Train Watching in Kingman

Yesterday I explored the Kingman area and wound up catching a few trains with my camera. I caught this west bound as it went by the old Kingman Station.





Note below the hotels in the background on Route 66 that were built in 1909.








A beautiful 195? Hudson Hornet parked outside this pupular 50s Mr. D'z burger place.









This morninng I'm heading east to Holbrook, AZ.

Weather Delay

I had planed to travel east on I-40 on Monday morning after the bluegrass festival was over, but the weather forecasts showed that Williams, AZ was getting snow and below freezing temps. I decided to call the campground in Williams where I had reservations for four night and postpone my arrival for a day. Tuesday's forecast did not look any better than Monday's forecast so I called again and postponed my arrival another day. On Tuesday, the forecast for Wednesday still was bad with snow and freezing temperatures, but I waited until this morning hopping the storms would be cleared out. But NO, they were still hanging on.

I called the campground in Williams and told them that I needed to cancel my staying with them this time, but that I may stop there in May on my way to Oregon from San Antonio in May. I spent the last two days and nights in an old Walmart parking lot in Lake Havasu City and I found a RV park in Kingman, AZ that could find me a site for the next two nights. I arrived in Kingman around noon today and after getting set up, I took my camera and went into town to check out some of the historic buildings.

Tomorrow, I plan to take pictures of trains in the area. The past two days I spent most of my time working on the slide show for the Bluegrass On The Beach festival that had a lot of good bands. I have the timing of the music to the pictures down to within hundreds of a second. So you can guess how many times I had to run the slide show to get it that close. But that is what I like to do for a challenge. I am very pleased with the outcome.

I will be cold here in Kingman tonight. Somewhere around the low thirties with a high near 50, but that's much better than in the middle teens in Williams that will be having a high tomorrow of just 32 degrees.

Bluegrass On The Beach

Well, I spent the past week in Lake Havasu City at the state park on the eastern shore of Lake Havasu. That was the site of the bluegrass festival that was a lot of fun. The music portion lasted three days, but the four days before hand were busy visiting with good friends that I have made over the past few years while attending various bluegrass festivals in California and Arizona. There were nine very good bands, but the last day was RAINED OUT. That gave me time to edit the more than 450 pictures that I took of the performers. I get music from their CDs and use that to go along with the slide shows. Here are a few pictures of the area, my dry-camping site in the parking lot and several of the bands.





I am using WiFi at the local library and it takes FOREVER to upload just one picture.

A band that everyone likes is the Bluegrass Brothers (below) from Virginia



Below is some the crowd. I had my chair on the fourth row and tree seats in from the center. It was great weather for most of the festival.



There were nine bands in the festival and everyone had a very good time, even with the rain.

On Tuesday of last week I traveled over 300 miles round trip to Kingman and then over the old Route 66 through Seligman where I got back on I-40 and headed back to Lake Havasu City. I took a lot of pictures for my Route 66 slide show that I am working on. I hope to get more pictures of places tomorrow or the next day in Williams, AZ. I have spent the past two days waiting for the weather to get better so I can motor on up there. The latest weather forecast is for snow showers in Williams for tomorrow. They are predicting a high of 32 in Williams for tomorrow and a low of 18. This should be fun.

Anyway, I will post when I can. The campgrounds that I am have reservations for all have WiFi. We will see if it is working when I want to use it. Stay tuned.

Quartzsite, Arizona

I parked the coach with a group of Monaco coach owners. I had never meet them before, but RVers are a friendly lot and it did not take long to make friends with them. Our location was about six miles north of the town of Quartzsite and two miles east along the Bouse Road in a BLM camping area. It was very quiet out there and the weather was great for the entire two weeks that I was there, except for the torrential down pours we experienced one day.

All around us were scenes out of Arizona Highways.

The BIG attraction for the first week that I was there was the RV Show at the BIG Tent.

The Chamber of Commerce had local artists do some Rock Art and they placed about 18 of them around at business in town. The rocks are sitting on a small pallet about 2-feet square. People were to go around and look at them and then vote for their favorite. They will auction them off in April and use the money for charitable work there in Quartzsite. Here are just two of the fine works of art:

Another thing that Quartzsite is famous for is Swap Meets. You can just about buy anything that you need and a lot of stuff that you don't need out there. For example: Do you need an old fliver? If so they had four antique cars for sale on a used car lot.

All this is just part of the may interesting things that I enjoyed while staying out in the beautiful desert. The group that I was camped with all departed about five days before I did. So we all went out for breakfast on the morning they took off and then we posed for pictures and exchanged contact information so we can keep in touch and meet there again next year in the same spot.



Of course no Arizona trip would be complete with a sunset picture.

Blythe Bluegrass Festival

My next stop after leaving Indio was Blythe, CA where I enjoyed my evenings sitting around a campfire with friends that I had made a couple of years ago while attending this festival. The festival workers furnish a wood stove and fire wood. They come around every day and resupply you with wood. Not only that, on the evenings before the festival starts, those same guys come around after dark with their instruments and play several bluegrass songs for the people sitting around the fire. They call themselves The Colorado River Boys and are very good.












Nine bluegrass bands performed over the three days of the festival on two stages. So if you did not want to hear the band that was playing on one stage you could walk over to the other stage and listen to another band.







This went into the early evening, but nobody complained. The music was very good.

FMCA Rally in Indio

I had a great time at the Western Area FMCA Rally that was held at the Riverside County Fairgrounds located in Indo, CA. There were around 1,000 motor homes parked on the grounds.

The big thing that I did at this rally was to have a new satellite dish installed. The old one had such outdated technology that it could not find the right satellite.

Another thing that I did was join The Golden Spike Chapter of FMCA. They are a group of neat people who are railroad fans like myself.

They had some good entertainment in the evenings. One singing group was called Beachfront Property. They sounded much like the Modernairs or Manhattan Transfer.

On The Road Again

I have just attended the Western Area FMCA Rally that was held in Indio last week. I am currently in Blythe, CA attending a Bluegrass Festival that will take place at the end of this week. I have met up with some bluegrass friends that I made two years ago while attending this same festival. We sat around a camp fire and told stories under a clear sky that was loaded with stars. The temperature was in the high 50s. A great time was had and we will do the same thing this evening.

At this very moment, I am in Quartzsite checking out the location of the Monaco group that I will be spending two weeks with after the Bluegrass Festival is over. They are out here in the desert somewhere. I stopped at the Quartzsite Library and jumped on the Internet to make this post. I would take forever to upload pictures so I will forgo those this time. Hopefully I will have time and the patients to upload them in the near future.