Hello from Yuma Arizona! We left our campsite in Quartzsite at 6:30am this morning and came here in search of an internet cafe to check email, update the site, etc. I have a few things from the past week to write about that Jamie didn’t mention:

• We’ve realized that because it is winter & we are in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun sets right around 5:10pm every night. We thought that Southern California & Arizona would stay lighter longer than Seattle but they really don’t. This means we have to find & set up a campsite before 5pm which is a pain. We are then left with a lot of time hanging out at a campsite picnic bench in the pitch dark after we’ve set up camp. Boring! Here’s a picture of me learning how to use our stove in the dark. We are so happy we brought headlamps – they make everything much easier in the dark.
• Last night’s campsite – the one in the gravel RV parking lot in Quartzsite – was kind of creepy. Even better, as we were setting up camp Jamie suddenly remembered stories his friend Chris Kopperud had told him in junior high about packs of Javelinas that roam the ditches of Arizona. Javelinas are small little warthogs that travel in packs and are really mean. I don’t think we were in any danger but it was hilarious to see the look on Jamie’s face when the possibility of a gory Javelina attack occured to him. Here’s me working on our Budweiser & Sun Chips dinner.
• Joshua Tree was beautiful and our campsite was only $5 per night! This made me very happy after the other $25 sites we found in California. It was pretty hot there; we ate a delicious watermelon for lunch.
• The day after Thanksgiving we went to a country bar called Pappy and Harriet’s near Joshua Tree. It had really good live country music – Jenny even got to dance with an old local guy. We spotted a couple we named the Rockabilly couple. They had obviously driven to the bar from LA and were dressed to the nines in their tight Wranglers, sleeveless T’s, and cowboy hats. They looked like they were wearing costumes…but we saw them the next morning at a breakfast place and they were all dressed up at 9am! Do they go to work like that too? I am really sorry we didn’t get a picture of them.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 26th, 2006 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Arizona, California, United States Road Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.