From Plomosa Road Camp 2 Feb 14th 2006

Feb 14th, 2006
Greetings from:
Plomosa Road Camp 2 (Plm Rd 2) N33 49.633 W114 03.145
Entrance from Highway (Plm Rd 2 Ent) N33 49.486 W114 03.490

On Jan 31st, I moved NE up Plomosa Road a few miles to this new campsite area and rejoined Ted Webber and Connie) who are camped about 150 metres away. For those trying to track me down, or locate me on Google-Earth, this camp is east off Plomosa Road (AKA the Bouse Quartzsite Highway) at a point half way between the 11 and 12 mile markers. Cell phone service here seems to switch between an analog signal and a digital one, both fairly strong. I don’t know what’s up with that but it works, so that’s all that matters. Since arriving, I have been to Bouse to visit the new library and check e-mail there (no wireless yet discovered in Bouse); also the Bouse Community Park for water and dumping ($7.00), been to Parker to the library there (good wireless signal), checked out the Arch Creek Camp (N34 10.504 W114 22.629), north of Highway 62, on the California side of the river (OK but a little exposed on a high ridge, so not that attractive) and watched the Parker 450 Desert Road Race as the circuit came within about two miles of Bouse A pall of dust hung over much of South-West Arizona following this exercise; it was noisy but reasonably exciting as high powered cars and trucks bounced their way along the track. On the way home from the race, I dropped in to see the Bouse Community art show where, surprisingly, some fairly well-known (according to the lady in the library) artists were displaying their work.

To the best of my knowledge, Bouse is known for little (or, perhaps, nothing) other than the fact that General George Patton had a tank division training camp in the area sometime prior to, and during, WW II. Interestingly enough, Patton’s presence may have cleared up one small mystery that has been concerning me. On the maps that I download into the GPS are shown some parallel dotted lines resembling a septic field but marked as trails. I have ridden this area and found few passable trails but rather, evidence of heavy machinery clearing patches of desert. It turns out that George’s tanks practiced boulder clearing here as an exercise – presumably helpful once they arrived in the ETO and had to clear rubble from the streets in bombed-out towns.

On one bike trip, I was 3.5 miles from camp when a loud bang alerted me to the fact that the rear tire on the bike had blown out its sidewall. Since I carry a spare tube but not a tire, I had to push the casualty back to the trailer, yellow anti-puncture slime squishing all the way. Luckily, enough daylight remained to see the trail. I’m not exactly sure how best to carry a spare tire with me on the bike but may have to consider this in the future. I have since replaced the tire with a new one from Herb’s Hardware In Quartzsite.

A couple of trips to the market in Q and the hip is rebelling. Walking around the exhibits in this giant flea market for hours is far harder on it than riding the bike. On my second foray into town, I picked up a shade screen to go on the front of the main awning. This will cool things down during hot weather but is too shady for now. With all the traffic and pedestrians, driving and parking in Q is very uncomfortable. Line-ups at the sewer and water stations (i.e The Pit Stop) have been enormous. At the wash (dry river bed) on the west side of the RV Show area, people, attempting to park as closely as possible to the action (mostly ex-Lake Louise skiers, I would imagine), were getting stuck in the loose sand and gravel, so I eased the truck along and managed to stay on top. With RV and Craft shows now over, the desert around Q has thinned out a little. There are plenty of people still around to see the gem and rock shows, plus various other exhibitions that keep the place busy until mid-March but the zoo atmosphere of late January has moderated.

A couple of days ago, new tire shining brightly, I set off on an expedition to the area near Mt Ibex, at 2750’ the highest peak in the area. Near its base, there are quite a few trails leading off to various mines, and, for that matter, to dead ends. At one point near the Southern Cross Mine, I met some men who were rappelling down into the nearly-vertical shaft (approx. 12’ diameter and 80° pitch). They told me that this particular pit went down about 300 – 400 feet. They had run out of rope and were planning their next move. Part of the afternoon had, apparently, been spent in clearing a crawl hole through a pile of debris that was obstructing the shaft at the 40’ level down from the surface. After making the gap, down they went, at least until the rope ran out, after which Prusiks (rope climbing knots, or in this case, mechanical devices made by Petzl) were used to climb back up. Falling objects (rocks, timbers etc) from 250 feet or more was of huge concern to these guys but did not deter them from enjoying their fun.

On my way back to camp, I decided to take a faint trail not recognized by the GPS, since it appeared to lead me in the right direction. With my customary navigational aptitude, the trail disappeared after I was far enough along not to want to retrace my steps and I ended up with a significant cross-country trek (always a mistake in this terrain) to get back to my original trail. Riding across one small draw, I ran into a large stone with the front tire and catapulted off the bike into a pile of rocks. The helmet saved my noggin and nothing else seemed too badly damaged, so I carried on, thankful that I had dodged another bullet. A couple of days later, as I was about to go for a short ride, I had to fix three punctures in my front tire, evidently just another message from the desert that travel anywhere off the beaten path can be perilous.

I have been spending some time lately, attempting to figure out the electrical loads in the trailer – this with a view to calculating the amperage draw of each individual appliance, adding them up and comparing them to the amount of input that I get from the solar panels. As a test subject, I was using my portable radio and somehow managed to blow something, with the result that it no longer works on the 12 volt system but does still operate on AC. I can find no fuse for the DC, so may have fried a diode or some equally critical component. I can use the inverter to power AC but that seems a wasteful way, meaning the use of more power than necessary with which to listen to Radio Free Quartzsite. I am going to seek advice from the solar shop in Q and see if there is an economical method of hooking up a meter to do the job. One recently noted and interesting phenomenon is that my meter reads the main trailer inverter as outputting 76 volts, the small inverter in the truck gives 98 volts. Ted Webber’s motorhome and inverter reads 109 volts – all with the same voltmeter, so something is awry. I am aware that the modified sine wave current produced by inverters can misrepresent actual voltages (because of the wave shape) so am not prepared to panic – yet! This is another reason to get some advice from the solar/battery guy. Since writing the above, I have made my trip to Q and, after hunting around, bought a small inverter (150 watts) at Discount Solar- this for use with the radio while I am restricted to AC power. It makes the radio hum on weak signals, which means that my favourite oldies station in Q is unavailable from the present location. Otherwise, it seems to work OK and uses only a fraction of an amp in power (alone), more with the radio on. I preferred the system with direct 12 V connection (better signal and less power usage) and hope, someday, to get that resolved. The kid at the local Radio Shack sounded knowledgeable as he speculated that I probably blew a diode ( I think that my radio contains about a billion) – almost impossible to track down with a meter, so I may be stuck with the situation as is or until I get another radio.

Dave and Lori Watkins, former Lake Louisers who now farm in southern Saskatchewan, are coming by on the 15th with their motorhome en route back home. I have given them the coordinates both for the camp site and entry off Plomosa Road, so they should have no trouble getting here. Ted Webber and Connie are still across the wash and their friend, Cline, who I met at Plomosa Road Camp 1, arrived from where he had been boondocking on Ogilvy Road west of Yuma. He has since departed for greener pastures. He said that they had suffered high winds down there whereas, here, it has been relatively calm. Ted Webber may move over to the Pegleg BLM camp area at Borrego Springs in about a week. It is in the wrong direction for me and certainly out of my path if I decide to return home via Moab next month but, I’ll think on it before making up my mind. Another option for returning home would be to go back up the Oregon Coast, a trip that I did several years ago. If that were the case, then Borrego would make a good staging point.

The following may only appeal to those of you who have GPS’s but, since I know that there are many of you out there who do navigate with help from above, I’ll just include a little section on my latest thoughts about transposing information from the GPS to the computer and vice versa. For a while after getting my GPS, I was saving and storing all the bits of information (Waypoints, Routes and Tracks) in a haphazard manner in the computer. Recognizing that this level of disorganization would soon exceed my ability to make sense of it, I decided to delete most of the individual files and have now concentrated all information in three Mapsets (more to come as I travel further afield). When the GPS downloads, it does so into an “untitled” file. From there, I copy Waypoints and tracks to the relevant mapset. All Waypoints also get copied to the master Waypoint file in Garmin Western North America Maps, so that I have one list of all Waypoints and can look up anything if required. One of the problems is that all Waypoints have to have different names, since the file will only accept one of each name. In addition, Waypoint names have to be short enough to fit into the GPS. If the program thinks a name is too long, it simply assigns a number, regardless of what name I might have typed in. I can see how, with time, I am going to lose track of the various Waypoint names and will have to streamline the filing methodology somehow. To add a new element to the GPS saga, I am going to go Geocaching – that is, searching for objects that people have hidden in various places and have then listed on the Internet. The plan is to find such a “cache” by going to the position co-ordinates that have been issued, enter one’s name in the log, exchange some article put in the cache by a previous searcher with something else and limp home.

Yesterday, we (Ted, Connie and I) went Geocaching. They had downloaded some sites off the Internet (which they access through their cell phone) and had all the positions marked. The two nearest positions to our camp were across the road and about .6 of a mile away. We attacked G07 first. It was up at the top of a climb of maybe 250 vertical feet and rated 4-2 (don’t know what the numbers stand for, except that, in some way, they relate to the degree of difficulty of the “trail” and, perhaps, the amount of ingenuity used in hiding the cache). The 4-2 rating gave me a strenuous climb up rock and scree to a ridge where I found the cache, a cookie tin hidden under some rocks. Inside, were small, miscellaneous items and a logbook with pencil for recording one’s “find”. In theory, one leaves an item in the tin and takes an item out – this to be traded at the next Geocache. The second Geocache (G08) was up at the top of an even bigger hill (rated 4-4) and I never did find it. At the location indicated by my GPS, I found a can of Bud wedged into a crack in the rock but nothing else. Either vandals got to it first or I had the wrong site. One of the problems with searching for GPS coordinates is that, without an accurate elevation listing, the bottom of a vertical cliff will read much the same position as the top. In all, there are about a dozen Geocaches within biking/walking distance of where I am camped, so I can see myself adding a hunt component to the bike rides from now on.


On Friday, the Little Cactus Restaurant, also known as the Wagonwheel Café, in Bouse, offered a menu special of all the fish one could eat for $6.95. Only one serving of chips and slaw was included in the deal so it was necessary to ration the latter items or beg leftovers from someone else’s plate. Despite being a one-horse town (though the highway is quite busy), the place was filling up by 5.00 in the afternoon. Where all the people came from I don’t know but they must have crawled out from under rocks all over the desert.

The skies are still clear and temps, most days, are in the mid-70s. Night time lows get down into the 40s so, it’s a very pleasant climate at this time of the year. There hasn’t been a drop of moisture since I arrived in early December and, if it remains dry, I expect that the desert flower show will fail to materialize as it did last year when we experienced several storms with plenty of rain showers.

The Olympics are now on TV but the focus in papers here seems more concentrated on speculation as to whether Wayne Gretzky will coach the Canadian hockey team, since wife Janet has become embroiled in the sports gambling scandal – with mafia overtones, yet! If nothing else, Canada gets a little extra recognition. Since Gretzky coaches the Phoenix Coyote team, Arizonans (the few that pay any attention to hockey) are at least familiar with the Great One. It was with some pride that I watched my old friend, Alberto Tomba, carry the Olympic torch in Turin. To think that, by tossing him off the ski hill years ago, we at Lake Louise may have played some role in his personal development, is highly gratifying. Evidently, he still has icon status in Italy, though there was no mention on TV as to whether he had received early parole to attend the ceremonies – just joking, of course.
JW