The Road East

Having had enough City life for a while, I headed east from L.A. on Tuesday, November 8th.  My plan was to drive to the Arizona border, about 220 miles.  My GPS said it would take about 4 hours with traffic and I left after lunch so I could get there before dark.  Unfortunately, my bike rack was loose so I stopped to repair it.  After two hours I gave up.  It's still loose.  It rattles around, but there is a sturdy pin holding it on so I said the hell with it.

When I got back on the road it was bumper to bumper--Friday rush hour fleeing L.A.  In two hours I went MAYBE ten miles.  I said to myself, "What would my brother Michael do?"

I got off the road and checked into a motel. $59 included all the standard amenities plus cookies, coffee and fruit all night, and breakfast.  I took five bananas for the trip.

The next day I ended up in an LTVA in Blythe, California, just before the border.  LTVA stands for Long Term Vehicle Area.  It's a huge patch of desert owned by the federal government where people can spend six months boondocking for $180.  There are a fair number of these places in the area and I'm sure there are plenty elsewhere.  People tend to flock back to the same LTVA year after year and even to the same spot, and though they are very widely separated from other RVs (hundreds of yards, usually) they form communities and look out for one another.  At our LTVA there is a host who collects the money, a garbage receptacle, and a dump for your tanks.  You get water in town and most people have sophisticated solar systems set up to provide power.  Many of them live happily for six months at a cost of a few hundred dollars a month.  The scenery is special in its way but six months is a long time here.

The night sky was awesome; before the moon came up the stars were almost bright enough to see by.  When the moon rose I was able to go hiking without any lights over rocky terrain.  Dirt roads led through the LTVA into the mountains beyond and I could see where the ATVs had climbed the hills and left tracks. The severe beauty of it drew me.

I went running towards the mountains the next day, but distance in the desert is deceptive and I was not able to reach them in an hour so I turned back.  Running on the broken soil was not bad since I wore my hiking boots but I did fall again because of not lifting my trailing foot high enough.  On the way back I ran along a dry riverbed and at one point sank three consecutive steps through the soil into a honeycomb of underground burrows, but no one was home.  It was a weird feeling, having my foot repeatedly break through seemingly solid ground into nothingness.

I went to town to do laundry and ran into a fellow camper, who invited me to visit her and her husband at the LTVA.  Jack and Joanne have been spending the season at this LTVA for years and they spend the rest of the year traveling.  I had never seen a rig like theirs up close and they were kind enough to show me their setup.  They had purchased a 38 foot long fifth wheel, which is a kind of trailer that typically sets its front end in the bed of a pickup truck.  It's more stable than a trailer and has great headroom. Instead of a pickup, however, Jack and Joanne had a Peterbilt with front and back seats and internal storage where Jack kept a Harley.  He installed a lift that placed the Harley inside and it was completely enclosed, still on the tractor frame (not behind).  The rig was registered as an RV so they didn't have to stop at weigh stations.  Jack said he was tired of pulling a 20,000 pound fifth wheel with a pickup so he paid $143,000 in 2005 and bought the Peterbilt brand new.  His only problems were keeping it aligned and changing the oil (twelve gallons!)  It's a twelve speed automatic transmission with air adjusted seats, and sitting in the driver's seat was very cool.  When Jack goes to town for water nobody gets in his way.  With a big rig and a Harley you would think Jack is a rough customer, but he is actually a retired French horn teacher from a small college in Colorado and a nice guy.  He and Joanne plan to have Thanksgiving dinner at their place for all their friends in the LTVA and invited me, but I didn't intend to stay that long.

After a few days I'd had enough of the LTVA and went on across the border to the town of Quartzsite.
I was surprised to see thousands of acres of cotton growing in the desert along the way.  Cotton requires a lot of water; apparently there is quite a bit here under the desert.  Cotton bolls are delightful--soft; cotton swabs without the sticks.  I picked a souvenir and kept it.

  Quartzsite has about 3,100 residents and more than 71 RV parks.  In the winter (The Season) the population climbs to twenty or thirty thousand.  The snowbirds were not due until after Thanksgiving,  so everyone was expectantly waiting for the revenue to start flowing.  Big tents with carpets laid right over the desert rocks were filled with flea market goods, off market foods at discount prices, and used RV gear.  No customers anywhere in sight--I felt uncomfortably watched when I went inside, as if they were counting on me to pay the overhead. The big brag in their 2011-2012 tourist guide is the new Super 8 Motel--built in 2003.

There isn't much in Quartzsite except for two things.  One is sidewalks.  There are miles and miles of brand new sidewalks, complete with curb and gutter, all professionally done recently and in great condition.  It's as if the town ran out of money before the houses got built, and now the walks run up and down the side streets waiting for the town to catch up.
The other is punctuation marks.  Rarely do you see an "s" that is not preceded by an apostrophe--RV Part's.
Refrigerator's. Tire's and Brake's. And worse, the extreme use of quotation marks:  Ask for "Ray". Bingo "Tonight".  My favorite is below (in all fairness, this one came before Quartzsite, but still...)

Sidewalks are expensive but punctuation marks are free so they use them wherever they can.  Or maybe they do it so screw with the snowbirds, like the street signs.

                                     

It's cheap, though.  $3.39 gas, $5.00 dry camping, $6.00 sandwiches.  With the great winter weather it's no wonder snowbirds flock here.

RV people are an interesting subculture.  They're invariably friendly and helpful, like sailors you meet at sea.  Anything they can do for you, they will.  They figure they might already know you and if they don't they'll likely run into you again somewhere.  Information about places to stay, places to buy, things to see flow freely.  If you need help, it's available just for the asking.  I learned about a solar installer nicknamed Handy Bob and I'm planning to have him install solar panels on my RV next week.

Next: How To Keep on Budget In an RV