Feb 17, 2023 Day 2 Quartzite, AZ

Temperatures dipped to 30 degrees overnight but as soon as we got up, we fired up the Mr. Heater and we had the camper warmed up in a short time. The cellular connection is pretty good here and I am able to work with no issues. We have both Verizon and AT&T plans but so far rely on AT&T more than Verizon. This location is Verizon and glad, so we don’t exceed our plan with AT&T for the month. We use our phones as hotspots and then with the Sure Call cellular booster, we can pretty much use data like we are on Wifi. We’ve watched a lot of TV shows and with our Roku, we can get everything we have at home. Boon-docking adds another layer because TV’s need electricity and to connect here, we need the generator running. Because streaming eats up the data, we decided to limit what we watch and are reading a couple good apocalyptic books. Ron is on book 5 of a 6-book series called After the Crash and I’m on book 2 of a 10-book series called Black Autumn. Great, we are out in the desert off grid and readying dystopian books – makes for interesting dreams!

We listen to music a lot too, especially during the day or before we head to bed. To save data (at least we think we don’t use data :), we use our iTunes library, rather than Sirius or Pandora. The speaker is Bluetooth and can ran quite a few hours before needing charged. When we start the generator, we make sure to charge up all of our devices including the speaker, laptop, the Anchor charger, sweeper, etc.

People come and go here, and many have dune buggies or 3 wheelers for traveling into the desert. Everyone is spaced out though unless they are with a group, and we see a few with 3 or 4 campers in groups. During the ‘big show’ when the RV tent shows are running from mid-January to end of the month, there are huge groups of campers and we’ve seen pictures of them in a large circle of 20 or 30 or more. These events started back in the early 60’s and certain many of the campers come back year after year, meeting up with old friends.

Ron looked up a geocache near our campsite and we decided to hike over to it and check it out. The terrain was rocky in places, and we had to cross 3 washes before reaching the hidden geocache. We took a few photos, signed the logbook, and selected what looks like a polished stone with maybe a tiger eye in the center. We also photographed a ‘travel bug’ to look up the number on it and determine how far this bug has traveled. It began its journey in 2013 by ‘capt1anclOud, starting in Montana before heading south to Arizona. The tracking bug started out with a screwdriver attached, but someone must have needed one at some point and replaced the screwdriver with a wrench.

I’m not sure what animals live in this area, and we did not hear any birds chattering but Ron did see one. Near our campsite we see what looks like a former prairie dog village but there are not any signs of recent inhabitants. Justice wasn’t interested in sniffing it so it must have been vacant for quite a while.