A fews days on BLM Land in Quartzsite AZ

Here we are in Quartzsite, it is our first experience camping on Federal Land. Usually this is free but at Quartzsite you can stay for longer periods of time (months instead of 2 weeks) and there is a dump and water onsite.

So it costs $40 for up to a 2 week stay or a little more for a long stay. But out in the desert where you camp there is no hookups. Most people are here for the winter and have big setups with Solar and 4x4 toys and compounds.

At the moment in the nearby "town" there is a big RV show so there are even more people hanging out than normal. It is really kind of strange seeing so many RVers just hanging out for basically free for miles and miles across the desert.

The town is also full of flea markets which we checked out. There was some interesting stuff and even more interesting people watching.

Excellent sunsets too!

Eventually we checked out the RV show too and "Solar Bill's" a place many people swear is the best place to get solar installed on your RV.

The best part of the show was "Adult Day Care" which was a beer garden with live music and BBQ.

At the rally we are attending people are using Smudge pots which are not illegal in orchards to keep warm. They run on diesel fuel and sound and look pretty cool. They do kick off a lot of heat and you barely smell the diesel once they get going.

Nearby there is some good hiking in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. In the panorama is a hike we did up to a Palm Canyon.

We also saw mountain sheep way up on a cliff as we were hiking and hungout for a while pointing them out to other hikers.

We also did a hike around some small hills where you can find Quartz crystals.

You can bring home what you find within certain limits. And we did find a bunch of good ones, nothing too big but nice clear ones.

Tools are supposed to be forbidden but you can tell people have been digging and breaking with tools.

I brough a hammer but it wasn't really that much help.

Tucker had a good time running around the mountain for the most part but did have a few run-ins with various cactus spines

This was one of the hills with cystals viewed from the other, you can see how the layers of earth have just been shoved up revealing the crystals from layers normally deep underground.

We had a nice fire one night, we haven't had too many fires this trip but we really needed this one to keep warm.

Overall the free-isn BLM camping is pretty cool, surprisingly we didn't see any signs of people being jerks which is a surprise.

We was kind of a surprise, we stayed 4 nights longer than we had expected.