1-19-10

Quartzite again

I was in my new camp here in Quartzite taking a nap when there was a banging on the pod…. I got up to meet this guy (John) that is camped just down the way from me. He rode up on his R80G/S that he bought last year from a guy in Phoenix. He had actually bought a Transalp from him for a tirp to Alaska and ended up buying the GS as well. John is a retired Postal guy from New Hampshire that came down to the desert for the winter. He has outfitted the bike with a R100GS subframe and seat. Otherwise it is a nice stock little bike that I don’t think has a lot of miles on it. He got it from Dave Nelson in Phoenix who has a pile of BMW’s I guess. It turned out that Dave came to camp last night for a visit and I got a chance to meet him. He has kept another one, that I guess is a really nice one. It is always great to meet another R80GS owner and this time two of them.

I went into town yesterday and stopped to see this motorized bike outfit. It turns out that they are from Billings, Montana and are down here selling and outfitting motors for bikes as well as complete bikes. This recombant wasn’t motorized but I liked the design.

This one has a Honda motor.

compact little rascle. It comes with a big bag to carry it in.

one unfolded with a nice fat butt seat. A woman was looking at one and I could tell she liked that seat… a good fit too…but the tires would need more air.

A fellow Montana rat bike.!!! This little Honda has been ridden hard and ridden hard some more, and more and more…….

I like the southwest upholstery.

This bike gets used. I waited around while I ate a huge double dip waffle ice cream cone, but he didn’t show up, so I have yet to meet him.

Nice metal work….

This little three wheeler tooled in and a guy and his wife got out. He said he has 94,000 miles on it since he built it.. it just has to be a lot nicer in the rain and snow than two wheels.

This is my neighbors camp. I went over to apologize to him for camping so close but he welcomed me to the site. He turns out to be really cool guy and has been looking around town for jobs. I just love his simple clean camp. he sleeps in the back of his truck and has it all set up really nice and efficient. His little tent is for not much other than a place to get in out of the weather as well as a place to stash his fire wood. He gets up at the crack of dawn and builds a fire and cooks his breakfast over the flames. Not many folks do that now. I sill have my old camp skillet well blackened from fires but now I am using propane. I sure like Ron’s easy ways and good outlook even in the face of the stinking economy.

He makes jewelry, draws, paints and gave me this drawing. He thinks I need a woman watching me…….

Another neighbor named Ray and his well equipped camp truck.

Ray rode his bike into town everyday. He said he was retired now, on social security, but doesn’t get much money from them as he has worked most of his life volunteering for others. He is a machinist as well as I think a lot of other trades. He said he has invented quite a few things and two things for his bike. One is what he called a differential for the crank (pedals) which automatically shifts into a lower gear when needed and the other is a special sprung seat that gives some sort of boost when the pedals reach bottom/top and makes the change between legs smoother. He has an amazing bike but some of his inventions are not installed at the moment. I was asking about some of the strange things and one pictured here is the mount for his sail. He uses the sail when the wind is blowing right on long trips. When he first opens his mouth, those teeth are a little shocking, but right away you know he is a really nice guy and just so friendly.

The blue and gold thing is the mount for the sail mast.

Another one of the ‘outback’ campers is Joe. He is a retired industrial crane operator. He has been retired for 31 years. He has a nice camper van and travels south in the winter and north in the summer as ‘some’ of us do. He also packs a few things for swap meets so he can make a few bucks now and then. He went down to New Zeeland when he was a young man and really liked it. When he found out I went to Australia he was really interested. It turns out that he doesn’t like the way our government is doing things and would like to get out of here. He sure wanted to know if Australia would take a retired person. I don’t think they will take us old bastards, unless we could find one of their women to marry us. Fat chance of that eh? It looked to me like all the good ones were already taken……

He took piano lessons when he was a kid and got this electric keyboard and has been practicing. He said he can play about 35 songs now.

Here is John and Marje back from a run into town. Marje is a really a sweetheart of a gal and I ended up giving her a pair of Angle Wing earrings. They both came over later and ended up buying quite a few hairclips as well as some earrings for friends and relatives. When I meet people as nice as these, I wonder if I might be unrealistic in my assumption that all those people back east aren’t worth a shit. New Hampshire may suck, but some of the people are be OK.

I had to stop and talk with the guy that owned this little VW Thing. It turns out he is from Michigan and this thing was a total rust bucket. It only had one fender left on it as the other rusted off. He has replaced almost everything on this rig. He said he has over $8500 dollars in parts on it and that doesn’t include labor. It turned out that when I went back to give the guy that told me about the Earp token a ‘finders fee’, he had a VW bug that had been made into a Baja Bug. He also had a tow bar for it. When he sold the bug the guy didn’t want the tow bar so I was able to get it from him. I will now have a way of getting my Thing that is in my shed in Goldfield, NV and tow it home. I remember my buddy Ken had a license plate that said “I go where I am towed”. My little Thing, named Orange Julius, is in pretty good shape other than it needs engine work. It is a ragtop unlike this hardtop. The parts are amazingly expensive, much like motorcycles I guess. They were made in Mexico and were designed for dirt roads. They are almost undestructable, other than rust. I put about a quarter million miles on my other one and it was just fine, after lots of those miles on dirt/gravel roads.

The three day black presidents day weekend saw a huge influx of campers into the campground. They really fill up the first part of the grounds like this photo shows. I am always amazed at how people come out here in quarter million dollar outfits and park right next to each other. I guess they feel more like home in the cities with neighbors on each side and up close. They finally filled up the first part and some of the more adventure types came on down where ‘we’ outcasts were camped. I was so pissed off when a group of them pulled into my front yard and circled the wagons. Jeez, right in my sun exposure. I couldn’t just hook up and go because I had an order of Green Panda licorice being sent to me by my friend Tucker. As luck would have it, the licorice came in the next day and I got hooked up and got the hell out of there. It was really nice camping with that nice group of folks but when that group moved right in the middle of us and cranked up their generators and put out their satellite dishes, it was too much for me. It always amazes me that they bring out their TV’s and plunk themselves down on the couch just like home. Why the hell come out in the first place? To answer that question I guess it is because they came to visit the Big RV show that started that weekend. When I went down to get my mail I had to leave and come back an hour later to stand in line, so I went over to give it a quick check out. WOW, it was held in a huge tent and the people were packed in there so tight you had to have your arms tight beside your body to walk through the crowd. I didn’t make it but about twenty feet before I had to turn around and get the hell out of there. Everything you can imagine dealing with RV stuff is probably sold there as well as food and trinkets. It is a good time not to be here.

I left headed west and went through Blythe and headed south down state route 78. This is farming country and the huge fields were mostly turned under after the cotton harvest. There were quite a few alfalfa fields as well as vegetable fields. I stopped at this one to look at the regrowth. I think they will harvest this field again and you can see where they cut off the stems for the  first harvest.

This is what the fields look like after the second harvest and the plants are thrashed to the ground before plowing.

they grow a lot of alfalfa here. The woman I talked to said that the farmers were not getting the price that they wanted for their hay, so they just stacked it and waited for a year to get what they wanted. Another guy said that they are now getting $220 /ton for their hay and it is all going to Japan. He said that small squares were selling for over $20-25 in the LA area.

There were a few fields being used for sheep grazing. It is always nice to see the lambs playing.

A palm tree nursery. When they are big enough they will be sold and moved to towns, trailer parks, etc.

I stopped in at the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge and visited with the volunteer lady there. She told me that they were doing a salt cedar eradication program and here is what that looks like. They burn the place and then dig up the trees/brush and try to get the roots shaken free of the dirt. They do this several times and then they will burn the piles. She said they then flood the area to leach down the salt and plant the area with native trees and pad cactus. Those salt cedars are so invasive I cant imagine that it will work without constant monitoring and work removing the seedlings. I guess it is one way to make never ending work for government employees.

across the road is what it looked like before they started.

they have a road that you can drive around a loop and check out the water fowl. There are thousands of Canadian Honkers, Snow gees (the white ones here), sandhill cranes, as well as lots of ducks. It is interesting how they stay segregated.

The woman explained to me that they grow corn for the geese and harvest (knock down) a little every couple of weeks for feed for them. At the end of the season  (February) they cut the rest down and fatten them up for their journey north. I had no idea that the geese/ducks were on welfare down here all winter.

I didn’t get a picture of the sandhills out in the alfalfa fields but I could sure hear them. I love the sound of them high overhead when they are flying over Montana. All fields down here are furrow irrigated. The visitor gal said that they put out sprinkler lines and irrigate the crops up and then remove them after the plants are established. It would be interesting to know how they harvest these fields with the big haying equipment going over these corrugations.

There is public lands right across from the Refuge so I pulled out there and spent the night. I could get enough cell phone signal to get internet and was watching a huge storm system approaching from California. I listened to the radio and they were predicting up to six inches of rain. I though it best to find this high ground and wait and see what happened. As it turned out there was actually not much rain in this area but I guess it poured in some places.

I unloaded the Bloodhound and went for a ride around the area. I found a nice gravel road going up to the hills which ended in a mining area. I think the map says the Bird Mine.

I couldn’t tell what they were getting in the rock and it didn’t look as if it has been in use for a year or two.

I liked this cracker style house. It was up on little legs to let the air under, as well as a big porch all around the north, west and south side of the house. I think it is a farm workers house.

Looks like the old house.

I had to take these photos of the farmers junk yard for ‘uncle Mike’ who is a sports car lover. A bug eye Sprite?

MG?

This is a well used four wheel drive custom rig eh?

Some of the fields are all ridged up. There are fields of cotton wood trees as well as fields of willow plantings that they government pays the farmers to plant and maintain for bird habitat I guess.

Here is a place where they burned the brush/trees or maybe it is an accidental wild fire area.

The Colorado River has been moved into this channel with dikes on both sides.

There is rip rap on the road that follow along each side of the channel as well as the big dike in the background.

When I came by this campground yesterday there was a crew of maybe twenty guys working on this area with chainsaws and brush cutters. This is next to a BLM campground that I drove in to check out. They charge ten bucks a day or fifteen a night. You can also buy a 6 month permit for $75 to stay in BLM campgrounds. They have the same deal over by Quartzite and a lot of folks buy that six month permit and stay the winter there.

The clean up crew sprayed the stumps of the salt cedars with poison to kill the root system.

This is a ‘Roadrunner’  which is a big forklift built on a truck. They use it to pick up stacks of hay and place them on a semi truck.

I talked with the guy that takes care of the campground and he told me that this is the original riverbed. He says it is warmer water and the bass are biting better here than out in the river. An interesting point is that standing here we were on the state line between California and Arizona as they kept the state line on the old riverbed when they moved the river to the channel.

Another big storm was headed this way and I found a nice area to camp that has great gravel and rock road. It turns out that this is a pile of rock and stones that they have all along the dike system in case they have a breech in the dyke from a flood. I am hidden back here and can’t be seen from anywhere. I can see a few lights at night far away. I sure find this much more to my liking than in a damn campground with asshats circled up in my front yard with a generator running.

This is the place I was camped when that big Tornado came past. I was in the pod and was listening to my little radio and they were discussing the difference between a tornado warning and a tornado watch. I went on line and went to the weather website for Yuma which is south of here and they had a tornado watch going. I then checked Blythe, just a little north of here and it said a Tornado Watch!!! I stepped out to see what was going on outside. Not sure if it dropped down but just north, behind the pod about a mile or so it was just plain BLACK and then it started raining hard. That is when I got in the truck and strapped myself in. Wow, what a high wind rainstorm that was. I turned on the windshield wipers and could only see the hood for an instant. I looked at the NOAA radar map and there was that red patch just over where I am camped. Dang ol’ Lucky Dog….. again. Nine lives for a cat…. How many for a dog?