The reason we moved the motorhome facing west in the first place was to tilt the solar panels, and have them face south to get maximum performance from them. It worked real well. For the week we were parked that way, the only time we ran the generator was to run the microwave or the printer. I love it when a plan comes together!
With almost everyone else from our group having left, we got to really enjoy the peace and quiet of the desert. We didn't do too much during the week, save for couple of trips into Quartzsite in the evening to get something to eat, a beverage or two, and for Ann to sing some karaoke. There are several places in town that do karaoke, and a few of them have it early enough in the evening that you can have some fun and still be home by 8:00PM. That seems to work well for a lot of the older people out here.
On Saturday we decided to go up to Parker Arizona, which is about 35 miles north of Quartzsite to see a movie and get some groceries. As we got north of Quartzsite about 20 miles we could see a huge dust cloud to the north and west, as the wind was pretty near calm, we wondered what was the reason for the dust cloud. It is not easy to see in this pic, but it is to the left of the tower.
When we got to the north side of Parker, near the Blue Water Resort and Casino (they have a movie theater as well), we saw lots of off road racing vehicles, and when we pulled into the parking lot there was Robby Gordon's souvenir truck.
I thought wow, this must be a big time off road race! It turns out it was a big time off road race; it was the Parker 425. Even though I had never heard of it, it is a well known race. The race consists of 2 or 3 laps, each about 125 miles through the desert. The run several classes, and one guy we talked to said there was about 200 entrants.
We wandered around a bit, then walked a few hundred yards to a decent viewing area, even though we were a couple hundred yards from the track, we could still see then racers come down along the river, head up hill, then go out of site in a cloud of dust.
While we were there we visited with a couple from Utah. The husband used to race midgets against Dick Simon, who later became an Indy car racer then an owner.
On the walk back I got a pic of Ann in front of the Lucas Oil sign.
And she got a couple of me under the General Tire finish line.
As it was going to be a while before the race would be over we decided to catch the movie Ann wanted to see (The Rite), then go watch more of the racing action. The movie was just a movie to me, but Ann liked it despite having been scared enough a few times to make her scream, but I think she likes that in movies. :)
After the movie was over we went to the finish line, where the announcer was interviewing the racers as they finished.
Since every one does not start at the same time, each racer is timed separately, so it is some time after the event is over, before the finishing order is established, but it was till fun to listen to the guys talk about their race. By this time a large crowd had gathered, and it looked there was going to be a huge party once the race was over, not wanting to get stuck in traffic, we decided to head out to Safeway, get some groceries, then had back to Quartzsite.
After Safeway we did make a stop at the Wal*Mart to look for a 8 inch frying pan. We were both surprised to see how limited the options were for housewares, and they didn't have what we wanted.
Then it was back "home" for a light dinner as we were not all that hungry after eating a large container of popcorn and a huge soda at the theater.
Sunday is "dump and refill day". Even though we could probably go for 10 days or so with dumping our tanks and refilling with fresh water, we did it every Sunday just so we wouldn't have to interrupt Ann's work schedule during the week to do so, and this way we didn't have to worry too much about conserving. Depending on the line at the dump station it usually took us an hour or so to stow things inside, bring in the slides, raise the jacks, drive the couple miles to the dump station, wait in line, dump refill with water and return to our spot and set up again. Waiting in line is not so bad when you have nothing else that you have to do, or should be doing. One guy in line was real slow in dumping, so the ranger who monitors the area had to remind him that this was a dump station, and not a campsite. The guy was offended, but it did get him going.
When I hooked up the water hose to refill the fresh water tank, I then went up on the roof and reversed the tilt of the solar panels as we wanted to park with our door to the south this week. After getting back down off the roof, I realized that I had forgotten to turn the valve that let water into the tank on, so I had to wait another 10 minutes or so for it to fill before returning to our campsite. Glad I wasnt in a hurry.
When we got back to our campsite this time we faced the motorhome east, so that the door and awning would be facing south. Again this week the solar panels did their job!
I am going to post this now, and bring you all up to date on our travel adventures tomorrow.
It is 10:30Pm here and time for bed.
Paul
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment