Monday, December 28, 2015

All Those Vendors......

Even the local businesses close down here during the summer and don't open back up until Oct. or so. In the last few weeks the grocery stores, local restaurants, laundromats, coffee houses, leather places, ice cream shoppe, rv parts/service, rock shops, bead stores, craft stores, etc. have opened their doors to the snobirds down here.

There are huge open areas set up here where people pull in their campers and setup their wares to sell for a price! Then there are the local craft fairs too and you can only participate if your stuff is hand made, which I really liked!!

We have seen paragliders, remote controlled planes and one morning I could have sworn I saw someone hanging from a hot air balloon lolol. Some of the motorized vehicles you see here are just far out, remember most of these snobirds are the older generation! I see people on scooters walking their dogs lol....except the dog is running hahaha!

There are hundreds of vendors already and more will be coming in. I was told a while back this is the wholesale capital of the world! So far I have seen....rocks, fossils, beads of all kinds for beading and jewelry making, crystals from Arkansa and any other place you can think of, sage bundles, hippie wares, dvd's, old fashioned kitchenware, clothing, jewelry, hot coffee, atv/scooter dealers, foods galore, rv supplies, tools, barber shop, massage therapy, windshield repair, satellite vendors, wholesale groceries, cabachons, pendulums, produce stands, breads, sweets, reiki, more rock shops than I could ever imagine, prospecting wares, kewl kitchen utensils, solar places and more! There are rv dealers out the whazoo! 

Alot of the rv parks have their own musical jamm sessions and there are places where bands come in and play for Sat. night dances! 

Of course they are gold & silver buyers. There is a permanent book store here where the owner supposedly plays a piano in there naked! What I do know is I haven't gone in there and I don't think I shall....lol. There is also a nude camping area out there somewhere...I have not bothered to search for that either, hmmmmm!

Soooo there u have it so far.....anything and everything one can imagine including many transients!!! When this shindig really gets going there will be so many events that it makes one's head spin. Many we won't attend but I am so glad I was able to see something like this...and we just might stay?!?!

Friday, December 4, 2015

The Hi Jolly Story and the Quartzsite Camels....

This adventure begins in 1855 with Jefferson Davis who was then the Secy. of War and he had an idea to import camels to build and travel on a wagon road through the southwest.

A buyer was dispatched and sent to the Middle East where he purchased 33 of them and proceeded to load them on a ship that had been modified for them and set sail to Indianola, Texas. Authorities were also sent there to find men who spoke camel....*snicker*!

Hadji Ali and Yiorgos Caralambo (AKA Greek George) were hired to teach the soldiers how to deal with these camels. Since the soldiers couldn't pronounce Hadji's name, he became known as Hi Jolly!

The camels were a great success! They could carry two to three times as much as the Army mules. They could go without water for much longer than could their horses or mules and most of the desert forage was fine for them to eat.

But alas, along came the Civil War and Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederacy as we all know. So without his support, the project was abandoned. Some of the camels were sold and others escaped into the wild. Hi Jolly bought two of them and operated a freight route between the Colorado River and the mining towns of eastern Arizona for the next two years.

In 1880 he became a U.S. citizen and started calling himself Philip Tedro and married Gertrude Serna of Tucson, AZ. When he retired, he moved to Quartzsite and prospected around the region using a mule. He died in 1902.

The camels thrived for a while, but eventually died out. However, as late as the 1930's and 1940's there were unsubstantiated reports of camels spotted in the wild. One story was that of the Red Camel, which roamed the desert with a headless human skeleton on its back!

This one picture of the pyramid with a camel on top is located in the Hi Jolly Cemetery and the cemetery is the most visited locations in Quartzsite!!

The other picture you can spot at the town boundary lines, on all 4 sides! I think the statues, etc. are a nice way to honor Hi Jolly and his camels.

Isn't that a neat story?!




More Campers Than I Ever Have Seen!!

Yes, I know, been a long absence but I finally thought of a couple things to write about! I will tell you the really neat story about the camels & Quartzsite, but first the camper review!! 

Since we got here already the population has just about doubled and we have only been here since Oct. 3rd. We have learned since that the normal population of this town is less than 2,000 and around Jan/Feb, it grows to hundreds of thousands!! There is gonna be concerts, parades, hot air balloon festival, Rock Fiesta (still not sure what that is), ATV races and goodness knows what all! More and more vendors selling their wares open up every day...not counting all the RV dealers here...geez loueez and it hasn't even really kicked off yet!

We are at LaPosa south on BLM land which has over 600 acres, about 2 miles south of town and every day more and more campers pull in. There are small, older campers. There are old and new fancy 5th wheels. There are tent campers. There are ones with pop-ups. There are the old and new van types. There are the class C's. There are semi-trucks pulling their campers. There are fancy shmancy class A's and older class A's. There are ones the size of friggin buses. Alot have solar panels on their roofs. Many build on rooms with metal frames and tarps to extend their already huge camping area. Some build free standing buildings with the metal frames and tarps. Camping trailers of all shapes and sizes, it is fun just to see what might come in here next. There are many ATV's, motorcycles, bicycles. Apparently with paying $180 for 7 months, you can have as much room as your heart's content, only rule is you have to be at least 15 ft. from your neighbor and quiet time from 10-7 nightly. Many are parked in a community circle type, people meet every year down here. Alot of led lights, blowup Santa on a motorcycle and holiday lights too!! 

The cold snap is hopefully over with. The 20's in the morning when u get up with no friggin heat all night is a very fast wake-up call. So now with the lows only in the 40's should be a walk in the park lolol! When it warms back up, hubby will be back out there huntin for that elusive yellow rock!!

Next up....the story of Hi Jolly and the camels of Quartzsite....a story that is just too kewl!!