Day 3 – Desert Rat Rally XV (Quartzsite, AZ)

Not a whole lot of commentary on today’s blog post… most of the pictures will just have to speak for themselves. We’ve either been ‘on-the-go’ or got too busy socializing for me to spend much time on the blog today and I don’t want to get behind. Plus, the internet connectivity slowed waaayy down here with all the folks sharing the bandwidth. So here we go…

Here’s the rally agenda again (below), but instead of attending the scheduled Safety Meeting, we joined our friend Frank Krauland in his Jeep and went on a 4-wheel drive trip with 5 other couples in their Jeeps.

Updates on the whiteboard in front of the rally tent (below).

This morning’s donuts… ya gotta get there early to get some 🙂

Ultra-lights buzzed around over our coaches early in the morning:

Alpiners socializing in the morning sun just outside the rally tent:

Safety Meeting (below) with Mac the Fire Guy (←link to his website). We’ve attended a couple of his seminars before at other venues and he has a booth in the “Big Tent” at the rally show. If you get the opportunity, you’ve got to see his presentation. We passed on the meeting today and went Jeepin’.

Stilla and I jumped into Frank’s Jeep and we spent the day off-road… follow along:

Old abandoned house we stopped to visit.

We stopped to check out an old mine:

We stopped at the ruins of another cabin with a mine pit (shaft) nearby.

We checked out the mine shaft.

We finally found “Dripping Springs” 🙂 But it wasn’t dripping today. A really beautiful location.

Cabin ruins at “Dripping Springs”.

Indian (er… I mean Native American) petroglyphs at “Dripping Springs”.

The 4-wheel drive crew (most of them) posed for a pic at “Dripping Springs”.

Time to head back…

But first we stopped at “Moe’s Cabin”. A popular stop for 4-wheelers and off-road vehicles:

I put a new card on the wall with the others. Our old card from last year was still there 🙂

Inside Moe’s Cabin:

Moe’s gravesite (?)

Hwy 10 bridge (below) where the smaller ATV’s can cross under the highway. We skirted the highway in our larger Jeeps.

Some of the Jeeps aired their tires back up with on-board air compressors before getting on the highway back home.

A couple of us had to stop at the Chevron™ in town to air the tires back up.

What a great 4-wheel drive trip. Thanks for the ride Frank! We’ll have to come back to some of these trails again with my mom, stepdad, brother Steve & Cheryl when they get here Sunday with their ATV’s.

We made it back to the Alpine Coach rally site off Plomosa Rd just in time for Happy Hour!

Norm Cannon came prepared for Happy Hour 🙂

The pizzas arrived courtesy of Silly Al’s Pizza (←link) in Quartzsite. If you ever get a chance… it’s really good, but good luck finding a seat for more than a couple people if you visit the place during the RV show week 🙂

Happy Campers:

After filling up on Silly Al’s pizza and salad, we had live entertainment by Art Michaud. His website (←link) says that he has a repertoire of over 1500 songs and has over 30 plus years of musical experience as a One-Man-Band/vocalist extraordinaire utilizing both acoustic and electric guitars, guitar synthesizer, bass pedals, drum machine and vocal harmonizer for background vocals. I think everyone would agree, he was really good and provide for awesome entertainment until late in the evening: