How Many Solar Panels? Never Enough!

This is Jeff. He is boon docking here in Joshua Tree on BLM land. He is a full-timer and has been doing this for many years. Since we have solar on our Montana, we are always interested in other solar setups and how well they work. If you look at all the pictures and count them, he has 11 panels on three sides of his motor home. That doesn't include the top! He told us how many, but I don't remember exactly. I think there were at least 8 or 9. So, maybe as many as 20 solar panels in all! He has 8- 6V golf cart batteries. He can run just about anything, as you can in your home. He prefers living off the grid and likes visiting areas that are secluded. Check out the pictures below.

Fun Day here in Sunny California

We may have to go back here and tour the museum. Lots of really old war stuff in here, I was told.

B17 Bomber doing flyover at The General Patton Museum

Al took both these photos of the planes. I guess since he's taller he was able to get a better shot, LOL!

From the road and at a distance, you can see us in the center. Two campers on the right are some guys who are working on the aqueduct. They are camping here while they are working, from 6am to 6pm. They just set up today, and when we said we were looking for a site, they pointed the one out next to them. Very nice guys, nice having them as neighbors.

Picture from our window. Nice view on all sides!

Al captured this sunset picture just outside our camper.

We left Quartzsite and are now in California. Not sure the name of the town, but we are located near the entrance to Joshua Tree National Park. There is BLM (Bureau of Land Mangagement) land here and we can camp for free. With our water tank full and our other tanks empty, we decided to try it out. With the solar working great and a generator as a backup, it was a no-brainer for us. We love the natural setting and the view all around us is so spectacular. What more could we want!

We arrived yesterday and picked a site that was so perfect, we thought we had the best site here. Then we found out, we were on a water aqueduct and they were planning on working on it the next day. We found out from some workers here that we were probably going to be asked to move. There is a pipe that they needed to work on that goes from Lake Havesau in AZ to another lake in Southern California. We missed the sign that was up, and only needed to move a short distance. It is confusing looking at the maps, but after we figured it out, it wasn't difficult to find another good site!

We weren't ready to do any touring of the area yet, as we felt we needed a down day. We did need to get milk and also some gas for the generator. There is just nothing around here unless you want to drive 20 to 30 miles. There was a gas station at the next exit 5 miles east of here, so we knew we could get gas and milk there. We were shocked when the clerk rang up the milk at $5.99 per gallon. Since we needed milk and it would cost more to drive 20 to 30 miles, we decided to get it anyway. Someone has to have his milk to survive!

On our little jaunt, we passed by "The General Patton Memorial Museum". We drove into the parking lot and noticed people standing around outside the building. A man came over to us and informed us that a B-17 Bomber was going to do a flyover at the museum. It was leaving Palm Springs, about 60 + miles from here and headed our way. We got out of the truck and waited about 15 minutes for it to arrive. It flew low enough for us to get some good shots. I guess General Patton pulled a few strings and we were just lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

We met a neat guy named Jeff who is camping here. You won't believe his setup. I am saving it for my next post. Stay tuned!

Rally Over here at Quartzsite

Things are winding down here at Quartzsite. Every day more people are leaving. We are allowed to boon dock here for 14 days and many came earlier than we did, so the circle is getting quite sparse. Many more will leave today, and we are trying to decide if we should leave tomorrow or stay until Wednesday, our official last day. It has been a lot of fun, but we are looking forward to some alone time until we go to Bakersfield to see my nephew, Andres and his family. We haven't seen him in 17 or 18 years, so we are really looking forward to seeing him and his wife and children. I promise I'll have some pictures for the family back home to see.


Back home, my cousin Jim, who is only 62 and has been fighting Esophageal Cancer, is now on Hospice. The doctors are now saying they can't do any more for him, so now it is in God's hands. Jim is a fine Christian man and is ready to meet his Maker, but it is so difficult for all of us who love him. He is now at home surrounded by his family.


Many people here in Quartzsite and people who have heard about the circle we formed here, have asked how we got such a perfect circle. My friend, Carol explains how it is done on her blog. She informed me the other day that we are the stars. She demonstrates how we were guided into our parking spot. Check it out on the link below:

http://www.reflectionsfromthefence.com/search/label/Montana%20Circle

More of Quartzsite

Standing by our site looking down at the circle from inside. Notice all the flags

Al took this picture and the next few pictures from the rooftop of our Montana

This was the official first day of the rally. We all dragged our lawn chairs out to the middle for an informational meeting.

It is so hard to describe Quartzsite. It is kind of a nothing little town that spring alive during the winter months. There are some permanent stores here in buildings, but a lot are in tents. We have only visited a few areas. There is much, much more. Lots and lots of junk, but some good stuff too for good prices. It's just kinda fun being there.

We were entertained by Rocky Watson. He was gooood!!!

Tent after tent

Row after row

Lot's of RVers here, in fact it's mostly RVers!

The Circling of the Montanas

This is a very quick post, as I wanted everyone to see the overhead view of our Montana's Club group who are boondocking here with us in the desert in Quartzsite, AZ. Not quite everyone had arrived when picture was taken. If you go from the break on the bottom left and count over to the right, we are the ninth one. It is pretty impressive to see how evenly spaced we are. There are hundreds of thousands of people boondocking out here. We are unique with our circle. This is such an unbelievable experience, that it would be difficult to put into words or even in pictures. That has been lots to do here. We have get togethers every evening at 5 and everyone brings food. Every night there is a campfire. Lots and lots of shopping here and unbelievable bargains on anything and everything. Flea market atmosphere. I'll put more pics up in a few days.

Tombstone, AZ

This is the old Bird Cage Theatre. The Bird Cage was one of the most famous night spots in the west during it's haydays from 1881 to 1889. It was described as the wildest, wickest night spot between Basin Street and the Barbary Coast. This museum is well preserved, and very authentic. It was closed and boarded up for over 50 years, and it then became a historical landmark. Everything it is was intact, and its contents were only affected by passing of time when it was reopened to the public in 1934 as a historical landmark.

This hearse is considered to be Tombstone's most valuable individual antique. It is trimmed in 24k gold and sterling silver. Almost everybody in Boot Hill Cemetery was transported by this hearse.

This is the room where all the gambling took place. It was down on the lower level, and is called the pocker room. In this room the longest poker game in history took place. It ran continuously for 8 years, 5 months and 3 days. Today the poker table still stands as it was left.

We found this poster very amusing. Actually this was for sale in the shop, but I think there was an original one displayed in the museum.

Doc Holiday, Wyatt Earp, Virgil Earp, and Morgan Earp. They were very good actors and put on a reenactment of the famous gunfight. The gunfight at the OK Corral took place on October 26, 1881. Three men were killed in the 30 second battle, and three of the lawmen were wounded. Wyatt was the only one not wounded in the fight.

Picture was taken on the road on the way to Tombstone. Love the rocks here!

This picture was also taken from the road as we drove by going 65 mph.

This photo was taken in back of the courthouse in Tombstone. Both of the Al's closely examinded the trap door from underneath. I guess it's a guy thing! LOL

This was an authentic stagecoach from the 1880's and still operating in Tombstone. There were others stagecoaches, but this one was the only one that was from that era. We didn't take a tour in it because there was so much to see, we didn't really have time. Next visit, for sure!

Streets of Tombstone. They have some live reenactments taking place here during the half hour before the show.

Visit to Boothill Graveyard

These are the graves of the outlaws killed by Wyatt and his deputies

There were lots of headstones that were interesting to read. This was one of my favorites.


We spent three days in Tombstone, AZ with our friends from the Montana group, Carol and Al. We stayed at Wells Fargo RV Park which was located right in town and you could walk into town easily from there. We had a great time visiting with Al and Carol and taking in all the history of this famous town. The whole town of Tombstone is really a museum in itself. We enjoyed walking the streets there and visiting a few of the museums. We visited the Courthouse, the O.K. Corral, The Bird Cage Theatre, and Boot Hill Cemetery. We also took in some of the area around Tombstone. That will definately have to be a future post.

We are now in Quartzsite, AZ boondocking with a bunch of our Montana Owner friends. It got up to 84 degrees yesterday and is already up to 78 today and it's still morning. There are going to be over 60 rigs here when the Rally officially starts on the 22nd. We are seeing old friends as well as new. We are parked between Ron and Rose, who we have met previously and Carol and Al. Once things really get underway here, I will put up some pictures of our setup here. You will be amazed. So long for now!

The Organ Mountains, Les Cruces, New Mexico

We stopped at an RV park near Les Cruces, NM for a couple of days. The mountains here are beautiful. They were nothing like what I am used to seeing in the Northeast. Totally different, but to me just as beautiful, as you can see from the pictures above.

We met up with friends of ours from the Montana Owners Club, Carol and Al, who were staying in Les Cruces. After having a really nice lunch together at a Mexican Restaurant in Old Mesilla, they took us for a ride up to Dripping Springs Rd. to the Visitor's Center run by the National Park Service. It was so hard to get good pictures of these mountains until we got up there. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was going down, and it made for perfect pictures. Thank you so much Al and Carol for a very enjoyable day.