We read on line that one could camp in the King of Arizona Preserve, dry camp. Apparently there are a lot of Bighorn Sheep there, which sounded exciting. It was just right--about half way to Mesa where we planned to be in two days.
So we traveled south through a town named Weirdest-Place-on-The-Planet, Arizona and saw the weirdest sights on the planet.
Actually, the name of the town was not Weirdest-Place-on-The-Planet, Arizona. It was called Quartzsite. We thought it should be called "RVTown." There were more RV places than I could possibly imagine. I had no idea that there were that many RVs in the entire country, or maybe everybody with an RV had just gathered there today and nobody told us because they already knew we were driving through.
Outside of Weirdest-Place-on-The-Planet, Arizona there were miles of open dusty fields with hundreds and hundreds of RVs parked in them. We took some photos, but they don't really do the phenomenon justice. They went on forever--acres and acres.
It looks like they are all there for the winter, snowbirds from another world. In many of them it was clear that the most sought after sites were those around the edges, next to trees that were barely taller than the RVs themselves. Why are so many of them there? Is it cheap? Is it free? Do they pay people to stay there? RVs everywhere, like some type of RV hell. What do they do in their spare time? Is this real?
And most of those "campgrounds"were only partially filled. All waiting for our business! Oh dear God.
As we drove to King of Arizona (KOFA is the other official name) we were so glad we would be staying in a nature preserve instead of at one of these places.
We finally, mercifully, arrived at the road that entered the preserve, only to be greeted 25 feet later, by a sign that said "no camping from this point on." AAAAHHHHHHKKKKKK!! We had read on-line that one could camp by the side of the road. They lied! It's a made for TV horror movie, and we star in it!
So much for waking in the morning and watching Big Horn Sheep grazing contentedly just outside our camper.
Maybe that's what all of those campers around Weirdest-Place-on-The-Planet, Arizona are--people like us who were going to KOFA and only had enough gas to get there, so had to park in dusty open fields for the rest of their lives because they couldn't get into the preserve to camp. Maybe that would happen to us. Maybe nobody would ever hear from us again! Maybe I'm cracking up!
No. The story has a happier ending. A slightly happier ending. Luckily we had enough gas in our tank to make it 50 miles down the road, so tonight we are in retirement heaven in an RV park that has concrete roads, two swimming pools, a mail room, and a code you need to punch in to get into the bathroom (Hey, everyone! the code is simple: 1. That's it. 1. Now you can use the bathroom here whenever you want to come, although you won't want to because the RV camp half a mile down the road has nude hot springs swimming and I know you'd rather stay there and I don't know the bathroom code for there, though, sorry, although you probably won't care. Do you think we should feel insulted that at an RV camp for seniors they have only a one-digit bathroom code for us to have to remember?).
Here are some photos of the RVers who never made it out of KOFA:
And here we are in retirement heaven, just before RVZilla pulled in to the other side of us. And all I have to remember tonight is the number 1.
When I look at your pictures I need a cold drink and a shower. Is this what people in the Northwest look for in a vacation? Some place where they never heard of rain?
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