Well, it has been a busy week since I last blogged. I have been pretty busy. For one thing, I installed the winch bumper and winch on the Limo. It wasn't an easy job, as there were several little mods that needed to be done to accomodate the winch and this ultra high clearance bumper. I had to rotate the sway bar disconnect, and cut off the cross member that protects it. Taking a sawzall and die grinder to your almost new $35,000 Jeep takes either a large degree of insanity, or a real vision. My vision has been blurry for years, but I went ahead and did the mods. The final product looks great, and I'm very happy with the way the winch is down in the bumper instead of up in front of the radiator. I also made one of the clip on license plate holder for the winch, and it is a nice touch.
Yesterday, we took a trail through the Plamosa Mountains. This is a trail described in the Arizona Trails book written by Wells. It is an "easy" rated trail, so we didn't expect much. We had a couple of friends along in the "Trail Limo" for the ride. Ron and Evelyn are our neighbors in the RV Park and we injected them with the geocache bug a few months ago. They are hopelessly addicted now, with over 100 finds. In fact, Ron found their 100th cache while we were on this trip. Ron and Evie are rapidly catching us (we are now at 250 caches.) We like to think we have a life, so we can't cache every moment. I just wish we could say we are busy finding the next cure for a deadly disease or something. Instead, I think I'd have to fall back and say we watch a lot of movies, sleep in late, blog, and bake. (I blog, she bakes!)
Back to Plamosa. It was cool, because the trail actually ran through a section
of small sand dunes. Before coming to Arizona, my vision of the desert was always like the Sahara. Miles and miles of sand dunes with no vegetation to be found. The Sonora desert in Arizona is much more lush, and has many species of cactus and plant life everywhere you go. So, it was interesting to actually see some sand dunes, even though they were quite small, rising up out of the desert about 10 feet. Still we did get a chance to blast up the sides of them in 4 wheel drive and throw a few "roos" behind the Limo.
One of the caches we visited is locted next to a "guzzler". Funny, I always thought a guzzler is a guy that doesn't know the proper way to embibe (which describes practically every friend I ever had until I reached my fifties... and a few since!) Or, perhaps a car that sucks gas fast enough to bring a smile to the face of a shiek. Now, I have been enlightened by the game
of geocaching, so I know that a guzzler is a man made device to collect water for drinking. In the hillside around the Quartzsite area there are over 9 guzzlers. They are in canyons next to steep mountains. They look like a failed attempt at building a pole barn. The collector is a very large area covered by aluminum roofing. It is constructed on a hillside in a canyon. At the lower edge of the collector there is a gutter that collects the water and dumps it into a large covered tank. From there, the water is piped down the hill to a large trough. The trough is to provide water for game. Now... you all know all that I know about guzzlers.
After the trail ran through the dunes up to the guzzler, and around the mountains for about 14 miles, we were deposited on the Plamosa highway just a few miles from the town of Bouse (rhymes with "House".) Bouse was the base for the tank battalions that General Patton brought here during WW II to learn desert warfare. We drove into Bouse and found a small cache magnetically stuck to a tank in a memorial. On the way back to Quartzsite, we drove up a nice 4x4 road and picked up 4 more caches. One of them was next to a cabin and memorial dedicated to a guy named "Bill" that passed on in 1988. Not exactly an antiquity... yet, but hang on for a century and it will be!
This afternoon, after a discussion of what we want to be when we grow up, we went to a lunch provided by the owners of the RV Park. It was a pot luck combined with them providing us the main course and soft drinks. The main course was "Spanish Spaghetti". We were all in a quandry about how spaghetti could be spanish, but now we know. It is like Italian spaghetti, but it has green chiles, cubed pork and a mix of cheddar and Monterey cheese on top. It was very tastey. So were all the side dishes provided by the other folks in the park. Willa put together a very refreshing side dish of pineapple and mandarin oranges in a lemon yogurt. It was a great dish for a very hot day. Temps today reached 90 degrees. Pretty dang hot for the first of March. I guess it was a "kinda" free lunch, since it was provided at no cost, other than the seasonal rent we paid to live here. Still, a good deal!
After the lunch, a group of bluegrass and country musicians played a concert for us. They are all professional musicians, and the music was very entertaining. One song was particularly entertaining. The "hook" of the chorus was something like "he was my best friend when he took my wife away. I hated him then, but I love him today!"
I ended the day by finally finishing my Quartzsite write up and mailing it out to my mail list.
Be sure to visit my pictures at Quartzsite area pictures to see more pictures of the surrounding area.
Yesterday, we took a trail through the Plamosa Mountains. This is a trail described in the Arizona Trails book written by Wells. It is an "easy" rated trail, so we didn't expect much. We had a couple of friends along in the "Trail Limo" for the ride. Ron and Evelyn are our neighbors in the RV Park and we injected them with the geocache bug a few months ago. They are hopelessly addicted now, with over 100 finds. In fact, Ron found their 100th cache while we were on this trip. Ron and Evie are rapidly catching us (we are now at 250 caches.) We like to think we have a life, so we can't cache every moment. I just wish we could say we are busy finding the next cure for a deadly disease or something. Instead, I think I'd have to fall back and say we watch a lot of movies, sleep in late, blog, and bake. (I blog, she bakes!)
Back to Plamosa. It was cool, because the trail actually ran through a section
of small sand dunes. Before coming to Arizona, my vision of the desert was always like the Sahara. Miles and miles of sand dunes with no vegetation to be found. The Sonora desert in Arizona is much more lush, and has many species of cactus and plant life everywhere you go. So, it was interesting to actually see some sand dunes, even though they were quite small, rising up out of the desert about 10 feet. Still we did get a chance to blast up the sides of them in 4 wheel drive and throw a few "roos" behind the Limo.One of the caches we visited is locted next to a "guzzler". Funny, I always thought a guzzler is a guy that doesn't know the proper way to embibe (which describes practically every friend I ever had until I reached my fifties... and a few since!) Or, perhaps a car that sucks gas fast enough to bring a smile to the face of a shiek. Now, I have been enlightened by the game
of geocaching, so I know that a guzzler is a man made device to collect water for drinking. In the hillside around the Quartzsite area there are over 9 guzzlers. They are in canyons next to steep mountains. They look like a failed attempt at building a pole barn. The collector is a very large area covered by aluminum roofing. It is constructed on a hillside in a canyon. At the lower edge of the collector there is a gutter that collects the water and dumps it into a large covered tank. From there, the water is piped down the hill to a large trough. The trough is to provide water for game. Now... you all know all that I know about guzzlers.After the trail ran through the dunes up to the guzzler, and around the mountains for about 14 miles, we were deposited on the Plamosa highway just a few miles from the town of Bouse (rhymes with "House".) Bouse was the base for the tank battalions that General Patton brought here during WW II to learn desert warfare. We drove into Bouse and found a small cache magnetically stuck to a tank in a memorial. On the way back to Quartzsite, we drove up a nice 4x4 road and picked up 4 more caches. One of them was next to a cabin and memorial dedicated to a guy named "Bill" that passed on in 1988. Not exactly an antiquity... yet, but hang on for a century and it will be!
This afternoon, after a discussion of what we want to be when we grow up, we went to a lunch provided by the owners of the RV Park. It was a pot luck combined with them providing us the main course and soft drinks. The main course was "Spanish Spaghetti". We were all in a quandry about how spaghetti could be spanish, but now we know. It is like Italian spaghetti, but it has green chiles, cubed pork and a mix of cheddar and Monterey cheese on top. It was very tastey. So were all the side dishes provided by the other folks in the park. Willa put together a very refreshing side dish of pineapple and mandarin oranges in a lemon yogurt. It was a great dish for a very hot day. Temps today reached 90 degrees. Pretty dang hot for the first of March. I guess it was a "kinda" free lunch, since it was provided at no cost, other than the seasonal rent we paid to live here. Still, a good deal!
After the lunch, a group of bluegrass and country musicians played a concert for us. They are all professional musicians, and the music was very entertaining. One song was particularly entertaining. The "hook" of the chorus was something like "he was my best friend when he took my wife away. I hated him then, but I love him today!"
I ended the day by finally finishing my Quartzsite write up and mailing it out to my mail list.
Be sure to visit my pictures at Quartzsite area pictures to see more pictures of the surrounding area.
Great Blog Gil! Are you a fan of Guy Clark? The above lyrics reminded me of his music! Life sounds grand!
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