More Quartzsite

There’s always been a guy here selling farm junk.  One year I remember he had a John Deere 70 gas with some stupid price – like $6500 maybe – and a SOLD tag hanging on it.  At the time I had just sold a 70 diesel that was in a lot better shape than the gasser down here and I thought I was damn lucky to get $2200 for it.  The guy who bought it thought I was damn lucky to get that too because he came back about a year later and wanted warranty on the governor.  But that’s another story involving a notable member of the Garrick NDP. 

We took the day off yesterday but this afternoon there we were wandering around the junk sellers again.  In the “John Deere” picture you can see that this year he has several units on display.  There was a B and an M as well as a 730 diesel and an 830.  The 730 had about 3/8” of endplay in the crank but the 830 looked pretty good.  He wanted $10,000 for the 830 – I’m no John Deere authority but that has to be at least twice what they were worth new – maybe more.

Our little corner of the desert is starting to fill up.  Some of the areas are positively crowded now – we’re not too bad yet but every day brings more neighbours.  There’s a gorgeous Newell coach parked at about 10:00 out our front window now.  For some reason the area where we are hasn’t attracted big groups despite being well suited to them.  This area seems to be filling with individual

travellers or groups of two.  We’ve got a couple of different friends that we expect to drop in on us for a few nights over the course of the next week.  After that we’ll move into town to the site of the bus rally.  Its hard to believe that January is almost half gone already.  It seems like we just arrived here.

We’ve been loving the weather and particularly so since it is so much better than everywhere else.  We thought Florida was bad last winter but it sounds like it is awful this year and western Canada is just plain bad, as usual.