As mentioned in my last post, my brother Steve and his longtime girlfriend Cheryl as well as my Mom and Stepdad Jim arrived Friday evening from Casa Grande to camp out with us for the weekend.

On Saturday, we drove into Quartzsite to check out all the vendors.  This was their first time here.  We literally spent all day walking through the “big tent” and adjoining vendor areas.  I didn’t take many pics – so, if a couple of the following look familiar, it’s because I reutilized the same ones from the last time we were here.  Trust me – it didn’t change much… just as crowded as ever 🙂

We found a vendor that sold the same dog pack that Stilla and I purchased when we were in Oregon.  It’s really handy for those times when it’s crowded and you can’t use a leash.  So my brother and mom each purchased one of the packs called; “Outward Hound“.  Too bad we didn’t see the cheaper price on Amazon.com.  Oh well, someone has to support those local vendors or else we wouldn’t have any shows to go to, right?

I also found a decent deal on an ATV flag which I am carrying in the picture above.  I guess I felt that I was missing something because the last time we rode with a group, because everyone had one of these flags except me.  I understand it is a requirement if we go to the sand dunes near here.

After we completed our Saturday shopping day, on Sunday we took the ATVs into the hills just East of our campsite.  Cheryl didn’t feel up to it so she stayed at the campsite and watched the dogs.

We primarily stuck to the major trails and found a few abandoned mine shafts that we briefly explored.

After a while we came across one of the many dry river beds, aka “washes” and followed it until we lost any evidence of a trail.  We ended up using the GPS to “bushwhack” cross country to get back to a road.  Good times… loads of fun!

Here we are taking a snack and refreshment break.

And all good things have to come to an end 🙁

Here they are packed up again and ready to roll back to Casa Grande on Monday.

It was great that they were able to come out here for the weekend.  This was the first time in ages that they got out on the ATVs.  They just get too busy at the “dirt farm”.  I wish they could have stayed longer.  We’re not sure when we’ll get back to Casa Grande.  We signed up for the Fireworks show in Lake Havasu starting February 11th.  So we plan on just killing time in the Yuma area until then… maybe we’ll head back to Casa Grande after the fireworks.

For my next post, we headed on down to Yuma because; 1) we’ve never been, and 2) we got 3 free nights at the Fortuna de Oro RV Resort.  A few of our fellow Alpiner’s are already down there taking advantage of that, so stay tuned…