Casita (Fiberglass) Rally – Quartzsite AZ

We  arrived at the Dome Rock gathering spot Tuesday to find a dozen or so eggs already present. [That’s a good thing since I wasn’t sure what exact spot to go to.] The views of mountains all around is much better than what we had before at Hi Jolly. We parked in the middle of the area near a landscaped area (with rocks outlining the shrubbery) but didn’t snug back into it as there was just too much slope. From our location any walking to or from the east or west ends must pass by us, so Kira has seen a steady flow of people & dogs (& one great orange kitty riding in a stroller).

I was initially a tad concerned that I’d get overwhelmed by the amount of people & activity [I need my downtime somewhat like RVSue] since we were pretty much in the middle of the area. That meant lots of people walking from one end or the other passed by us — often stopping to chat. But everyone has been very respectful of others’ needs for privacy & quiet during the evening. Overall, it has just been very energizing tho to both see the other makes of fiberglass trailers (including previous Casita owners now in a Born Free Class C) & to see the great ideas others have making their trailers comfortable. If I’d been standing in full sunshine all this time, I’m afraid my tongue may have gotten sunburned! LOL
We’ve meet & talked with Gene, webmaster of Casita Travel Trailer Forum, & fell in-love with the screen rooms he MADE for himself & two other Casitas (not Gene’s trailer below). Now my mind is whirling around trying to come up with a plan for using our existing sunscreens to make into a sunroom that we can set up when we’re parked for more than a few days. And the way the wind has been the past several days at Q — I’d be putting up clear, solid plastic over those sunscreens to cut the wind!

I got to meet & chat with other bloggers too! There’s Cathy (& Paul) of It's a Smallwood After All, John with Just Finding Our Way, & Jerry (& Wanda) of EggRollings. Diane of Dragonfly Over The Rainbow was here too but I didn’t catch up to her. We also had some help from Kamper Bob (fulltiming in a Scamp 5th wheel) of Recreation Engineer figuring out why our inverter has been shutting off the past four mornings, even with no TV watching the night before. Turns out we haven’t had enough sun to fully charge up the batteries during the day so each day the batteries were less charged than the day before. Although we have a (propane) generator, we haven’t used it in a couple of years, so we charged up the battery bank with the pickup. Not as inexpensive as the generator but a whole lot quieter. We may end up selling the genset since it’s over a 100 pounds, isn’t a quiet model, & a pain to use.
Many of the 76 fiberglass trailers here at Dome Rock have left by Monday afternoon but glad the rain/storm/wind we had in late morning waited until after the gathering. We’ll be heading down to Yuma from here before finally starting east to return to Missouri in the Spring sometime. Even without grass or trees, lack of sunshine, & too much wind, Arizona has definitely been better than the cold & snow in much of the country.
However, you ladies KNOW there comes a time when not even a hat can make dirty hair tolerable. I just HAD to wash my hair one windy morning. There’s no way I was gona try plugging my blow dryer into the inverter — but what to do? Jeff suggested just going outside since it was so windy, but I can’t stand having a cold (& especially WET head after having chemo & no hair in the winter). I sit on the floor (wiggled into various positions actually) in front of the furnace blower & dried my (short) hair very nicely. Of course, going outside destroyed any resemblance of a hairstyle, but at least it was clean & dry! One lady told me she turns on their vehicle’s heater with the fan on high. That’d work too!
Ran into a guy who said breakfast revolved around BISCUITS, so he proceeded to fix them in a skillet (as instructed by wife on the phone), covered by a lid. The first morning, they burnt on the bottom before his bacon got even half done. The second morning, he turned the heat down (duh) & didn’t burn the bottom until his bacon was 3/4 done. He was going to give it one more morning, but I forgot to ask him if he finally got the fire turned down low enough for decent biscuits. The one thing we left in our storage unit was the little metal, folding Coleman campfire oven. It won’t fit on the Casita stovetop, but it would definitely work on our Little Red Campfire (with the grill attached on top).

I think I can probably adjust to several months of warmish southwestern winters even without green grass & tall trees!