Quartzsite, AZ
We have completed our first week of a two week stay on BLM land north of the small town of Quartzsite, AZ. This is dry camping with no hookups of any kind; no water, no electricity and no sewage hookup. You need come in with your fresh water tank full (ours holds 100 gallons) and a strategy for generating whatever electricity you need. That is where the solar panels and lithium ion batteries we installed in December come in. We aren’t here alone by any stretch of the imagination. We are with a subgroup of the Escapees RV club known as Boomers. I have no idea where the name came from. We are also here with long time friends, Jim and Corinne and new friends, Paul and Kay. Jim and Corinne met Paul and Kay on the road a few years ago and continue to meet up as often as possible. In addition to our group of Boomers, currently over 180 rigs and counting, there are an estimated 100,000 or more (some say upwards of 500,000) RVs boondocking in the desert surrounding Quartzsite these two weeks of January. Needless to say, we are not alone.
So, how is it going so far? Well we are doing very well with water management, which was our primary concern coming in. We bought a bunch of water before coming here that we use for drinking and coffee making so as to reserve the fresh water tank for washing only. We are more than 1/2 way through our 2 weeks and we still have more than 1/2 our water so that is good. We haven’t counted but Dan thinks that more than 1/2 the beer is gone so that may become a problem. As for the solar power generation, we are doing fine. We would be doing excellent if it wasn’t for the fact that our first full day was solid rain with over 1.65″ of rain falling in one day. Keep in mind the annual average rainfall for this area is just over 4″. This put us in a big hole with our electricity. On the morning of the second day, our batteries were at 49% and we got them back to 79% before bed. We have slowly been getting back up, adding a few percent to the evening peak with today getting to 93%. We hope to see 100% before we head out without firing up the generator to help. We are convinced if it weren’t for that first bad day, we would easily return to 100% each day as long as the sun stays out.
Part of the big draw to this area during this time of year is an annual RV show and flea market in the town of Quartzsite. We ventured over to the show on its first day, Saturday, January 19th. We went early and all the official parking was already gone so we ended up parking on some patch of desert near the big show tent. There were lots of people and some interesting items for sale, not all related to RVing and the RV lifestyle. We have since returned for a second visit to pickup items we saw the first time and decided we want. Amy may return for a third trip with Kay and Corinne for more casual shopping.
We’ve done some interesting things since we’ve been here. We have been having community dinners with the 3 couples and one day we made pizzas. In order to get multiple pizzas cooked simultaneously, Dan cooked one of the pizzas on our Webber Q1200 grill. This is the first time we’ve tried cooking a pizza on a grill. If you haven’t done this before, we highly recommend it. We plan to do it again and make it a regular part of our meal rotation. Another food related activity was our stint as judges for the annual Boomerville Chili Cook Off. At one of the daily happy hour meetings, they asked for newbies to volunteer to judge the chili cook off. We raised our hands immediately. That is the kind of volunteering we like! Another new experience for Amy was sewing outside. Amy, Corinne and Kay are working together on a quilt and with limited space in an RV, the easiest place to do this together is outside.
The first week ended on an extra high note for us as we got to watch the Patriots win the AFC title game and earn another trip to the Super Bowl. This, however, is the first time we’ve ever watched an AFC championship game outdoors. After the game was over, we stayed outside to watch the lunar eclipse. We got to see some of it but the skies were a bit overcast and we never got a real good look at it once it entered totality.
Once week 2 is over, we will post a second blog about how week 2 went and will let you all know whether the batteries make it back to 100% on solar power alone or not.
How about an average mid-day and early morning temperature report? Do you have a means to measure the humidity? Can you meter the percent of electric power consumed by device (e.g. AC, TV, etc)? This venue sounds fascinating to me!
Fred, the daily highs have been between 62 and 68 so far. Today may not get to 60 and the winds are still high. They are expected to calm tomorrow. Most overnight lows have been in the 40’s. I don’t know about the humidity but other than last Tuesday its been pretty low. No AC on solar power. The TV is pretty low consumption, around 3-5 amps DC. All my monitoring is at the 12V batteries. They feed a 2800 Watt inverter that turns that to 120V AC. There are 3 120V appliances in the rig that are not on that AC circuit, the 2 air conditioners/heat pumps and the fireplace electric heater. Those items are unavailable when on solar. Microwave, coffee maker, toaster, etc are big power draws and should be used sparingly unless you are at a surplus of power, which we are not (yet). Once the days are longer and the sun is higher we should have more flexibility with our power usage while boondocking.
My blog post is going to say “Yeah…what he said.” 🙂 Great picture of your rig at sunset.