Desert Time

When I was here last, a couple of weeks ago, I knew I didn’t give Quartzsite an honest test. I knew that as I was experiencing it.  I certainly knew it when I was writing about it.  I only visited the town itself.  I had unpleasant interactions with people who are sick of dealing with tourists.  I did pull onto the BLM land but it was so close to the freeway, it was an all night roar.  No, not an honest test at all.

Around the town there is the Bureau of Land Management, BLM Land.  If you buy a pass, either two week or the season, you are allowed to stay anywhere on the BLM land.  And that land is vast.  It is possible, with the right camper setup and four wheel drive, to be the only person in some huge desert valley.  The only person within miles.  But I don’t have a setup like that.  The distance I want to drive the BV from some sort of road is far less vast.  I worry about hitting some hole and breaking an axel or getting stuck in the sand or something.  

So driving well off the beaten path is out of the question, I instead drove about five miles south of town on the highway, then off onto a marginally paved road for a couple of miles which turned into gravel for a couple more.  Then finally onto a desert path where at about ten miles an hour I was able to creep back to a spot next to a couple of saguaros that looked nice.  Differing from the lonesome valley, this close to town area is more organized.  There are camps divided into sections and usually some sort of central tent.  The area I chose was one of the larger camps.  

Just some background on my life to give you a little frame of reference,  during the summer instead of living in The BV, I have a camper on a leased spot in a campground in northern Minnesota.  The people who stay at this campground are the best bunch of weirdos I have ever met in my life.  Open, friendly, non-judgmental, happy.  You can’t walk by them without a wave or conversation.  I was really expecting the same exact thing at Quartzsite, just less trees and more cactus.

It turned out to not be the case at all. The people in this desert campground were cool, distant and bordering unfriendly.  I did a fair amount of walking.  There was a nice circumference trail about four miles.  Nobody waved or made any sort of contact.  I noticed a similar things as people walked or drove by where I was camped.  Eyes forward, they didn’t even look in for a wave.  I know it seems like a small thing but it was so universal and so different than I have been used to, it seemed strange. 

Every day except Sunday they have a happy hour at the main tent from four until six and so I went to a few.  Every Wednesday they conduct sort of a business meeting during happy hour.  It was like a HOA meeting.  Reports of people driving where they weren’t supposed to.  Complaints about people driving too fast.  Worries of people taking too much food on the first pass through the Thanksgiving buffet the next day. (Where like every other buffet there was mounds of food left over at the end.)  It just all seemed petty.

I’m not proposing any sort of correlation but in this whole campground every single person I saw was white.  Not even any Asians.  There were tons of American flags, Blue Line flags, of course a couple Trump flags always show up to spoil any event.  But there were no Pride flags.  None.  No Black Lives Matter flags either.  I didn’t like it.

People aside, the walking was fantastic.   The trails are groomed and perfect.  It is such a different place than I have spent much of the previous month.    A week ago, on Hollywood Blvd, I was bombarded by tumultuous noise.  It is virtually silent here.   Not particularly dark at night, it is full moon time and even six or seven miles away there is a lot of light from town.

One amusing interaction I had… The first evening I arrived I was on a walk.  It was a good hour before dark.  There was sort of a dust storm going on which was a new experience for me.  First walk on a new trail.  I had been told about its route but I didn’t know for sure.  I was about twenty minutes into the walk stopped at a campsite where I saw a guy, this was before I knew about the unfriendliness,  I asked him about the trail route.  It turned out he wasn’t a walker.  He told me he had no idea where the trail went.  In the end he told me “Yeah, I see people walking around this way.  You might get lost in the dust storm but you will probably will be fine.”   With this stunning recommendation I decided instead to head back to the van and do further exploration with an earlier start.  

The rock hunting was fun.  When I unpack I will report my total poundage.  I found one AMAZING rock it looked like a dragon.  I have a summertime project where it will fit it beautifully.  No surprise there is lots of quartzite laying around.  Lots of volcanic rocks filled with holes.  I really had to control myself and tried to limit my collecting to four rocks a day. 

Isn't this cool? Maybe my life's
coolest rock.

It  had been my intent to talk to people and get together a collection of stories.  How people came here and why they come back.  Very few people were talking.  But I met a woman the first night who said seventeen years ago she and her husband bought a camper and started to travel more.  I am guessing she is late 70s.  A year in, he died and she started traveling alone in the camper.   She came here to this campground the first time. She went back home and sold all of her stuff. Now she spends winters here and summers she lives on the road. About ten years ago she met a guy who now travels with her.  She said, “He’s twenty two years younger than me but what the heck.”

A lot of life is a matter of expectations.  I had many coming to Quartzsite the first time and felt a little let down.  Honestly, my whole blog has been hung up on this one post because I like writing happy stories and when I can’t I get sort of stalled.  But, every day I was there was beautiful.  Sunny, high 60s and perfect.  Every night cooled down and I would typically run the furnace for a few minutes every morning.  Will I go back?  Yeah, probably I will.  My expectations have shifted and I am willing to roll will them.

During the week I was there the population of campers around me roughly tripled.  Closer in to town I bet there were ten times as many and town itself was dozens of times busier.  The rush to Quartzsite is on!