Quartzsite, Arizona

We arrived at our home in Quartzsite in the early afternoon after stopping in Blythe to shop at the Albertson's. After unloading the Lazy Daze, we had dinner at our favorite restaurant in town, Taco Mio.

Since we're here for the winter, there will probably not be many posts until we're back out on the road again in April 2006. If we take a trip someplace, or otherwise do something out of the ordinary, I'll post it here; otherwise, it'll be pretty quiet at this site!

Northshore Resort

Northshore Resort is one of our Coast to Coast parks located in Needles, California. Note for the future: with the new reservation system Coast to Coast started last year, we've run into a couple of parks that, while they'll let you in without a reservation, ask to be paid in cash rather than using the points already purchased from Coast to Coast...so try to make reservations!

The only trouble with this -- for us, at least -- is that you can't make reservations with Coast to Coast any sooner than 3 days prior to arriving, and we often don't know that far in advance where we'll be. Take our trip to Needles, for example. We were planning on boondocking at a particular place, but it turned out not to be a good place, and it was in the 90's, so we decided to go to the Coast to Coast park instead where we could plug in and run the air conditioning.

Pair-A-Dice Co-Op Park

Pair-A-Dice is the Escapees Co-Op park located in Pahrump, Nevada. We spent a couple of days here relaxing. We had dinner at Terrible's Casino the night we arrived.

Mesquite Springs Campground, Day 2

We took a trip to check out Ubehebe Crater, a 600-foot deep crater caused by a massive volcanic explosion more than 3,000 years ago.

Mesquite Springs Campground, Death Valley National Park

On our way to the campground, we stopped to tour Scotty's Castle.

Although it is called Scotty's Castle, it was actually owned by Scotty's friend and benefactor, Albert M. Johnson. Located in Grapevine Canyon, the canyon was an ideal location for constructing a home, because it had a constant and regular source of water. Johnson had received an engineering degree at Cornell University, and used his engineering knowledge and ingenuity to take advantage of the natural resources available in the canyon, like the Pelton water wheels to generate electricity. The springs are located at an elevation 300 feet above the building, which means ample water pressure as it comes down hill and passes through the water wheel. The turning wheel would run a generator to produce electricity. The castle is filled with other technological ingenuity making it well worth a stop.

Continuing on to Mesquite Springs Campground, which is at 1800 feet in elevation, we found a site that backed up to Death Valley Wash (dry, of course, but I bet it was running with water last spring!).

Miller's Rest Stop

Miller's Rest Stop is on US-6 about 10 miles west of Tonopah. They have a large area specifically for over-night RV parking with an 18-hour limit. We had stopped here on our way to Pit River Campground earlier in the year, and found it to be a quiet place, even though it's near the highway. However, the highway doesn't have a lot of traffic at night, and the road is flat, so what trucks do pass by don't have to use their jake brakes. This rest area also has fresh water and a dump station, all free.

20-Mile Beach

20-Mile Beach is a free BLM campground on the shores of Walker Lake, north of Hawthorne. This campground has primitive camping; i.e., there are no designated sites, you just find a place and park. We found a nice place with a good view of the lake.

Nugget Casino

We came to Reno to do shopping at both Costco and Trader Joe's where we picked up a case of Two Buck Chuck.

We were on our way to another casino, but drove right by the Nugget and noticed quite a few RVs parked in the back of their western parking lot, so we turned in and parked there...for free. We did, however, walk over to the casino to have dinner at one of their many restaurants, Rosie's Cafe. We had an excellent meal (German pot roast, potato pancakes, braised red cabbage, and desert...yum!) all for $4.00 each ($5.00 regular "early bird" price plus a senior discount of $1.00).