Quartzsite, AZ

We got to Quartzsite on Monday January 21. For those of you who don't know what or where Quartzsite is, it is the largest accumulation of RV'ers in the USA! Someone called it a senior citizen RAVE party. Snow birds flock here from all over the country for about 3 months of Winter in their motorhomes, 5th wheels, and travel trailers. Normally there are about 2,000 residents here, but during December, January and February there are about a million people in and around Quartzsite!

The funny thing is that although all the RV Parks are fully packed with no vacancies, most people set up in the desert without hookups. $500,000 Prevost motorhomes with solar panels and going to town to buy water for their rigs.

RV Everywhere!!!!

We were last here several years ago for a weekend with our great friends Scott and Terri. We stayed in Blythe  CA in a Motel 6 and drove the 20 miles in each day. We had decided when we retired we would come in the RV and stay a week. We were originally going to boondock (stay in the desert without hookups) but decided to stay in a park. Knowing how hard it would be to get reservations I called and reserved back in March of last year. After researching it I found that Quail Run RV had the best reviews.

Quail Run RV Park

There are swap meets and flea markets all over town. This one is called Tyson Wells Flea Market. It is huge.  We took this picture from the freeway overpass. You can see how far the vendor booths go!

Swap Meet

Here is another picture of the swap meet from the street. You can see the traffic. During the day this is the way Quartzsite is. It has been awesome having the scooter, being able to get around the mess! The scooter also allows us to find parking everywhere.

Bumper to bumper traffic

They have the "Big Tent" which is the place the RV vendors really want to be. This only happens for the last two weeks in January. There are RV's for sale all around the tent, as well as other vendor booths around it too. The "Big Tent" is the furthest tent you can see in this picture.

The Big Tent

This is inside the Big Tent. A lot of "Fair" kind of vendors as well as RV stuff. We had hard water stains that we got on our shower doors from Santa Paula that we could not get off. A vendor was selling some stuff that he guaranteed would remove it safely. It was pricey, but money back if it didn't work and since we are here for a week, I was willing.. Guess what? It worked as advertised!!!

Inside the Big Tent

Well that's it for today,

We miss you all!

Brian and Patty

Rose Parade Floats!

This post is written for January 2nd.

On New Years day Patty suggested we go to Pasadena on the 2nd and view the Rose Parade floats! What a great idea!! Because we are now retired and considered 'seniors' we were able to do early entry. This is much better as you do not need to fight the crowds that start at 9:00.

We got our picture taken at the parade theme float, "Oh, the places you'll go!". An old friend of ours, Charlie Higbee suggested that this was perfect for our new full timing lifestyle. I made the picture my Facebook profile picture.

Oh the places you'll go!

We could have arrived at the Rose Bowl parking lot earlier but we didn't get there until about 7:30 or so. From there we took the shuttle bus across town to the viewing area. We were the only two people on the bus. By the time we arrived at the float area it was about 8:15. The gates opened at 7:00 and next time I will be ready to get in by 7:00 because by 9:00 the general public was able to come in. Still at 8:15 the crowds were very sparse and you could easily get good pictures.

Small crowds early

We didn't leave until about 11-11:30 and this street was so jammed we could hardly get back through it to leave. Patty and I do not like crowds like that, but it was awesome early!

This was the first float we saw. It is amazing how they used flowers to make it look like fur on the bears. What really amazed us was that on TV it just looks like painted statues, but close up it is a bunch of extravagant floral arrangements.  On the Dole float they told us they had used 24,000 pink roses! That was just the pink ones, they also had white, and red and yellow roses!

First float we saw

And of course they don't just use flowers on the floats, the green and purple on the bottom of the Cat in the hat float are cabbages, the white on the face of Thing 1 and 2 and the flower petals are shaved coconut, the red suits on the Things are hollyberries.

Cat in the hat

This is the float from Cal Poly. Crystal graduated from here. It won the Bob Hope Humor Trophy so we had to take pictures of it. It was titled Air Tuxedo.

Air Tuxedo

Many of the floats used animations and some were run by propane. This float had two V-8 big blocks that had been converted to propane. One engine ran the animation of the float and one ran the propulsion. A separate person drives the float and runs the animations.

Mechanics of a float

Patty really liked this City of Downy float. They used green and yellow bell peppers for the sidings of the house. I thought the bark of the tree looked real so I asked what they used for it. Can you guess??

Well it turns out the local Pasadena Eucalyptus trees shed their bark every year. So the bark on the trees was local Pasadena BARK! 

Patty's dream house

Disney had the best float in the parade. It had the best animation and in my opinion was just the best overall. It was an replica of their new theme area Cars Land in California Adventure. It didn't win any trophy's at all, which didn't make sense. I asked a Disney employee why it hadn't?

Disney's Cars Land

Well it turns out that the parade has rules as to length of the floats. Disney didn't care. This is just one HUGE advertisement for the new Cars Land. It is way too long to be considered for a trophy, but almost every home in America and probably in the world got to see what Cars Land it about. Disney got what they wanted out of it!

Well that's it for today. The blog is back now that we are back traveling.

Love you all,

Brian and Patty