Day 1 at Rice Ranch

We decided to move early in order to avoid any possible rain delays

on the desert.  The local news media seems to think the weather is going to be a lot worse than Accuweather is predicting.  I’m disinclined to think we are going to get any significant amount of rain but on the other hand we really wanted to attend this rally.  So late in the day yesterday we moved into town. 

We had to wait until late in the day because the RV show is on now and traffic around here gets more than a little congested.  Here in this case being Rice Ranch in Quartzsite.  The traffic on the highway and the road in front of Rice Ranch gets pretty well gridlocked during the day.  Plus the nice folks at Rice Ranch who told Larry he could hold a bus rally here aren’t above renting the same space out again to every Tom, Dick and Harry who comes along looking for a place to park for the day.  I didn’t want to try to negotiate either the road traffic or the parking lot traffic so we waited until after the show closed to make our move.

There’s a lot of folks here who we met last winter on the casino parking lot south of Tucson.  We were particularly looking forward to seeing Tom & Doreen Caffrey again and they showed up overnight.  Jorgito was particularly happy to see Doreen.  I tried to arrange an adoption but wasn’t successful.

Tom spent most of his day on his knees beside one of the other busses at the rally.  I and several others were busy making ourselves scarce because the owner of the bus was very obviously looking for someone to do repairs for free.  I listened to him “explaining” his

problems last night and after about the fourth time of hearing amps used to mean volts I concluded that I didn’t really want to hear any more.  But Tom is a much better man than I will ever be and he proved it by spending most of his day kneeling on the cold ground fixing the guy’s furnace. 

Today we went for a quick wander through the RV show but it seemed that it was more of a household gadget show with the occasional booth dealing with RVs.  There was an impressive turnout from the western provinces in one corner of the tent.  I don’t mind seeing our tax dollars spent to encourage tourism. 

No matter how much promotion is done though our neighbour here won’t be swayed.  He pulled in last night in a gorgeous Eagle but we didn’t get to meet until this morning.  The NRA crest on his jacket gave me a head’s up and we were only about 2 minutes into the conversation before he managed to work in that he would never visit Canada because he couldn’t bring along his 45.  Now I’m about as open minded with regard to gun ownership as anybody you are likely to meet.  I happen to think that our government has its head squarely up its ass when it comes to gun registration.  But give me a break already – if anybody is so damned stupid as to avoid travelling in Canada because they can’t bring their pseudo-penis along then they shouldn’t advertise the fact.