell us that we had been in the site he’d just vacated and that Wandering Willy was parked across the wash. So we finally got to meet Bill aka Wandering Willie. We stopped  by his trailer on our way to Yuma one day and had a short visit, what a nice man he is.

We were in Anza Borrego for almost eight weeks, at first there were only a half dozen RVs in the area we stay in, between Christmas and New Years the numbers grew to probably 35 or 40. Some people spend the winter camped at the dry lake bed and several of them were very unhappy with the influx of people.

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One man put up tape so no one could encroach on his space, and then proceeded to take the fire pits apart on the  site next to him so  nobody would camp there either.

Another camper  put barricades up at the entrance to  his site after a couple of  rvers tried to make a parking spot where there wasn’t one. He would walk his dog past our site every day and we had several conversations about all the rvs

I was quite astounded when I was told that  I was was the subject of a rant by the same fellow, and that it was my fault  that all the people  were coming the dry lake bed  area. He  said that I blogged about Borrego and told everyone to come  and that bloggers were a cult and I was the ring leader. I believe he was talking about a group of  people in Air Stream Trailers who were parked in the site next to us, and the NU RVers  who had a gathering near us. I didn’t know any of them, and they would have no reason to read my blog.

Oh well.

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Our friend Martin showed us this, not far from his site,

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It  is a female Tarantula”s nest the white is her web. I am sure glad she stayed inside.

A last Borrego sunrise

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We are off to Quartzsite this morning for a bit.

Jean

Sunday, January 19, 2014

A Quick Visit

 

Last Monday our son Edd  came from Vancouver Island to visit us at Anza Borrego SP. He arrived Monday night at the Palm Springs Airport and he left Friday morning, which meant he only had three  full days.

Tuesday we walked to the dry lake bed, drove up Montezuma Highway,went to the visitors center and drove around looking at some of the metal statues.

 

Montezuma Lookout

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Looking at some of the statues

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Wednesday  Slot Canyon

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Skip is not taking out the garbage, we had stopped at the fruit stand and bought oranges, but we didn’t bring a back pack because of the narrow  canyon.

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Thursday Ghost Mountain

We have visited the Marshall South Home site   five times, and  each  time we are in awestruck, by the beauty and thought of the  life the south family experienced  at the top of Ghost Mountain.

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Looking down at Blair Valley

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We met a man on the mountain who had come to spend the night camping by the remains of the homestead.  He knew a lot about Marshall South and his family, and told us that Rider South the eldest son had led a group up the mountain,  seven or eight weeks previously. We chatted with him for quite a while, before he went to set up his tent and we went down the mountain.

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Cactus Blooming alongside the trail.

We had a fun week which passed too quickly, it was so nice having Edd  visit.

We will be leaving Borrego on Tuesday, heading for Ogilbe Rd for a week or so,  we haven’t decided where we will be after that.

Jean

Friday, January 10, 2014

Keeping Busy and Waiting for A Visitor.

 

Well we are still here boon docking at Anza Borrego, we have been here seven weeks, I guess we just get too comfortable here. The weather has been fantastic, cold nights and lovely warm days. So far we have had very few windy days, although I may jinx ourselves saying that.

We haven’t done a lot of hiking this trip, we did climb up Coyote mountain in search of the stone snake.

 

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Skip had the opportunity to go with out friend  Martin to cut wood, so we have had lots of fires.

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Right after Christmas Denise and Benny left for Yuma, and our peace and quiet was shattered by the arrival of two groups of  RVers  one group group of nine came in in a convoy,  mostly big Class A’s and another group behind them with nine or ten  RVs so it was generators every morning and all evening long.

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Thankfully things are back to normal now.

We have been busy doing a few mods to our motorhome, we replaced the foam in our dinette cushions with  a really good 4” foam, it made quite a difference, we were starting feel like we were sitting on plywood.

Then we changed the material on all the valances  above the windows and doorway.

We started with this,

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Took them off the wall

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Took out a million staples

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Recovered them ( forgot to take pictures) with a suede material.

 

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We reused the piping from the old material along the bottom edge. we are quite pleased with the finished product.

 

Every morning Sophie and Louie and I go for a long walk across the desert, often we go up Inspiration Wash.

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Fonts Point is in the distance

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Looking back at Clark Dry Lake Bed, we are one of the white RVs to the left

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We are excited that our eldest son is coming to visit for a few days, we are picking him up at the Palm Springs Airport on Monday night. We have a few hikes planned Ghost Mountain,  slot Canyon  and whatever else he wants to see, he may want to just veg.

 

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Jean