We are back in the Sonoran Desert in the Southwest again. This is called the low desert as opposed to the high desert, the Mohave Desert, just north of here. Just to make this perfectly clear, Death Valley at minus 282 feet is part of the “high desert.” The low desert is also the hotter desert but once again Death Valley sets the records in this department. Now today we are in the boondockers mecca, Quartzite, and we are camped right out in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. They figure something like a million people take advantage of the free BLM camping around Quartzite.

Did I say hot! We are dreaming of at least warm. Today it barely topped 50 degrees and the wind was 15 to 20 mph from the north and simply whistled through two sweat shirts and chilled us to the bone. We are attending a rally of 100 plus Alpine motor homes just like ours. Quartzite is an RVer’s paradise with all kinds of shopping opportunities. We brought out Path, our trusty tandem recumbent bicycle, and wheeled around town yesterday. Sure enough we to were able to find a bargain, we bought a used solar panel. This will supplement our solar energy, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and thereby reduce our carbon footprint. What could be better, unlimited solar power, free camping, perfect cell phone and internet, lots of friends around and whistling air conditioning?

I spent most of the day creating mounting brackets for the new solar panel. I had my shop just a humming. I would fire up the gen-set and drill a bunch of holes. Then I pop riveted the bracket assemblies together. Fire up the gen-set again and drill some more holes. Break off a bolt in the solar panel and spend the rest of the afternoon extracting the broken stump and re-threading the mounting hole. You know, just an average run of the mill, humdrum day in the desert.

We had a spectacular sunset this evening, see photo below.

Tomorrow we are off to Blythe California for their annual Bluegrass festival. This again is in the hot, low, Sonoran Desert so we expect another 50 degree day with 15 to 20 mph air conditioning. Perhaps we will get some warmer weather by the weekend.

So we close with warm greetings from the Sonoran Desert.

Gary and Judy