Monday, Monday, Monday, now just imagine that being spoken in a big booming voice…kind of gets you a little excited that something great is going to be happen today…well sorry it’s not, at least for us, both of “The Buchanan’s” are still down with colds so today will be a bit of a rough day, because I have to get up on the roof to reset the solar panels for travel, and put our Zamp solar suitcase away, remove the windshield sun shade before we prepare to hit the road.
Heading north out of the Yuma area on US-95 today, it’s Monday so my expectations are for reasonably light traffic, we have a little over 60 miles (100 kilometres) to Quartzsite of two lane road so I’m sure there will be a few people that aren’t happy with my speed. But that will be their problem not mine, we will get our first look at the craziness that is Quartzsite with two weeks till the maximum crazy level, after I looked up the fees for water and dumping at the RV Pit Stop, and realized that just two dumps would cost more than getting a 14 day pass at LaPossa South LTVA (Long Term Visitor Area) which also allows us to dump our garbage, dump our waste dump and water fill at the Pit Stop was going to be $25+taxes, so the $40 for 14 days at the LTVA in Quartzsite seems like the best deal, it will make it cheaper over the next two weeks of adding water and dumping waste tanks.
So we made it to LaPossa South camping area, purchased our permit, and headed off to the dump station to dump and reload with fresh water. It’s always a busy spot because it is the only dump station for three large LTVA’s so you normally expect a line up but it’s always entertaining to watch people at the dump station, for some reason it just seems to bring out the worst of people’s behaviour, and don’t get me started about the stupidity of people at the water fill station. Today was reasonable we were about 7th or 8th in line so I just figured we would be about an hour, what always amazes me is how a coach like ours that can hold up to 120 gallons of waste can pull up and dump faster than some one in a converted vans that only hold 40 gallons. These are some of the questions that normal people just can’t find an answer for, this area around Quartzsite is a very broad mix of rigs from little home made wood trailers to a million dollar Prevost coach, and it’s usually the Prevost owner that will be the biggest hold up…just saying.
After refilling with water we headed north up to Quartzsite, we can report that the big tent is up, and as we pass over I-10, our route changes to AZ-95, yes it changes from US-95 to AZ-95 in Quartzsite, just a little confusing on a good day, but as we head north we pass a couple BLM areas again we are on two lane highway, there are a couple of passing lanes enroute to Parker AZ, it is the Parker dam just north of Parker that backs up the Colorado River to actually form Lake Havasu. We have settled into the Blue Water Casino parking lot for a night of black topping and we will head up the road to Lake Havasu tomorrow morning, it’s only about 40 miles and one of the prettiest drives along the Colorado River in Arizona. Travel distance today was only 106 miles (170 kms) but it involved the best part of four hours, tomorrow will only be about one hour as we move to our spot for the balloon festival.
The Buchanan's Rolling Down The Road 