Time to head north…

After a month in Amado, daily afternoon temps were over 100 F and even with the shade I had in the 50 amp spot they assigned me at Mt. View RV Ranch, I’d still be seeing 105-110 F temps in the afternoon, lasting several hours. The heat pump was handling it fine but it still wears on ya not being able to hang out outside or mess around outside much. So decided to head north. Three days before travel, I’d driven north at 6:30 am to take advantage of the morning cool and filled up the RV’s diesel tank at a Shell station 5 miles away. Price was within a couple cents of the best price in the area. I did this specifically so that I could get a very early start in the morning when I did leave so I could avoid the heat of the day. I was heading for Quartzsite, only 4 hours away. There are several routes I could take to get to Pahrump, and this is one of my regular travel routes. Pahrump would probably be a 30 day stop over based on their average temps this time of year.

I wanted to avoid the heat of the day because my dash AC isn’t working yet. I can use my heat pump and do so all the time, but the generator uses 0.8 gallons of diesel per hour to run the heat pump and I have to be careful because it uses the main diesel tanks fuel and I don’t want to run the generator when the RVs tank is down below 1/4 tank because if it runs out, it’s a bitch getting it running again after getting a diesel fill up. Takes multiple start attempts over 2-3 hours and I don’t like stressing the starting motor or the fuel pump too much doing that. Anyway, I just planned my trip in 4-5 hour chunks and tried to get up really early to avoid the heat while traveling here in the desert. And of course, if I’m heading west, that avoids the morning sun and heading north avoids the sun from around 10 am to 3 pm.

Anyway, I stayed 3 days past my due date so I could be traveling during the middle of the week. Right now I don’t think it matters that much which day of the week I travel, seems to me the RV traffic is very light. I think even RV’ers are hunkering down and trying not to move much during the Covid-19 virus shutdown. A known is better than an unknown and it looked as though the Amado/Nogales area was going to be a great place to stay to avoid infection. BUT, the daily temps were just too much. I still have to consider my equipment and although I did maintenance on my heat pump in early May of ’19, it’s still 18 years old. And having it fail here in the southern desert no where near RV service is not something I wanted to experience.

Here’s some of the freeway artwork you find in Arizona. I kind of like it. Then after passing though Tucson, there’s this big peak that’s kind of interesting.

This next shot is of downtown Tucson as I passed through. Gotten pretty big. Many many RV parks here. Not my kind of place to look for parks but some people like big towns. The winter weather is quite good here I guess.

After passing through Tucson, I take the I-8 west, then at Gila Bend, take AZ-85 north. This is the Phoenix bypass. Totally avoids that city. I hadn’t eaten breakfast as I wanted to get on the road really early, and I did, 6:15 AM is when I left the Mt. View RV Ranch, so I wanted to stop at the Shell station right at the Gila Bend exit and buy a breakfast sandwich. And damn! It’s not just closed, the entire place has been torn down and it’s mostly bulldozed over now. Jeese. That was a RV park I’d stayed at many times over the years. They were a PPA park, and had pretty good services and the wifi was good to. Now it’s all gone. So I stopped and made myself a vegi plate for breakfast.

I’d decided to stop in Quartzsite (even though I could have pushed on and made it to Pahrump in just over 8 hours) because of Silly Al’s Pizza. It is just that good and I wanted to stop there in town for the night, buy a couple of them, pick them up at curbside (they have that service according to their web site), cut them up into meal size sections and freeze the left overs. I didn’t head to Phoenix because of the traffic there, instead opting for the Phoenix bypass. I-10 to I-8, take the AZ-85 shortcut north, and back onto I-10 the rest of the way into Quartzsite. Near the north end of AZ-85 there’s a RR track crossing all 4 lanes of the road. You’re traveling 55-60 and don’t often think of slowing down. And usually on a 4 lane highway it’s not an issue. Here though, the mound for the RR tracks crossing the road is both hard to spot and so high that when hit at high speed, my RV almost caught air. Seemed to jump into the air 1-2 feet. Stuff in the RV jumping and falling all over the floor, stuff jumping out of the cabinets all over the house. Damn. Some 20 minutes of careful listening and observing later, decided my chassis wasn’t ruined, my tires weren’t going flat, and my wheel bearings were okay and then the road got back onto I-10 westbound.

And an hour plus later, I was approaching Quartzsite. Got off the west bound freeway at exit 19, pulled into the Shell station and used my phone to search for RV parks. Found one that took Passport America (PPA) , has 50 amp, and wifi. Called them up and yep, they were open, had lots of spaces, wifi was working fine. And it turned out that out of the many choices of RV parks available in Quartzsite, this one was the closest to where I happened to be. Hah! And one of just 3 that takes PPA. My one night there was $16 and I think they take the card 3 nights.

And here’s where they put me while I stayed at Park Place RV:

You can see that Quartzsite is definitely desert. Hardly any trees, no grass. This town is swarming with RV visitors from around mid October until mid April when it gets too hot and RV’ers start leaving. So there’s lots of competition for RV’ers to come and stay with them with most of the RV parks in town though some parks still think they’re ‘all that’ and ask outrageous fees to park, this one seems to understand value still. This was in late April, like the 29th or so. I was all set up by 11 am and it was already 90 F.  And a look around…

The clouds make it appear to be coolish, but they only helped keep it below 100 F. Late in the afternoon it flirted with 105 F for a while. It was pleasant having the clouds though because full on sunshine in Quartzsite is brutal.

So I called Silly Al’s to order my pizzas and no answer. Over the next hour, kept trying. No answer. Went online, found their FB page, and their web site, and neither site said anything about them being closed. They both said they were open during the shutdown for curbside service. Finally, I PM’ed them on FB and after 30 minutes, someone that works for them answered back that they were only open on Saturday. WTF!!! Dammit. I could have skipped stopping here all together if they’d bothered to mention that on the web site or on their FB page. Jeese.

Kind of a hassle but I love their pizza so it was worth the effort. Or at least it could have been. I wasn’t going to stay there for 3 nights waiting for pizza so the next morning, early, I headed off to Pahrump. There’s a tiny aircraft museum I passed on the way out of town, I’ve never stopped there in my many stays in Quartzsite, gotta do that some day.

On the travel route from Quartzsite to Pahrump, you pass through Parker just 30 miles north. And on the outskirts of Parker is an Native American owned fuel station (might have a casino inside, not sure) and I knew about it so I planned to stop there and fuel up since it was right on the way, easy in/out and build for big vehicles. I needed around 1/2 tank. When I get up there, I’m pleasantly surprised to see it’s $2.15/gallon for diesel. Nice. As I was driving through Parker after fill up, I saw that all the other stations had diesel from $2.35 to $2.55/gallon. Yikes. I was pretty happy about the fuel savings and happily made my way uneventfully to Pahrump.

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Here’s what much of the road between Quartzsite and Pahrump looks like. There are a couple vistas off in the distance that are kinda interesting along the way, but generally, no better than this. I do enjoy traveling through some of the more remote areas, places where I don’t see another car for miles, that’s pretty neat. And there is a canyon or two along the way. I’m talking the US-95 route on the eastern edge of Mojave valley. Heads straight to Las Vegas but if you don’t miss your exit like me, the route to Pahrump just borders the southern edge of the town. Even then, the missed exit only cost me maybe 15 minutes.

After 4 and 1/2 hours or so, arrived in Pahrump. Noticed all the casinos that I passed were closed. But the Preferred RV Resort is open as expected. This is the park where I bought in a couple years ago so I’m guaranteed a spot…and that is what I want, to be sure I have a place to stay as I pass on my way north.

Got signed in and here I am all set up. The wifi tower is across the road right behind my RV but the speed was under 1 Mbps so I moved my antenna up to the front window and pointed it at the casino across the street. And it’s still on though the casino is totally closed. Speed was 14 Mbps…streaming movie speed! Yea!

And that’s where I’m still parked. Things are better here in Pahrump temp wise, like today it’s only 89 F, and I’ve got two shade trees, plus with the added elevation here in Pahrump, it’s generally cooler most of the day compared to Amado. So I’m happy here for now. It’s now mid May and I think I’ll head north next week or the week after for even more cooling.

I’m not very happy about the stupidity coming from the white house that is encouraging idiots of all stripes to ignore the social distancing suggestions like it was some kind of removal of their rights. I don’t see them storming capital buildings when a “No shoes, no shirt, no service” sign goes up in a restaurant. I even saw some guy dressed in a khaki type uniform carrying a sidearm an the local Walmart without a mask of course. Just wandering around, probably hoping someone will notice his dumb ass. Unofficial as hell. Looked like a boy scout but in long pants. Some freakin’ 22-24 year old kid. Doubt he has any idea what the fork he’s doing either.

So here in mid May, it’s looking like, based on the news, that the US will have the world’s highest death rate from Covid-19 soon when we hit a new peak. And deservedly so if so many refuse to listen to the health officials that have been right all along so far.

I for one, intend to keep listening to the best advice from scientists and will keep following their guidelines as best I can.

This area is an hours drive from Las Vegas which has a pretty high rate right now of Covid so I’ll pretty happy it’s not nearly as bad here. There are some cases, and last I heard they’re not rising, but there’s now a ‘back to normal’ permitted by the governor and I’m seeing crowds of people with no masks starting to accumulate, especially here at the RV park where it’s most noticeable to me, so leaving soon is probably a good idea in the grand scheme of things.

Well, enough bad news, the good news is my daughter has a nice rental house she’s living in up in Milton-Freewater, Oregon and for a change, there appears to be room for me to park my RV for a while. This would be my only family member that I know of that has a place for me to park. I’ve been full timing for 16 years and in all that time, I’ve not had a relative or a friend with any RV parking for me. Not their fault of course, but dahyum, you’d think I’d catch a break…maybe this is it! Will have to check it out first of course. The Google earth satellite and ground pictures of the place make it seem like a great place to stay too. It may be another month before I get there as I leisurely make my way north but I’m really looking forward to getting there.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoy my adventures as much as I do.