It’s warmer today reaching 72 degrees but slightly overcast and the wind picks up occasionally. While enjoying our morning coffee outside, we decide to fire up the Blackstone and fix a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, hash browns with tomato juice to drink. Other than a few light items, we generally don’t eat a meal until 4:00pm but today was perfect for fixing a big breakfast and enjoying the morning.
There are a lot of van campers here, some tents, a couple of former ambulances converted to campers, and a couple of minivan and crossover vehicles. Our closest neighbor is a minivan camper with an older woman and her two dogs who has what looks to be a tent bathroom. There are 2 former ambulances, now campers nearby also and yesterday a station wagon type vehicle pulled up with a travel rack on top of it – we have yet to see anyone come out of this vehicle. Across the area and near the wash, an elderly man has a pickup truck with a tent set up. Further down the area is a group of 5th wheelers who are camped near Plomosa Road and have some ATVs they take out into the desert. Across the road there are quite a few larger rigs, diesel pushers, 5th wheelers etc. and we see a lot of ATVs in that area too.
We are wondering what the draw is to bring at least 250k and upwards of 1m people here each winter. The area doesn’t seem to sport a lot of hiking trails, and other than the big tent during the 2nd half of January, not much in the way of entertainment. There is a rock and gem show we plan to check out and maybe buy an interesting rock or two and Arizona’s oldest tree at 1,050 years old is located in Quartzite to photograph, but is that enough to draw this many people year after year to this area? After pondering this question all day while we sat outside on our free campsite, off grid, doing nothing but taking in nature, and enjoying the 70-degree weather, it suddenly dawned on me that maybe this is what the draw is. It’s free, we are off grid and not wired to any source other than the sun (other than occasionally running a generator) we have no destination to get to, the weather is pleasant, and are completely satisfied just sitting here with no outside distractions, pressures, and stresses – this may very well be the draw.
This evening we make a fire in the solo stove, soaking up the last rays of the sun as it sets on the mountains in the distance.
2025 Airstream Travels 