For the last few days I have been homesteading in Quartzsite, AZ. Well… homesteading may be a misleading term, but I have staked out a small piece of desert real estate where I have parked my house. No one seems to mind or even notice that I’m here – I’m only one of thousands of recreational vehicles camping this public land. The town of Quartzsite is hosting it’s annual, giant tent sale (really just a huge flea market), drawing droves of retirees and vacationers to the area.<\/p>\n
Richard and Dianna are parked at the La Posa LTVA south of town. It is only 5 miles from my site so it is easy for us to get together. We’ve walked through the market place a couple of times, browsing numerous booths of tools, clothes, jewelry, hardware, housewares, hats, and bangles, everything you could ever imagine never needing. <\/p>\n
I’ve been devoting a couple of days for making improvements to my van. Thanks to Richard, my solar panel is now generating all my electrical needs. Richard is an expert at solar-systems for RVs, and he walked me through the process of hooking everything up. Yesterday I built a battery box and mounted the solar controller under my bed. The next step will be to fasten the panel to the roof of my van.<\/p>\n
I also found a reasonably priced antenna for my TV. We are in such a remote area of AZ, my rabbit-ears just wouldn’t cut it. With this new amplified antenna I mounted on the back of my van, I now get several stations from Phoenix and Yuma.<\/p>\n
We have enjoyed riding motorcycles around town, and yesterday we rode south to a place called Stone Cabin where they have delicious ice cream. Dianna said that the girl who usually works the counter, dips huge cones. It was probably good that we didn’t eat more of the sweet desert and resolved to make it our dinner.<\/p>\n
Today was a hiking day. We drove to a place called Palm Canyon, situated at the end of a washboardy, dirt road about ten miles south of Q. Although it was a short hike, the terrain and rock-scramble made for a good workout. At the end of the main trail we came to a sign that pointed to a grove of Fan Palms, high in a side canyon above us; it is the only place they grow in the southwest.<\/p>\n
Tonight it has started to rain. The forecast is bleak for the next few days so we may be spending time resting, more repairs, or taking the car on an excursion. Hey, its kind of nice to be able to do whatever we want.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the last few days I have been homesteading in Quartzsite, AZ. Well… homesteading may be a misleading term, but I have staked out a small piece of desert real estate where I have parked my house. No one seems to mind or even notice that I’m here – I’m only one of thousands of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":817,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions\/817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}