Saturday was pretty boring. We didn’t do anything but sit around and read books.
There is a restaurant/bar in Quartzsite called the Yacht Club. We have tried it a couple of times but the food was bad and service was the pits so we took it off our list of places to eat.
This year we were told that it was much better than in the past so we decided to try it again.
The Saturday night special was prime rib so we went for it.
Our server was totally clueless, the salad was old and wilted and the food was cold. Okay, That’s it, three strikes your out. We won’t be eating at the Yacht Club again no matter what anyone tells us about their improvement.
A few years ago Becky, Dennis, Bob, Patti and I spent a couple nights
camping in the desert. Our last night was spent in a canyon where Bob found large deposits of Desert Rose, hence the name Rose Camp.
I, along with Becky, Dennis, Dave, Jo Ann and Patti have looked for this spot a couple of times without success.
Since the last time we tried, I have been scouring the maps trying to locate the trail that goes to that particular canyon. I made a track on my GPS from what I believe to be the canyon, all the way to the main (Vicksburg) road.
I decided that yesterday we would make another attempt. I asked Jo Ann and Dave if they would like to go along and they did.
We had breakfast at the “Times Three” restaurant with Jo Ann, Dave, Jim and Doris.
After breakfast we went back to the RV, packed a lunch, grabbed my GPS and the camera’s and around 10:00 we left the park. We drove east on I-10 for 26 miles to Vicksburg Road where we left the freeway and stopped by the gas station to air down.
Once the tires were aired down we headed south on Vicksburg Rd
into the north east corner of the KOFA refuge. At the Pipeline Rd we turned east and followed it to where Vicksburg Road turns off it heading south. A mile or so down this road Hovatter Road joins Vicksburg. From here it is called Hovatter Road; we continued south until we came to The Bob Crowder Dam.
From looking at the maps earlier I determined that the trail we wanted was 2.6 miles south of the monument here.
I reset the odometer in the jeep and we headed south. At exactly 2.6 miles we found the trail we were looking for.
I really don’t know why we had so much trouble finding this trail in the past as it is marked with a BLM road sign.
We must have driven by it several times in the last couple of years without seeing it. We turned east onto 04 and followed it across the desert.
After a few miles we came to a gate in a fence that we remembered from our original trip so we knew we were on the right track.
Patti opened the gate and we went through the gate and continued heading southeast. 
Things were looking more familiar as we continued our ride enjoying the beauty of the desert vista’s.
Eventually we found a trail that went into a canyon that we suspected was the one we were looking for.
We followed this trail into the canyon all the way to where it petered out about half way up a mountain. Although we were sure that this was the canyon we were looking for, there was nothing that looked familiar to either Patti or me. We turned around and went back down the mountain to a flat spot where we stopped for lunch.
After we had eaten; Jo Ann and I wandered around for a while picking up lots of Desert Rose and other rocks. In a short time we had quite a bunch of Desert Rose and other sparkly rocks.
After a while we left the lunch spot and headed back down the trail looking for the place where we had camped years ago.
I never build a fire ring so it makes finding one of my old camp spots hard, which is one of the reasons I don’t make a fire ring.
We never did actually find the exact camp spot but we are sure that this is the correct canyon and we did find the general area where we had camped.
Now that we have found the canyon, I feel more confident bringing the rock hounds here to look for Desert Rose.
As usual the ride was very picturesque.
Eventually we got back to Vicksburg Road and headed for I-10 where we stopped at the gas station to air up the tires and top off the gas tanks. We got back on the freeway and by 5:00 we were back at the RV.
It was as always a fun drive through the desert.
The heaviest deposits of the rose rock where up on the ridge backs. There were lots of places up on the ridge where the rose rock was still laying where it was formed. The parts where you parked your jeeps has been picked over by people for years, but not up on the ridge back. Good to see you finally found the spot. Exploring is like that.
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And thanks for getting rid of the dam, I'm not a robot thingy, they suck.
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