Neal Behnke is writing daily reports to the Rockhound Connection on Facebook, a group worth following. Here’s Neal’s latest:
Welcome one and all to day 7 at the wonder in the desert, Quartzsite! Uncle Neal will stamp your passport and show you the door.
Quartzsite Arizona is really a rock hounds dream, established many years ago by wandering camel farmers, it has had a continuous rock show going since John Denver left and moved to Colorado and got all weird. First tourists started stopping as the freeway was slowly built, sometimes they would wander into the desert, sometimes they would wander back with rocks they would then sell to other tourists for water and trinkets. After 1978 the freeway reached almost a mile past town and the city was named.
Quartzsite is a fantastic place to rock hound, the local rock club (friends of Quartzsite) offer rock hounding trips, volunteer to clean the public bus benches and hand out cheese sandwiches. Please be aware if you are approached by anyone saying they will take you rockhounding, ask to see their cheese sandwich. Last year over a 100 rock hounds were tricked into looking for valley opal and 12 swimming pools were built. It is a good chance that if you are standing in someones back yard with a shovel and you are within 10 feet of wifi and a coffee maker, you are not rock hounding.
Todays Desert gardens events include Escape Room! held on the Lido deck, your goal is to try getting out of the house, finding the keys and your rock hammer and avoiding all your adult responsibilities so you can wander in the desert.
If you purchased any Cinnabar from Toxic Tonys minerals, please be aware that testing has confirmed that this particular material is hardly toxic at all, if you would like the high grade stuff please come back this morning.
Kids events today include buckskin Willys scorpion ranch! Willy has rustled up some 1.2 million desert red spotted viper scorpions, all in his .01 acre spread! Its fun to watch the little buggers tear across the desert floor, if you lean close over the 1 foot fence you can hear their tiny feet skittering in the sand!
Milking and stampede starts today at 1.
