Quartzsite

We daytripped to Quartzsite in the Jeep to find out what the attraction is. Quartzsite used to be a stopover on a stagecoach route in the 1850s. It was called Fort Tyson then. Then it became Tyson Wells. Then the town got abandoned. Then mining brought it back as the small town of Quartzsite in 1897, until 1965 when they had their first Rockhound gem and mineral show. Actually, it still is a small town. They have a year-round population of 1,900 people.

A million people come to visit Quartzsite during January and February. It’s like the Burning Man Festival, but without the pretense of creating a “new society”. Burning Man is purported to be an all volunteer effort, but I checked out their website and they charge admission. Two hundred dollars per person. By my calculation the organizers collect $10,000,000 in admissions each year for their all volunteer event. I think I want to create an all volunteer “new society” social experiment too.

Quartzsite is like the Burning Man Festival, but it lasts two months instead of one week, they don’t burn anything at the end, and it’s free. There are eight major gem and mineral shows (after you’ve had one, why would you need seven more?). W saw a small fraction of the two thousand vendors. That’s a lot of tools, t shirts, and rocks for sale. If you want to spend the winter in the world’s largest open air flea market; a junker’s dream, you’ll want to be in Quartzsite.

They say 100,000 RVs. We believe it after touring all the open space in the desert. We got there with only about 1,000 RVs there. It was practically empty. I talked to a couple desert rats who were at the gas station filling up some water jugs. They told me it’s free to stay in the desert dry camping. There is a two week limit, but all you have to do is move every two weeks and you can stay as long as you want. That’s why my guys were there; for the free camping and warm weather. There are places in town you can go to dump your tanks and fill up on fresh water and propane. If you want some amenities, there is camping on BLM land with some facilities. No hookups, but some common washrooms. That costs $189 per season (you can stretch the season to nine months to get your money’s worth). If you want full hookups in a real RV park, those start at $139 per month. So if you want to spend the winter in a warm primitive place for practically nothing, you’ll want to be in Quartzsite.

Judy says we passed a giant Class A motorhome by the side of the road completely painted in camouflage, but I didn’t see anything.