THE Trip, Quartzsite, BLM and Boondocking.

Copyright 2011, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

Well, we are here, we are doing it!  We are boondocking on BLM land a few miles north of Quartzsite with 130 or so of our bestest friends.

So, just what is it to boondock??  Well, you drive out into the desert, find a place to park, and live with no electricity, and no other services like running water, for the next couple of weeks.

Power is supplied by generator or solar panels.  We use this:

This little beaut keeps our battery in Tana charged, as well as the computer, phone and camera batteries charged.  It will run the microwave, if we are careful in the way we use it.  It will not run an air conditioner.  It will run some lights, the furnace and keeps us partially on the grid.  Downside, after a few hours, the noise can become a tad bit annoying.  Annoyance set aside, this is a good piece of equipment to have out here.  Our own personal grid generator, purr away, power away!  WAHHOOO

I may have mentioned that we carry 60 gallons of water in our fresh water tank.  We can get MORE water in town at the cost of 2 cents per gallon.  A number of the MOCer's have 40 gallon water haulers, a bladder type of affair.  Fill up in town, bring back to camp, transfer the water to the trailers with a 12 volt pump.  We can make 60 gallons last a good week, actually we made 40 gallons last a week, that was 7 showers, and dishes and toilet flushing for a week.

When our holding tanks, or what you might call our sewage tanks are full, we call the truck.  He comes out and pumps the holding tanks out - - bye bye sewage.  (That is more than enough detail for this family oriented blog, don't you think!  LOL)

Heat, hot water and the refrigerator run on propane.  We are using about one 30 gallon tank per week out here on the desert.  At night we turn the heat down to about 64.  That is a bit on the coolish side for ole softy Carol (and her Demon, one side affect of the diabetes for me is that I am always cold).  I'm fine as long as I can stay IN the bed, under the comforters, it is that potty break outside in the middle of the night with the fur kids that is rather uncomfy.   The weather here has been rather mild, so the uncomfy factor has been moderate and doable.  LOL

Ok, that pretty much covers the necessities of life in the BLM, so, lets show you a few other facits of life out here:

Campfires are important, you can tell that by the size of the firewood pile.  Rather impressive, isn't it???

And, there is the HUGE firepit that the firebugs will use to try to burn up all that wood.  Got a few boxes and some paper plates in there for kindling.

Hard to tell how large the fire is, but, I can promise you the fellows build a nice fire every night here in Q.

Ultra light aircraft float by, especially at sunrise and sunset.  Speaking of sunset, how about this moon rising, peaking out from behind that mountain?  My Sony let me down, did not capture the true color, the moon was a beautiful golden color.

Turn around and look to the west and here is the sunset the very same night:

Gotta tell you tho, there have been some prettier sunsets since I took this photo.  I'll be sharing more Quartzsite photos with you over the next few posts, you won't believe some of the stuff I got photos of!




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