We have gone from the luxury of the Family Motor Home Rally in Indeo, California along with 1,300 coaches; to the Bluegrass Festival in Blythe, California with perhaps 500 families; and now to the desert of Quartzsite, Arizona with about 100 Alpine Motor Homes just like ours. In each location we have met with old friends and made some new friends.

We had delightful weather in Indeo. In Blythe we survived a dust storm but by the actual festival time the weather was again delightful. In fact we were feeling just a little smug about it, because we kept hearing about how bad the weather was in the rest of the country. Just about the time the rest of the country warmed up, we have started to feel your pain. We did get a little sprinkle the last night of jamming in the Blythe camping area. We all quickly got our instruments under cover. We later resumed a limited jam inside our coach.

Tuesday started out a nice sunny day with no clouds. We pulled up stakes and drove to Quartzsite where we were to pick up our mail. We parked at the east end of town and made quick work of the one mile walk to the post office. Whoa; a few hundred people had the same idea so we stood in line for about an hour. We then crossed over I-10, again on foot, and visited the “Big RV Sales Tent.” We picked up a couple presents for Arcturus and then we noticed there were big black clouds to our west. As we hurried back to Arcturus the nearby hills grew indistinct and then disappeared before our very eyes. Soon came the spattering of a few raindrops and we redoubled our efforts to get back to the coach. We were about 200 feet away when it cut loose.

We drove about six miles out of town in a driving rain and at the designated point we bravely turned off into the desert. We joined about 50 Alpine coaches parked in a naturally gravely area of the desert.

Once again today, Wednesday, January 20^th the Sonoran Desert is sunny and warm. Alpine coaches have been streaming in all day long. The weatherman is promising us an even more spectacular rain storm for tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Wow! With the Thursday sunrise there came the rain. The rugged hills bordering this sector of the desert have all disappeared from view and the rain marches through driven by a southwest wind. Most of the group activities have been cancelled or postponed and all of the participants are holed up in their coaches. We pulled in the big slider to keep the wind from damaging the rollout canopy and I note that several of the neighbors have done the same.

Photos of the wet desert. Click to enlarge>

Judy is busy baking an apple flake and pear scones. Running the oven is helping warm the coach. The solar panels are only delivering 0.3 amps, so we are relying on the big Onan generator for power. You can see from the photos that the desert is awash. There ought to be a beautiful spring blooming around here with all of this water. The wind gusts probably reached the predicted 50 mph between 4 and 5 pm and the activities tent had to be struck. The gusts are coming broad on our side and we are just rocking and rolling.

I have been practicing the fiddle this afternoon. I bought a new lesson book at the Blythe Bluegrass Festival from Jay Buckey. I am dedicating myself to learn the fiddle enough that I can debut at a jam session in one of the next festivals. Meanwhile I am still practicing in the bedroom behind closed doors. If you check out Jay’s web site you can get a bit of an idea what his program is all about. Jay Buckey.  You get to download music (.mp3) files of each lesson and that way you have something to practice against.

Meanwhile we are counting on the weatherman’s prediction of warm sunny weather after today. I am sure L.A. will breathe a sigh of relief also.