Quartzsite, AZ - BLM

Saturday - It was much faster leaving the Los Angeles basin than coming in. Traffic flowed smoothly and we arrived in Quartzsite around 2:30 MST after a four-hour drive. We filled up after crossing into AZ. $3.14/gal versus $4.959 in CA. Fortunately, we didn’t need to get diesel while we were in CA.

We are set up for several days so I went ahead and tilted the solar panels. We’ll see how much power we can get out of them. 

Monday - Yesterday was a quiet, relaxing day. I sous vided a port loin roast with garlic and rosemary. It was alright, not a standout but I didn't have any fresh garlic or rosemary. The grocery stores here in Quartzsite could be better stocked but, then again, it's Quartzsite so low expectations. 

Tuesday - It was a cool night with a low of 36°F. But it was clear and sunny all day. I ran the generator until the SoC was up to 88% and I hoped that the solar would be able to top off the batteries. 

Even with the panels tilted to the south, we max power was about 520 watts. But the angle wasn’t steep enough to match the low sun angle. 

It has been wonderful to visit with @blazeourway (on Instagram). Thank you for making your way down from northern AZ!

Knott’s Merry Farm

Friday - This morning, we headed to Knott’s Berry Farm which claims to be one of the oldest theme parks around. It is really extensively decorated for the Christmas season. 

The steam train has been running as an attraction as well as the reconstructed ghost town. The buildings were originally in Calico ghost town east of Barstow, CA. The buildings were relocated here forming the core of the park. 

The Calico Mine Train ride was here way before the much more advanced animatronics at Disneyland. The story is the Walt Disney was a frequent visitor. 

There is a lot of live entertainment such as the Calico Carolers wandering the streets in the old western town. The focus of the park is now thrill rides such as wooden and steel coasters with lots of loops and inversions. Too much for me these days. 

The ride behind the lights is Bear-y Tales which is a shooter style ride like Buzz Lightyear at Disney. This had the most inefficient staff running the ride with it taking upwards of five minutes to unload and load two cars. No seat belts just sit down on hard seats and the bar slides toward you. And, there were 3-5 staff managing the load/unload process. I got the idea that some safety guys had their way. 

Downtown L.A.

Thursday - We drove the Jeep to downtown Los Angeles to pick up Kenji for shopping, haircut, and lunch. Not necessarily in that order. We hadn’t seen Kenji for a couple of years since we were last here staying in Culver City around Christmas. Initially, we stopped at a Walmart Supercenter to pick up some clothes and groceries. I took advantage of the stop to pick up some more ATF fluid for the hydraulic system. 

The next stop was Supercuts in Downey. Then Acapulco, a wonderful Mexican chain restaurant that I used to frequent. We’ll see how it has survived the years. The only significance of the coffee cup is that’s where I’m sitting while working on this post. And every post should have some sort of picture.

Yesterday, I saw a lot of frustrated people trying to take pictures in front of the Christmas tree at night and the tree would be perfectly exposed but their faces were underexposed. I couldn’t find a setting on the built-in camera app for fill flash or whatever it’s called. But it was easy to do other camera apps. On the iPhone camera, there is a flash setting for “on” which is what needs to be selected. I just couldn’t find it last night. 

Later - It was a slow drive from downtown back to the RV park. About 90 minutes for 35 miles. 

Disneyland

Wednesday - We took the shuttle back to the Disney parks and this time we were in the park before opening (8am).

This is the “rope drop” crowd waiting for opening. After opening, we walked back to the holiday themed Haunted Mansion. The theme was The Nightmare Before Christmas. I never watched the movie but I gather that it was popular. 

On our way through Adventure Land, we noticed that Pirates of the Caribbean had a very short line. It was a walk-on. No waiting. We then headed into Fantasy Land and walked through the Sleeping Beauty dioramas on the second floor of the castle before going on the Snow White ride. Pretty nice that you can walk through the castle.

Then on to Toontown for the new, for Disneyland, Mickey’s and Minnie’s Runaway Railroad. It was exactly the same as Magic Kingdom. We are using the Lightning Lane Multipass for most of these rides so our wait times were very low to a walk-on. Pretty nice. 

It’s a Small World, Alice in Wonderland, Mr. Toads Wild Ride, and now we are waiting for the next one. Astro Blasters in Tomorrow Land. Then Space Mountain right after that. Dinner was a deluxe grilled cheese with tomato basil soup from Jolly Holiday. It was delicious. We then did the Nemo submarine ride. Bridget went to watch the Christmas lights and the holiday parade. I am pretty tired and sore so I am at the Star Wars area relaxing with some ice cream. It’s very quiet here. Everyone is at the parade!

I must say that watching DFBGuide, Mammoth Club and the AllEars YouTube channels really helped planning our visits. 16,626 steps for today.