Well Happy New Year to all of our friends and family! Hard to believe that it is 2006 already. We will be leaving for the desert on Tuesday making a stop in Chandler Arizona to visit my Uncle David.

We have had a great time lounging her in Huachuca City for the month of December. Today we are going to try to get over to Fort Huachuca to see the museum there. It is still an active Military Base. Interestingly enough down the road on the east side the land is marked off as military installation and warns "no trespassing, artillery impact area!" Probably not the place to go rock hunting I suppose.

I took a drive east through Texas Canyon to try to find a piece of land a friend had bought a couple of years ago. On the way there I passed a sign that said Amerind Museum. So on the way back I stop to see what it was all about. It was American Indian relics including some dated BC. Behind the museum is part of Texas Canyon and some of the photos came from behind the museum where they had a picnic area.

Well we are now in Quartzsite Arizona which has been my destination for the last 2 years. Desert is the proper term but not what I expected. I thought we would be in sand with cactus and that’s about it, well there are cactus and big beautiful ones obviously very old. Sand on the other hand is pretty non existent as the ground is almost like gravel but I believe it is probably lava rock. Lots of scrub trees and dead bushes also. There are some large stones that are quite porous. I will add a picture of one soon as I take it tomorrow. The temperature is fantastic, it has been mid 70’s since we got here and today was the first day you could actually call it cloudy and even then it was mostly sunny. Humidity here is like 3 percent so static electricity is terrible. Get out of the chair and get shocked, slide out of the truck and get shocked, pet the dog and get shocked..... get it?

In town is quite a show, there are hundreds of vendors selling everything you can image. Surprisingly there are some pretty good deals. People are all over the place and everywhere you look are hundreds and thousands of RV’s of all types. The big climax show isn’t for 2 weeks yet so things will be getting a lot busier yet. Rocks and Gems are a big deal here as this apparently is Gem central. Vendors bring in 1000’s of pounds of rocks and Gems to sell. Services to cut polish and turn your stones into jewelry is quite plentiful.

We are currently about 3 miles off the main road. The pavement ends 1.5 miles from where we are. There are RV’s all around us in the distance but none really close, other than there are 4 of us here right now sharing the same space. This should grow to about 50 rigs from our class of Fulltimers we started. There are cactus here probably 20 feet tall. I was checking out a dead one that had fallen a long time ago and was surprised to see that the inside is kind of like a tree in that there is a wood structure but it looks like wooden rope. I will also get some pics of that and post here. Critters are not apparent yet, we saw a dead tarantula at the check in office about 3 inches in diameter. We need to be aware of scorpions, rattlesnakes, spiders and who knows what else. No sign of any living things yet other than I did see a Praying Mantis but wondered what it is eating as everything here is pretty much dead.

This is our first real chance to test our solar use. The first day we used WAY to much as expected and it took us all the next day with solar and our little generator to recover. Today was much better and we recovered all the used electric by about 1pm. It takes a little getting use to as today was cloudy so we need to be aware of tomorrows weather to prepare for it. Our water supply is doing well. We store about 60 gallons and have maybe used 8 gallons so far in the last 2 days. Obvioulsy showers are Navy style in that you get wet soap up and rinse off. But at least we are clean!

Getting mail is our next obstacle, but we will probably go to a nearby town in California to see about either getting a PO Box or general delivery

January 7th pictures

January 8th, 2006

Today I finally achieved one of my goals and that was to find a Rattlesnake! We are walking in the desert about 75 feet from the trailer and Patti say’s “you suppose that is a snake hole” pointing at it with her finger, I said look out there’s a snake! And it was, a Sidewinder Rattlesnake about 10” long just hiding in the weeds! See today’s pictures. Now I need to find a scorpion and a Tarantula. :) I have also included pictures of the lava rock here and the innards of a cactus. Enjoy!