Tag Archives: The Desert Bar (Parker AZ)

2015/10/28 (W) Inside Flash

Linda’s iPad alarm went off at 5:45 AM but she did not get up until after 6.  I got up at the same time she did but she was dressed and out the door by 6:15 while I was still stumbling around.  I put on my warm robe, fed the cats, made coffee, and had a banana nut muffin.  After enjoying my coffee by the fireplace I had my orange juice and granola with blueberries.

It started raining overnight and was still raining this morning as the remnants of hurricane Patricia pulled up from the lower Mississippi River and moved north between the river and the western side of the Appalachian Mountains towards the Great Lakes.  The forecast was for the rain to continue through the day and then off and on into tomorrow.  It was a good day to work in the house so that is mostly what I did.  But first I gathered up the trash from the house and rolled the large container to the street for pickup.

The first thing on my self-imposed to-do list was finalizing an order with DX Engineering.  I had already placed multi-packs of two different sized snap-on ferrite beads in my cart but needed to spend slightly more money to get free shipping.  I am not, however, one of those people who is drawn into buying something I do not need just because it is a BOGO item.

I have been planning for quite some time to install a multi-outlet fused DC distribution panel in the front of the bus to provide Anderson PowerPole connections for the various 12V DC accessories such as the GPS.  I had just never made it a priority, which is to say, never taken the time to figure out exactly which product to buy.  I had to go out to the bus to assess the size and feasibility of available areas for mounting.  After looking at all of the options I selected an 8-port unit from West Mountain Radio.  I really wanted a unit with USB charging ports but the only such model they make only has four PowerPole connections, which is not enough.

My next task was to order a couple of items from the Rockler Woodworking and Hardware website.  I have been considering their black, powder-coated shelf brackets for a while.  I made another trip to the bus to determine how much space I had on the wall where the table will go.  It looked like I will have 14 inches of wall space for mounting brackets so I selected the middle of three sizes, which is 12″ high by 18″ deep.  The brackets will support 1,000 pounds each so a pair of them will certainly support the weight of the Corian-topped dining table.  The table is 38″ long and fully supported by 3/4″ plywood underneath, but it remains to be seen if the wall is strong enough to support the table in a cantilevered installation.  If not, we will have to add a leg or an angled support.

The other thing I needed was hardwood veneer to build the three panels that will replace the strip mirrors that were on the lower portion of the outside hallway wall.  I decided to go with the Allwood 2-ply maple and put a 24″ wide by 96″ long roll in the cart.  The three panels will have a finished size of about 22-1/2″ by 28″ so the 8′ long piece should work out just right.  I placed the order and moved on the next thing which was entering account information into our password program.

Our password app is wonderful but frustrating at times as it tries to synchronize via the cloud every time you open it, edit an entry, or create a new one.  By design it keeps our passwords up-to-date on multiple devices, which is why we have it, but it is slow to sync and sometimes appears to hang up.  When it is trying to sync it won’t let me do anything else, so I sit and wait (or make another cup of tea).

Phil called around 12:15 PM, returning my phone message from yesterday, and we chatted for 20 minutes or so.  With any luck he will have stone delivered here on Friday or Saturday and get the driveway put in before Joe gets here next week with his trailer.  Phil, however, is at the mercy of Wayne County inspectors on another job and was not able to work anywhere today due to the rain.  Most of his work is weather and bureaucrat dependent.

I had the leftover squash and quinoa/lentil pilaf for lunch at 12:45 PM.  While I was eating a lone buck wandered through the back yard with what appeared to be a 6-point rack.  It is the first buck (with antlers) that I have seen this year.

I worked on this post for a while and then went to my office.  As much as I needed to work on getting posts uploaded to my blog there were other unfinished tasks weighing more heavily on my mind.  At the top of the list was an article for Bus Conversion Magazine on a 1985 Model 15 Eagle bus conversion that I saw and photographed at the Eagles International converted coach rally in Quartzsite, Arizona back in January of this year.  I met the owners at that time and subsequently interacted with them a bit but then got really busy with my own projects and had to set the article on the back burner.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the article was farther along than I remembered.  I also had a short narrative and eight photos from the owners that I had not yet incorporated into the article so that gave me additional material to work with.  With only a few short breaks to interrupt my work I pulled together a first complete draft by 6 PM and e-mailed it to the owners and the publisher of the magazine.  Gary (at BCM) wants to run this article as the feature/cover story in the January 2016 issue so the editor needs it before the end of November.  Personally, I need to be done with it at least a week before Thanksgiving.

While working on the article I had quite a few e-mails back and forth with Gary, one of which inquired about my article on The Desert Bar / Nellie E. Saloon outside of Parker, Arizona.  A draft of that article also exists but it is not even a full page of text and I have not yet selected and processed any photos.  I wrote a little bit on The Desert Bar in a March 2016 overview article about our time in Quartzsite.  For a standalone article I will need to say something more/different than I said there.  If the weather continues to be crummy tomorrow I may use that as an excuse to sequester myself in my office, hunker down at my computer, and crank this article out.

One of my afternoon breaks was in response to the doorbell.  It was UPS delivering my order from B&H Photo.  I did not open it right away as I wanted to stay on my BCM article task.  Linda texted me at 3:30 PM to let me know she was leaving the bakery and arrived home about an hour later.  Even though she left the house at 6:15 AM this morning it took her 90 minutes to get to the bakery in Hamtramck.  Wet roads with poor lane markings in marginal early morning light will do that.  Michigan does not do a good job of maintaining its roads.

For dinner Linda made a simple salad of power greens with Ken’s Sweet Vidalia Onion dressing, roasted the white asparagus we bought the other day, and reheated the leftover risotto.  The risotto held up well to being served as leftovers but the white asparagus, which was fresh, was disappointing.  It was tough and we ended up microwaving it.  Linda thought it was bitter, and did not like it, but I think that is a characteristic of asparagus.  We both agreed, however, that it did not taste like much of anything.

While we were relaxing in the living room after dinner I did a search on white asparagus.  Asparagus is a spring vegetable so the stuff we bought probably came from a long way south of the border.  It is grown “underground” by keeping dirt around the stalks; a process known as etiolation, or light deprivation.  It is supposed to be milder than regular (green) asparagus but with a tough, bitter outer skin than needs to be removed before cooking.  The classic German method of preparation is immersion in simmering water with salt and butter until tender.  Now we know.  Eating things out of season may be one of the “benefits” of being globally interconnected but there is a lot to be said for eating local in-season whenever possible.

The power flickered once during dinner and several more times during the evening.  Winds were forecast at 15 – 25 MPH out of the SW gusting to 40 and strengthening into the morning hours as the wind shifted out of the W in advance of a second cold front.  I shut off the color laser printer, the two NAS units, and the Linux box as a precaution but left my laptop on since it runs on its own internal battery.

 

2015/01/18 (N) The Desert Bar

Today was divided into several distinct pieces.  At 8:30 AM we connected Linda’s iPad to our Verizon MiFi and Facetimed with our son, daughter-in-law, and grand-daughter.  At 25 months her vocabulary is developing quickly and she recognizes us on the iPad as Grandma Linda and Grandpa Bruce.

The Nellie E. Saloon at The Desert Bar outside Parker, AZ.

The Nellie E. Saloon at The Desert Bar outside Parker, AZ.

When we concluded the call I made a quick run over to the Quartzsite Market Place to touch base with Gary Hatt and the folks at the Eagles International bus rally and the FMCA Western GM Bus Chapter rally.  I returned to pick up Linda and we chatted briefly with Jim Guld of Geeks On Tour.  He and Chris are staying at our encampment for at least this week.

Linda at The Desert Bar.

Linda at The Desert Bar, upper level.

We headed up AZ-95 to Plomosa Road and headed east into the BLM camping area to pick up Mara.  She is camped with the WINs (Wandering Individuals Network) but we drove past their camp and she flagged us down on the return.  We got a brief tour of her Fleetwood Bounder and then headed for the Desert Bar.  It was over 40 miles to get there with the last five on a primitive road that is not regularly maintained.  It was very rough in places but our Honda Element had enough ground clearance to handle it and 4-wheel drive was not needed.  It was, however, a slow drive.  There is also a network of rougher trails that ATVs use to get to the bar.

The lower level of The Desert Bar.  Lots of people for a Sunday afternoon.

The lower level of The Desert Bar. Lots of people for a Sunday afternoon.

One of the buildings that makes up The Desert Bar is the Nellie E. Saloon.  It is named after the mine that operated there at one time.  The bar began very humbly in 1983 and has grown considerably since that time.  It is the quintessential “let’s build it and see if they come” venture.  And come they did.  It is completely off-grid and powered mostly by solar energy, although we did see a propane tank which we presumed fuels the cooking grills.  Hours are weekends (Sat and Sun) noon to 6 PM from the first weekend in October to the last weekend in April.  We got there a little before it opened but there were already people there and by 1 PM there were at least 200 people milling around and eating and the live band started playing.  It was an older but active crowd, reflective of what we generally see around Quartzsite.  The Desert Bar has moved beyond famous and is now legendary.

Linda with our friend, Mara, at The Desert Bar.

Linda with our friend, Mara, at The Desert Bar.

The beer was canned but cold and fairly priced, especially considering the location.  We had veggie burgers that were tasty and cost $3.50 each.  We shared an order of garlic fries with Mara and they were excellent.  There were lots of other choices on the menu as well, so of which we could have had.  As we were getting ready to leave we spotted riders on horseback coming up the road so we stuck around long enough to photograph their arrival.  These were the original, 1 HP, ATVs of the American west.  We had a great time there and it was certainly a unique place and experience for us.

The dance floor at The Desert Bar.

The dance floor at The Desert Bar.

We left at 2 PM, stopped at the Wal-Mart in Parker, and got back to our rig at 3:30 PM. I dropped Linda off and headed over to Lloyd DeGerald’s place.  Verda was there but Lloyd had their credit card machine with him so I said I would come back tomorrow morning to buy the Webasto flame detector photocell.  I then headed back to the Eagles International and Western GM bus rallies to grab some general bus photos.

Linda and Mara enjoying the vibe at The Desert Bar.

Linda and Mara enjoying the vibe at The Desert Bar.

Gary and I touched base with Buck Bolding to get squared away with arrangements to photograph his Eagle later in the week.  We also walked over to the Western GM rally and made arrangements with Larry Hall to photograph his bus on Tuesday morning.

Byron Pigg and his wife Betty had straightened up their 1985 model 15 Eagle so I spent some time photographing the interior.  The rally was having a pot luck (carry in) meal at 4:30 PM and invited me to stay so I had some plain spaghetti and green salad.  While I was there I met Rico and Monica, a couple from Europe that have spent four months each winter for the last 15 years traveling around the world in a decommissioned Swiss military truck with a large trailer behind it.  Rico drives buses in Europe for a living and works enough hours in eight months to earn his full year’s pay, which gets paid out to him once a month all year long and making it convenient to fund their annual travels.  Gary and I chatted with folks until it was dark and I finally left to go back to my coach.

Patrons arrive at The Desert Bar on the original, 1 HP, ATV.

Patrons arrive at The Desert Bar on the original, 1 HP, ATV.

BCM publisher Gary Hatt (L) at the Eagles International bus rally at the Quartzsite Market Place drycamp area.

BCM publisher Gary Hatt (L) at the Eagles International bus rally at the Quartzsite Market Place drycamp area.

I spent the rest of the evening copying photographs from my camera to my computer and working on this blog post.  Somewhere in all of that I got a phone call from Lou Petkus of the SKP photographers BOF and we figured out a time/place to meet.

Sunset over 'Q' Mountain from the Eagles International bus rally site.

Sunset over ‘Q’ Mountain from the Eagles International bus rally site.