AN 8 HOUR STAY IN CALIFORNIA

We left Nevada in the wee morning hours Thursday headed towards California. With a short 30 mile jaunt through Arizona we were in California before the sun rose. When it was daylight we stopped in Barstow so Craig could play with his erector set, the steel framing on the trailer, to build a base for a container on the back end of the trailer.

After dealing with the usual Southern California traffic back ups, we pulled into the shipper's yard at 9:30am. They loaded the containers, and Craig and I, working like a synchonized team went to work chaining and strapping the containers. In under a hour we had the containers securely on the trailer, paperwork signed, and on the freeway headed towards Phoenix.


Driving through Palm Springs we began seeing a multitude of windmills. This particular area would put the Altamont Pass to shame. Both sides of the freeway were lined. I suppose they need all that extra electricity for air conditioning. Speaking of which, we had to turn the AC on in the truck as the temperature had hit 68 degrees!


We had to go into Ehrenburg, Arizona to fax some paperwork into the office. We couldn't believe what we saw as we took the off ramp. The frontage road leading up to the Flying J was bumper to bumper with RV'ers fueling up their vehicles. It almost looked like the world was coming to an end. We had to pull out onto the other lane of traffic to get around them to get to the truck parking.


So what was the attraction to the area? Quartzite, Arizona. What makes Quartzite special is that it has been a rock-hound's paradise since the 1960's. Each winter Quartzite swells in population to well over a million visitors, most of whom converge on the small town in a wave of RVs during the months of January and February. We just happened to end up in the middle of them making their way there.

We stayed in Tonopah, Arizona Thursday night and dropped off the containers Friday morning. Once again we make the drop, put away equipment, had the paperwork signed in under 45 minutes! We are getting quite good at it. Shortly after unloading we were told to head towards Pharr, Texas, just as we were hearing of winter storm watch for the New Mexico/Texas area. So far as up Friday night, we have only run into strong winds and light rain. We'll see what we wake up to Saturday morning.