A Wintertime Visit to Quartzsite

on Feb 1, 2025

By Bonnie and Bill Neely

The new year began with us heading toward the strange place we had heard lots about from other RVers who live in the North most of the year. Winter is the peak time for human snowbirds to migrate to the warm desert at Quartzsite, Arizona. This is a little town of about 500 people, but somehow they cope with about 2 million visitors each winter, all arriving in different kinds of homes on wheels -- from beat-up old vans and converted buses to RVs and large luxury coaches.

Quartzsite has 50 RV parks, but the most popular place is the free Bureau of Land Management land, which offers miles of hot, dusty, flat, dry camping with no hook-ups, water or electricity. Sewer trucks, garbage trucks and water trucks come through frequently to keep the place sanitary with so many people living there for the winter months.

The rule is that you can stay for two weeks, but then you must move at least 25 miles away for several weeks before returning. The camaraderie is inviting, no one is pretentious and this is a collection of more than 2 million individuals who love their freedom. Summer temperatures average 120 F with are no hook-ups for air conditioning, so we decided that January was the perfect time of year to experience this place, now immortalized in the 2020 Academy Award-winning film "Nomadland." We only stayed one night at the encampment, but we found everyone to be welcoming, orderly and law-abiding.

Quartzsite is a very hard rock mined in this area. It has a grainy, sandpaper-like glassy surface composed predominantly of an interlocking mosaic of quartz crystals. Rock hounds flock to this area, and we wanted to visit a rock shop, too. We came away with many interesting stones that our grandson would love.

In other parts of Arizona we veered a little off the highway to go through the famous Petrified Forest National Park. We were disappointed because we didn't see many specimens. The park ranger told us that over the years souvenir-seekers had stolen many of the petrified pieces before laws were established to protect this unusual place. The few pieces of petrified wood we saw were beautiful chunks of several brilliant reds, greens, purples and yellows with diamondlike sparkles in the sunlight.

The rocks are all granite crystal, composed of iron, carbon and manganese. These had once been trees, which more than 200 million years ago sank quickly and deeply into an ancient river system. They were so quickly buried by the sediment that oxygen was cut off and the decay process slowed. As minerals seeped into the porous wood, they solidified into stone of many colors, and we could clearly see the tree's cadmium rings in some of the beautiful slabs.

Farther along Interstate 40 going toward Texas, we stopped near Winslow to see the Meteor Crater Natural Landmark, which is the best-preserved meteorite impact site on Earth. The pieces that broke off the meteor are known as Canyon Diablo Meteorite. The diameter of the hole is about three-fourths of a mile, and the depth is 560 feet. The iron meteorite hit the earth at about 29,000 miles per hour here about 50,000 years ago.

Most of it was vaporized by the high impact, but some fragments remained, from which scientists have gleaned valuable information. At the visitor center we learned a lot about meteors and saw one of the biggest meteor pieces on display. The crater is on private land owned by the Barringer family, so it can't be protected as public land by government laws.

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WHEN YOU GO

Quartzsite: quartzsitetourism.com

Meteor Crater Natural Landmark: meteorcrater.com

Petrified Forest National Park: nps.gov/pefo/index.htm

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Bonnie Neely is the author of "Real Ventures: Did We Really Do That?" which is available at www.amazon.com. She and her husband Bill are freelance writers. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.