Prior to planning for this trip, I had never heard of the nomad town of Quartzsite, AZ. It's worth learning about. The town has only a few hundred permanent residents, but on the BLM land surrounding the town, over 10,000 nomads will set up camp for the winter.
our camping set-up in the middle of no where. We joined one of Jon's remote co-workers and his family. They are a full-time RV family, so they showed us around and had some tips to share.
we made good use of our solar panels to keep lights on and charge phones and laptops.
we hiked a nearby trail up through a mountain pass to see the only native palm trees growing in Arizona. (They're hiding up in the crack between the peaks)
Every one of those white specks is a camper.
Miles and miles of campers, tents, converted buses, vans, and every kind of mobile or temporary shelter. The Sonoran desert hosts them all. The Long-term-visitor-area requires a very small fee to register and have access to water, dump stations, trash bins and pit toilets. It seems the bare minimum to sustain life, but it attracts travelers from northern Canada and across the entire US. The mild temperatures of the winter desert make it easy to live mostly out-of-doors. So many retirees winter here.
Most of the desert is so barren, but I am continually amazed by the persistence of life.
E and I were surprised by a desert fox when we went stepped outside in the middle of the night.
We enjoyed a campfire, made new friends, and can now say we've stayed at Quartzsite, THE place for travelers to spend the winter.
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