I guess it shook the whole SW. I received an email from liveworkdream.com stating that they felt it all the way over by Tuscon. Wow!

Above are maps from USGS showing the earthquake activity in this area (we are near Niland, CA) over the last week and the shake map for the 7.2 that hit yesterday. There are a lot more maps and information on their website.

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Quartzsite is just not our scene. Two days would have been more than enough even if the weather had been great.  It was pretty crazy to pull into the BLM area the first night and see rigs lined up awning to awning just like a commercial campground. We had to go about a quarter mile deep into the area before we found a spot where we could get a mere hundred feet from a couple of neighbors. The next morning, we found out why the area was so ’sparsely’ populated as the kids in the converted school bus had breakfast and blasted the MTV version of the Grateful Dead over the world’s crappiest PA system. Ah, well… at least it wasn’t polka.

This morning, we got up ‘early’ to try and make it back to Slab City by dark. Apparently, I was still on California time and not really adhering to Jenn’s schedule. Still, we got out at a reasonable time and then sat in mid-morning traffic at Quartzsite while the rain started splattering. The wind had not stopped in at least 24 hours.

The crosswinds battered us all the way to Blythe, CA, where we stopped to do some shopping and laundry. We got an amazing deal on London broil at Albertson’s and had the butcher chop up a bit and grind a bit until we ended up with twenty-something pound of beef to squeeze into the freezer. By the time we made it the laundromat, the storm was starting to get feisty. Jenn volunteered to do laundry if I would make us some burgers.

You don’t have to ask me to cook a burger twice! Jenn says I made the burger Eddie Murphy’s mom used to make. They were somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of a pounds w/ sauteed mushrooms and onions stuffed inside along with barbecue sauce and mozzarella cheese on homemade bread. We finished eating just in time to get seasick!

No chunks were spewed, but I was sitting in the camper in my long johns waiting on clean pants when a nasty front hit Blythe.  We had 70 mph winds and a torrential rainfall that dumped 4 or 5 inches in something like 10 minutes. The camper was rolling back and forth like we were on the road and the rain drops were so big it sounded like hail on the roof. Jenn’s cat jumped up in the bed with me and whined the whole time.

As soon as it slacked off, Jenn brought a load of laundry with my pants in it and said ‘By the way, there’s a tornado 5 miles from here. Might want to put your pants on and come inside.’ Ten minutes later, the front had passed and we were ready to hit the road. Somehow we’d made it well into mid-afternoon and were still only twenty-ish miles from Quartzsite! The crosswinds were nasty for another twenty miles or so and we passed two over turned semis that were in the same area the tornado passed through.

The weather finally settled down a bit, but the wind is still fairly stiff and there are a few more fronts rolling in. We decided to call it a day at the dry camping area behind the General Patton museum in Chiriaco Summit. Jenn, who is an amateur meteorologist amongst her other talents, says the weather should be fairly tame here compared to what we’ve seen so far. Let’s hope she’s right!

Campsites mentioned in this post:
Chiriaco Summit
Quartzsite
Slab City

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I think we got lucky with a weather window and it seemed like a good time to get the heck out of frozen Fernley. Jenn’s alternate route was going to keep us in mountains for quite a ways, which would have been cold! Also, apparently there were numerous closed roads connecting to that route, which didn’t seem auspicious.

Hopefully, we’ll be finding a longish term spot in the desert tonight. Last night next to the highway and the train got old early.

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I guess we’re starting to see the ‘real’ Washington weather. Our first week in the state was pretty dry, but the past week has been rather damp or perhaps moist. In fact, you could say it has been downright soggy.

Last Sunday, we headed towards Mt. Rainier National Park from the north side. The park is still closed, but there is a lot of forestry land around the park which allows dispersed camping. We spotted at least one exceptionally nice boondocking spot on the main road into the park, but as it was a fairly well traveled road, any and all turnouts were occupied. Near the park entrance, we crossed a rather long one lane bridge across the Carbon River.

Immediately, the road turned to gravel and around the first bend, the road was constricted by a fallen tree and a couple of large boulders on the opposite side. This particular section of road was more mud, boulders and tree roots than gravel. We had around 18 inches of clearance between the jacks and the obstacles. Not too bad, but the angle of attack required getting rather close to the edge of the road. Normally, this wouldn’t be a large concern, but we’d already seen the edge of a couple roads washed away that morning.

With Jenn’s help in the form of ambiguous hand signals (does anyone know what two crooked fingers forming a ‘U’ means?), we managed to get through the constriction without any new dings or scratches. Not too far up the road, we found a somewhat obscured pullout that would be our home for the next week.

I think we had one sunny day, on Monday, followed by four rainy ones. We then figured we might as well stick around through the weekend since Washingtonians seem to enjoy camping and grabbed all the good spots on the weekends. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea to let that hairy bit of road dry out some as there was a drainage culvert right above it.

So, how did we amuse ourselves for a week when we were rained in without internet? Better than you might expect two people to do while cooped up in the back of a truck. It turned out we were able to tune in an HD channel that played nothing but older movies and we managed to tolerate the commercials fairly well. There was also a good selection of radio stations, one of which happened to play both kinds of music – jazz and blues.

One thing I made sure to pack when we left was four decks of cards, which we actually used for the first time at Patrick’s party. I don’t think Jenn and I have ever played cards together, but we played a bit of gin rummy and I taught Jenn to play UNO using two decks of cards. We’re going to have to get a real deck some day! At one point, the house rules got downright silly: we were using poker chips, two decks of cards and a made up ’spinner’ for random number generation. The game was alternating between UNO and gin, with the winner of a hand allowed to spin for poker chips which could be spent to make up a temporary rule for the next game. Silly, yes. But, I won!

Jenn spent a lot of time being constructive as well. She’s been knitting me a pair of socks. So far, they cover about half of my foot. I think we’re going to have to get back out in the middle of nowhere before I can expect the other half. She enjoyed bragging about how all of her half-finished projects give her plenty to do during the moments when I was scrambling for something to keep me occupied. I played with my electronics kit a bit for the first time in two years and even managed to shoot a few arrows during a brief lull in the rain. Just enough rounds to ruin another arrow… 15 yards is really a bit too close for practice, but I was bored!

Somewhere in there during a lull, I climbed up on the roof and resealed an area that turned out not to be leaking. Four days of rain along with temperatures in the low forties overnight and low fifties for mid-day highs and we had some pretty awful humidity in the camper. Yep, raining from the skylight in the bathroom! Water forming on cans in the cupboards. As long as I was doing repairs, I fixed the connections on our inverter, which were not exactly up to code. The connections look much nicer now and should hold up much better, even if it is a bit harder to check the exact battery voltage now.

And then, there were video games! Yes, we’ve quite a collection of old games that we’re dragging around. After trying out a few things, Jenn settled in on a real time strategy game of some sort and I went to an old favorite – Slash’em. It’s a Nethack variant, and if you’ve never fought a nethack addiction, well, I suppose you’re like 99.999% of people. Any UNIX gamer will know Nethack, but there aren’t all that many of us! I’ve spent a lot of time playing Nethack off and on over the past 13 years and I’ve ‘won’ exactly twice. I don’t think I’ll ever ‘beat’ it.

For those keeping score on the costs of boondocking, I think we used roughly two gallons of gasoline keeping the batteries charged enough to watch TV, listen to the radio, read books, play video games and run the furnace. I’m guessing we used two gallons of propane keeping the thermostat set at 52, but that’s a bit harder to judge… I don’t actually remember when we last filled the propane.

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I didn’t mess with it again until we were out of our stick and brick home. At that time, I pulled it out of the freezer and finished the softening stage. I couldn’t make a fire to smoke it at that campsite. So, I put the hide back in a bag and stuffed it into outside storage.

Since we are talking about staying in this great campsite until my family gathering at the beginning of the month, I thought it would be a great time to finish the hide. So, yesterday, I gathered up some rotten wood to smoke with, some nice (fallen) trees to make a tripod, and started sewing up the hide. Johnny was so excited about the prospect of not having to smell my brain tanned hide when he opened that compartment anymore that he offered to erect the tripod. Such a nice guy. Thanks hun! Nice work.

Sigh, it wasn’t supposed to rain today. Ok, NWS said a 20% chance, but in Florida that means that its not going to rain.

Its ok. I have plenty of time to smoke it and NWS promises that there wont be any rain next week. In the meantime, its been an enjoyable two days of rain. It is so peaceful sitting under the awning listening to the thunder, rain and the stream. Its absolutely beautiful here. The showers come and go. In between them, the butterflies come out and play in the patches of sunlight. I also love the way the dappled sunlight plays on the wet rocks that line the creek when it makes it’s way past the clouds and leaves.

Finally, the rain forest is living up to its name. I hope it rains tomorrow too.

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