A visit with Judy at the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge

Judy operates a popular blog at Travels with Emma and she does volunteer work at the various National Wildlife Refuges around the country. She travels with her dog Emma!

Our regular readers will remember when we did a blogger interview with Judy in 2013. We had met her for a few minutes at the blogger-fest a couple of weeks ago, but we wanted to visit the refuge and spend some more time together.

Easier said than done...

We had made plans to go for a morning bicycle ride with Doug, who lives in his fifth wheel near where we're parked here at Imperial Dam. We said that we would be there around 9:00am, but our fridge burner had been acting up over night and now that we have a replacement I decided to change it before we left for the bike ride.

But it was easier said than done!

A great camping spot!

Our nearest neighbor is at least half a mile away. Just the way we like it.

We were excited to finally meet a long time reader of this blog. Doug has been a loyal daily reader for years. You've probably seen him comment as "Dugg". He lives here in his fifth wheel during the winter and knows the area well, so he said he would choose a camping spot for us. And being a long time reader, he knows what we like!

Sherman has a new awning!

We drove Sherman over to an empty lot near where our friends Geoff and Fran have their motorhome parked. Geoff had offered to help me install our new awning fabric to save the $150 installation fee that the awning guys at Quartzsite wanted to do the job.

If a penny saved is a penny earned, then I earned $50 an hour yesterday for the three hours it took to complete the job!

A four wheel drive adventure!

Great fun yesterday as we went out into the desert on a four wheel drive adventure with our friends Geoff and Fran. They bought a book that lists trail routes that are accessible only with a 4x4 vehicle, and so they took us out to one of the listed routes, the Dripping Springs Trail.

Then, we drove out to see one of only two natural stands of palm trees that grow in Arizona.

January Expenses

Well we're glad that month is over! The pocketbook (and the credit card) took a big hit. Definitely one of our more expensive months, but we got a lot of things done that simply needed to be done.

We spent $3,547.63. Yikes! (Note, all dollar amounts are listed in Canadian dollars which dropped like a rock throughout the month and just keeps getting worse).

Finally, our propane adapter installed!

We started yesterday morning with a bike ride. Happy to be a two bicycle family again, and both of them with good tires and working properly!

There's not a lot to see in the town of Quartzsite, but there were a couple of areas that are worth a visit.

More dental work, and then back to Quartzsite

We kind of changed our plans a little and came back to Quartzsite a couple of days earlier than we had originally planned. This way, we can hopefully go for our jeep tour with friends on Sunday, and then do our awning fabric installation Monday morning.

And after that, we have no plans for the next several weeks, so we'll be able to take our time visiting and exploring as we please without feeling to need to be somewhere!

Blogging visitors!

We had made arrangements to have visitors over yesterday afternoon, so we took advantage of our free time in the morning to go for a hike to the top of the little mountain beside Pilot Knob LTVA.

It's a relatively steep hike, but from the time we left Sherman to the time we were at the top was only 45 minutes. We took a different route coming back down.

Not the smoothest day

Sometimes everything goes according to plan, and sometimes it doesn't!

Yesterday was a "doesn't" day!

First problem was that we didn't get the earliest start, and that was nobody's fault but our own. We set out just after 9:30am, and the plan was to ride our bikes on the dirt road that goes around the mountain and hooks up to the road going across the border.

Quartzsite to Yuma

We packed up and hit the road yesterday morning. We had bought a 14 day LTVA (long term visitor area) pass for $40 ($50 CDN) so that we are able to camp on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) property for 14 consecutive days and be able to use their water and dump station facilities.

So, the first thing we did when we left was to empty our holding tanks, and fill with fresh water.

The highest mountain overlooking Quartzsite

It was a rare rainy afternoon here in the desert yesterday. We had been told to expect just enough rain to make your windshield dirty, but we got a lot more than that.

Fortunately, we picked a window of time to go for a hike where it just spit on us a little bit. We left Sherman at about 9:50am, and set out to hike the highest mountain overlooking Quartzsite!

What we bought at the RV show

One of the reasons we came to Quartzsite was that we figured we might get some deals on things that we need and want for Sherman. A few repair and maintenance items, and a few things that we simply wanted. But we had a list, and we've now crossed quite a few things off that list!

So yesterday morning, we drove back and parked so that we were walking distance to the show, about 1/2 a mile away.

A fun afternoon visiting with other RV'ing bloggers

A few weeks back, I think we were in Mazatlan at the time, I read on somebody else's blog that there was going to be an "official" gathering of bloggers during the time of the Quartzsite RV show. The date was to be January 24th.

We were already planning on being in the area around that time, so decided we wanted to meet some of the folks we regularly read about.

The Big Quartzsite RV Show

Okay, so the big deal here at Quartzsite is the RV show taking place this week. We're here partly because Sherman needs some repair and maintenance items and this seemed to be a good place to get them, and at a decent price.

Overall, I'm a little disappointed so far.