Quartzsite Entertainment

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 -- Quartzsite, AZ
Camping Free on BLM Land

It's time for a confession: I'm developing a severe case of the "lazys". Being here in Quartzsite, there's not exactly a lot to do. Sure, we sleep, deep luxurious sleep, until an hour after the sun rises and begins to naturally warm the camper. We savor hot coffee for longer than we should. We take long walks around BLM Land. We run into town to compare laundromats, truck stops, and dump stations. We had breakfast this morning at Sweet Darlene's, a local restaurant, arriving about 10:30am, but still in time for a big ol' Denver omelet from the breakfast menu. I, for one, am almost feeling guilty for being so unproductive, so lazy. Give me a little more time and I'm sure I'll get over it.

Today, we drove north to Parker, a small town of about 3,000 people on the Colorado River, which forms the border of Arizona and the foreign land of California. Parker has a casino and access to the river below Parker Dam, making gambling and water sports key elements in it's bid to attract California tourist dollars. Besides that, there's not much in Parker -- which may be why you've never heard of it before. During our hour-long visit, we shot a few pictures and I dipped my toe in the Colorado just to be able to say so -- the highlight of the afternoon. Then we drove home.

The camping may be cheap here, but there's a price to pay.

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Television. If you've read some of my earlier blog posts, you may be aware that neither Dar nor I are big fans of television -- or as I like to call it: Mind Control American Style. To this day I still can't explain ordering our camper with a big satellite TV dome on it -- and we still haven't been able to justify the expense of signing up with one of the satellite TV providers. So the dome just sits up there without anything to do with the possible exception of being an early warning system for low clearance bridges. "When you hear the TV dome scraping on the bottom of the bridge, it's time to slow down and check what's going on".

Tonight, Dar and I are nestled around our campfire, talking over the day watching the nightly light show in the sky. With the nearly full moon, shooting stars, satellites flying by, constellations preparing to battle one another, and the cool quiet air flowing over you -- I've got to wonder what's so darn interesting on TV that keeps most of our neighbors glued to their dull glowing generator-driven TV screens every night. We're in the desert -- what was the frontier not too many years ago -- where the lack of light provides a view of the night sky just not available in most of the USA. The natural sky show is spectacular. We and our neighbors are both watching Dancing with the Stars... but there are no commercial ads on our version.

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I see Obama is projected to win our home state of Wisconsin, the ninth straight win he's bagged over Clinton. I don't know if or for whom I'll vote in November, but I do know I'm done with any and all Bushes or Clintons. We've had 20 years of these two aristocratic political families and it's time for a significant change.

T