Our relative asks us for this weekend, before they return home, to visit one of their friends in California in Orange County. So a road trip it is, we plan with the help of our relative a few stops and on Friday we are on the way towards Orange County. The first stop is at a rest area along the way to….rest and to find a cache before moving towards Quartzsite the first significant stop on the way.
We pass through Quartzsite proper first as we make our way towards the Hi Jolly cemetery. In the winter Quartzsite’s population is booming with RVs seemingly everywhere but there are still buildings that are shut down and boarded up as it is common in small American towns.
We stop first at the Hi Jolly Cemetery which takes its name from an Ottoman camel driver who lived and died in Quartzsite. He was part of the doomed effort to use camels to explore the Southwest of the USA. He even has an elaborate monument built in 1935 by the Arizona government which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
We explore the rest of the cemetery also for a while but a cold wind is blowing and it is quite expansive so we retreat to the car posthaste.
We then continue towards our second goal in Quartzsite, a gem show, to show our relative a small fraction of the gems available at the Arizona gem shows.
We have chosen a permanent rock, gem and mineral show at the Desert Gardens which we hope will have a good cross-section of what is generally available.
It is actually larger than we expected and as we walk from tent to tent it becomes evident that we could spend the whole day here and not seeing everything. So we decide to just walk around and marvel at the many samples of rocks and minerals and explore more in depth only a few select tents.
Both us and our relative buy a few souvenirs, which is easy given the selection, and then it is getting late so it is time to leave towards Blythe where we eat a late lunch at Carl’s Jr before continuing to Joshua Tree National Park.
