SHOWING

Our time here in Quartzsite has been ever so rewarding ! We have seen many long time friends and met folks that we have known via the internet for years. Showing the Oliver Legacy Elite II has been quite a friend magnet. Here is the way we look at the show site.

We are in a great location beside the frontage road, right on the corner. There is lots of parking and some friends have stopped by while pulling or driving a RV. The molded fiberglass gathering near  here on Dome Rock Road makes it convenient for forums friends to come to see Oliver’s new offering. The dessert at night is ablaze with thousands of campfires and RV’s lights.

Today is the last day of the BIG Tent show, so the crowds will change their touring pattern no doubt. We stopped by the AL&L booth at the BIG Tent. We have worked for AL&L for the past five Summers. They are great folks and we just had to stop by and say Hi.

Just up the road from our show site is a local landmark for the Dessert Gardens Show Grounds. The walk under water tank arch way.

Friends from the Napa Valley in California flew into Phoenix for a visit, fell in love with the new Elite II and placed an order. Congratulations to the Leighton’s on their impending delivery !

Jeff and Glenda drove up from KofA where they are camped near other Casitan’s. We hadn’t seen them since we fished together at Lake Ouachita in Arkansas. We had a great visit and caught up on lots of molded fiberglass happenings.

We will be here until around the middle of February, so if nearby, stop in and say hi !

QUARTZSITE

Being raised as a kid in the mining towns along the Mogollon Rim, I had been to Quartzsite Arizona before. There wasn’t much there so many years ago. He, he, times change, and Quartzsite is no exception ! This Winter we are showing trailers, 2014 models, for Oliver Travel Trailers out of Hohenwald Tennessee, at the Dessert Gardens Show Grounds here in “Q”. Here is a look down the midway.

Our show site is right on the corner and many Rver’s stop in for a look each day.

 

This was an entire family group, most of them on ATV’s. “Q” is ATV friendly and you can ride them anywhere.

This is a look at our show site in the shade of a Palo Verde Tree.

TIMES

Times were hard in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas. The old timers had a saying that was often quoted around the whittlin’ and spittin’ benches in front of the Hatfield stores. It went like this, “ you can hear nearly anything in these here mountains, except meat a’ fryin’ er’ money a jinglin’”.

For years Mountain family’s had went to work on jobs way off somewhere. Logging , pipeline, ect., were popular and my Dad was a pipeline welder, until he heard about a job out in Arizona in a Copper mine. We moved out there and discovered that it wasn’t sand dessert as we had imagined, but was high Sonoran Dessert, just below the Mogollon Rim.

The family car was a old gray ford fastback sedan that had been wrecked, repaired and re painted. It had a tendency to run hot if loaded heavy and ran very fast. Now, by fast, I mean fifty miles per hour or so. There were few paved roads between the mining town and Grandma’s house in Arkansas, so as we learned about a new one, we would re route to take advantage of it. Vacation time was a big thing and it was planned and re planned, over and over.

 

Route 66 was a marvelous thing back then ! We would leave the mining town in the cool of the evening. Then cross the San Carlos Apache reservation and go through the Salt River canyon. We would be carrying heavy canvas water bags on the bumper for when the car ran hot on the long hard climb out of the canyon. Gasoline was very inexpensive and every little wide spot in the road had gas pumps and a general store.

Arriving back in the Ouachita’s was a wonderful thing ! We would just absolutely soak in all the old familiar sights, sounds and smells. The pole yard’s rich pine scent was one in particular.

Times may have been hard in the Ouachita Mountains, but there was folks there that had compassion for each other, like no other place we knew of.

ANNUAL

At about New Year’s Eve/Day, we break out those battery’s that we have found on post CHRISTmas sale, and commence our annual ritual. It is time to replace the battery’s in our detectors as well as test each device. In addition to smoke and carbon monoxide detector’s, we have temperature read out’s for the outside, inside and basement. Here is a look at some devices that now have new battery’s.

The Atomic clock on the left, reads the inside and outside temps, and the LL Bean on the right reads the basement temperature. That is ten battery’s, 6 AA’s and 4 AAA’s, for just those things. Then there is the other safety sensor’s, they take  nine volt battery’s. Here they are.

 

Smoke and Carbon Monoxide detectors.

But wait, we aren’t quite through just yet ! There is the propane detector.

And, the other remote read out in the office slide out.

Why burn through all those battery’s, one might ask. Simply put, it is for safety. Each device is independently powered from it’s own source. Meaning that they can still function with everything else totally dead, like for instance, the solar battery bank.

That isn’t a sensor that is draped around the basement temp receiver, it is a USB LED light to make the laptop keyboard easier to see when we are off the grid.

Quite a New Years Eve party we’re having here in the 5er ! Getting down with all these serious battery change outs ! I’ll bet we don’t make it till’ midnight to see the Ball Drop ! Happy New Year every one !