Tag Archives: Wickenburg

First Show of the 2020/21 Winter Season

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Not quite what I was hoping for, but I can’t complain.

I did my first show of the season this weekend. It was a Friday through Saturday show in Wickenburg, AZ and I signed up for a few reasons:

  • I wanted to maximize the number of shows I’d do before Christmas. This was the first full weekend in December.
  • My friend Janet was showing there. It would be nice to hang out with her.
  • It was in Wickenburg, where I had other friends I wanted to visit, including one who had two small packages for me.
  • It was free. Yes, there was no fee charged to vendors.

The event was the first “Cowboy Christmas” fair at Flying E Ranch, one of the few surviving “dude ranches” in Wickenburg. It was thrown together by a crew that had little show experience but tried very hard to bring it all together. In general, I think they did a good job, especially as a first effort. They managed to bring together at least 50 vendors so there was an actual reason for people to come.

I know Janet and our other friends (Steve and Karen) who showed their work were disappointed in the collection of vendors, though. They produce fine art paintings that sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars and they were side by side with some booths that looked like they’d be better suited at a swap meet. My work isn’t quite as “fine arty” as theirs and there were enough vendors at my level or above to satisfy me.

My Booth
Here’s my booth for the show. I had to put down my camper patio mat to provide a decent floor; the surface was well worn desert earth with just enough decomposed horse manure to give it character. What do you think of my new banner in back?

The bigger problem was the attendees. Friday was an absolute bust for me — I didn’t sell a single thing. Janet sold a few note cards. I think Steve and Karen might have sold a painting. (Their work is definitely western with lots of realistically painted horses.) There was some horsey event going on after we all closed; I didn’t know much about it and didn’t really care given that I was dealing with a cold and just wanted to rest.

Saturday was a little better. There was the annual Las Damas ride that day so there were plenty of women around — perfect audience for my work, you’d think. But although folks were looking, they weren’t really buying. I sold a silver ring early in the day and then nothing for a while. What saved me was a woman who came by wanting a pendant that matched a ring she wore. We found a stone in my collection that she liked and I made her a pendant while she walked around. Because they stone she picked was costly — $35! — the sale came to $74, bringing my daily (and show) total to a whopping $100.

As amazing as this might sound, I actually did better than Janet. I suspect that’s the only time that’ll ever happen.

Steve and Karen would up delivering a painting to some customers who had put a deposit down at an earlier show in Arizona. They were happy; they’d made some money and had two fewer paintings to pack up at the end of the show.

Of course, the show was free and they did feed us lunch every day. (I won’t go into detail on that.) And we were able to camp at the ranch walking distance from our booths for free. So I’d consider this first show a win — although a tiny one — with some revenue, free food, free camping, and no costs.

Would I do it again? It really depends on whether I have something better to do. The folks who set this up need to work on marketing if they want to do this again. A show with vendors is great, but not if you can’t get shoppers. Even though I had no costs to do this show, it’s a lot of effort to set up a booth and sit in it all day; I like to bring in an average of $250 or more per day (over show costs) on a show. And I really do think they need to be a bit pickier about what they allow to be sold. I can think of at least five booths that had no place being at a “Cowboy Christmas” event — folks setting up what looked like a garage sale. They really brought the overall quality of the show down to a level even I don’t want to be associated with.

My next show is in Phoenix and should be an entirely different kind of event. I’ll report back on that when it’s over.

Snowbirding 2020: The Drive Plan

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Another trip down an all-too-familiar route.

Posts in this series:
– The Big Plan
– The Drive Plan

On Tuesday, I plan to start by drive to — of all places — Wickenburg, AZ. It’s a drive I’ve taken many times. After all, I started spending my summers up here in Washington in 2008, the year I got my first cherry drying gig. Back in those days, I’d make two drives north in the spring — one in my helicopter and a second in a truck pulling a trailer to live in. Then, at the end of the season, I’d make two drives home to get everything back to my Wickenburg hangar.

The Preferred Route

During those years, I tried all kinds of routes north or south and I discovered the one truth about the drive: the shortest route involves route 93 between Wickenburg and Twin Falls, ID and I-84 between Twin Falls and the Tri-Cities area of Washington. Ask Google Maps — it’ll tell you. And even if you don’t believe it, I can confirm in. I’ve driven just about every other possible route.

Map of Route
Google Maps knows the fastest routes. This map even shows the route 6 shortcut.

I-84 is a freeway that goes from Portland to Salt Lake City, leaving the relatively flat land of eastern Washington to climb the Green Mountains east of Pendleton, OR (of blanket fame) before descending southeast bound into the Boise, ID area and crossing rolling prairie land. The terrain climbs and descends again and again as I head south on the two-lane route 93 from Twin Falls, which I mostly stick to, taking advantage of a shortcut on route 6 between Ely and Crystal Springs, NV.

Route 93 is one of those remote roads that frighten city people. Towns aren’t much more than a handful of homes — if that. Gas stations are few and far between. If you miss a fuel stop you could be in serious trouble, waiting hours for the AAA guy to bring you five gallons. I’ve never run out of fuel on this route, but I’ve had more than a few close calls. If diesel wasn’t so damn stinky, I’d bring along a spare 5 gallons just in case.

Once I get to I-15, I’m back on the freeway and in very familiar area just outside of Las Vegas. Then, near Boulder City, NV, I leave freeways behind again for the long drive down route 93 to Kingman, a short stint on I-40, and more route 93 all the way down to Wickenburg. It’s 1,280 miles and should take about 20 hours with fuel stops if I stick to the speed limit — which I do when I’m towing these days. I used to be able to do it all in two days, with Jackpot, NV on Idaho’s border as my preferred overnight stop. That’s where I’d sleep in my RV in the truck parking lot outside of Cactus Pete’s casino. When the trip north stretched to three days due to weather or a late start or, in one case, illness, I’d try other overnight stops including a lakeside campsite at Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge just south of Alamo, NV; a casino parking lot in West Wendover, NV; a campsite at Farewell Bend State Recreation area near Huntington, OR; or a state park campground somewhere in the Green Mountains. I’m not opposed to overnighting in a Walmart parking lot, but I’d prefer not to.

The Challenge of Driving When Days are Short

Driving south in late autumn is a whole different story. I can’t do it in two days mostly because I prefer not to travel in the dark. That means it’s always three days and I need two stops along the way. So not only do I have to plan my route around the weather, but I should have a damn good idea of where I’m going to stop along the way to make cold weather camping bearable.

And that’s the challenge. My truck camper is not winterized and I don’t want its pipes to freeze. I also don’t want to worry about running out of battery power at night when the heater would likely run nonstop to keep the poorly insulated camper warm enough for me to sleep. The answer is to find a campground with a power hookup that’s right on my route, close enough to reach before it gets dark.

I found such a place last year: the tiny Three Island Crossing State Park in Glenns Ferry, ID. Although the water is turned off in this campground and the bathrooms are closed and locked, the power is still turned on and available. I can pull into a campsite, plug in, and use my quiet electric heater to keep the camper warm all night. I get the added benefit of being able to use my microwave to heat up some dinner and my electric coffee maker to make coffee in the morning. The forecast says Tuesday night’s low will be 25°F so I really will appreciate that electric hookup.

Three Island Crossing is 491 miles from Malaga and will take about 8 hours to get to with one fuel stop along the way. That means that if I leave here at 7 AM sharp, I’ll get there by 4 PM local time. Sunset there will be around 5 PM. I arrived after dark last year and left in the morning before sunrise so I never got a chance to actually see the place. It would be nice to see it this year. I plan on hitting the road long before the 8 AM sunrise the next morning.

The Las Vegas Stop

My next stop is a no-brainer of sorts: Las Vegas, NV. If you think it’s weird camping in Las Vegas, you’re right. It is.

I stay at the KOA at Sam’s Town. In general, I dislike KOAs — they’re glorified parking lots. But this isn’t a camping trip. It’s an overnight stop before I’ll be spending weeks off the grid. I found the KOA years ago and have been staying there every trip south since. I get a full hookup site, plug in, and get a good night’s sleep. In the morning, I use the clean, warm, completely underutilized shower facilities to get a good, long, hot shower. Then I top off my water tanks and dump my black and gray water. If I need propane, I buy it there and the attendant helps me load it back into the compartment where the tanks go. There’s Sam’s Town next door if I want a good dinner or breakfast that I don’t have to cook. There’s a Walmart across the street if I want to stock up on anything I might have trouble finding in the weeks to come. And if I get there early enough, I can take a free shuttle or an Uber out to the strip to see what’s changed since my last visit. I admit that the chances of that happening are minimal; the 555 mile drive will take about 9 hours with fuel stops and I’ll likely be exhausted after two full days on the road.

KOA Great Outdoors
This screenshot from an email confirmation is what prompted this blog post. I love the way KOA refers to a campground in Las Vegas as “the great outdoors.” 🙄

This particular stop — especially this year — will be my most expensive overnight stop this year, coming in at just about $55 for the night. Ouch. The reason it’s so costly: it’s not just my truck camper this year. I’ll be pulling my cargo trailer, which makes my rig a lot longer than it normally would be and really encourages me to find a pull-through spot. (Backing a trailer is hard enough when you can see it but it’s nearly impossible when a truck camper hides it from view.) Because most of the folks who stay at that KOA are driving big rigs — hence the underutilized shower facilities — all of the smaller pull-throughs are taken. The only one available was a 72-foot long spot. I shouldn’t have any trouble fitting my roughly 40-foot total length rig into it, but it’ll cost me. Big spots cost big money.

The high cost also encourages me to stay just one night when I might have stayed two. I haven’t really enjoyed a trip to Vegas in a while. I suppose I’ll have to wait for the next time HeliExpo comes to town.

The Home Stretch

The rest of the drive is very familiar. As I write this, I’m planning a stop in Wickenburg where I might be participating in a holiday art show. It’s still unclear on whether they have room for me; I applied late (as usual). If I’m in, I go to Wickenburg. If I’m not in, I might go straight down to our usual camping area on the Colorado River. That means taking route 95 south from Vegas, all the way into California at I-10 or possibly crossing the river at I-40 and heading south from Lake Havasu. I’ve gone both ways and they both work.

Either way, it’s a short travel day with less than 300 miles to cover so I’ll definitely get to my destination.

And by that time, I should be back in t-shirt weather with very few worries about keeping my camper from freezing overnight.

That’s the plan. Stay tuned to see if I stick to it.

Snowbirding 2019: A Quick Stop in Wickenburg and Forepaugh

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I do some shopping and configure my new old trailer.

Posts in this series:
• The Long Drive
• At the Backwaters Campsite
• In Mesa and Gilbert
• A Quick Stop in Wickenburg and Forepaugh
• Off Plomosa Road
• Camping at the Big RV Show
• A Trip to Organ Pipe with the WINs
• The Tucson Gem & Mineral Shows
• Wickenburg Gold Rush Days
• Constellation Park Interlude
• White Tank Mountain Park
• Bumming It in Phoenix and Apache Junction
• A Dose of Civilization
• Return to the Backwaters
•

Although I would have had breakfast at Wild Horse West, they didn’t open until 10 AM and even then all they had was their regular burger menu. So after taking Penny for a quick walk to do her business, we loaded up into the truck and pulled out, dragging the trailer behind me.

Return to Wickenburg

If you’ve been reading this blog for a long time, you may recall that I lived in Wickenburg. For 15 years. I actually started looking for a different place to live back in 2005 — only eight years after arriving — but my wasband would only agree to two other places: San Diego, which is crowded and wildly expensive, and Santa Fe, which is at an elevation that would make it impossible to run my helicopter charter business. So I was stuck in Wickenburg — until I got divorced and was able to move wherever the hell I wanted to. I wasted no time getting out. That was in 2013.

So I knew Wickenburg well. I knew where I could get printing done (KwikPrint) and where I could buy groceries (Safeway). And I was only in town long enough to hit those two destinations, get what I needed, and get out.

At Forepaugh

My friend Janet, who I’d camped with for two weeks over the Christmas holidays, was staying with her significant other, Steve, at an off-the-grid ranch in Forepaugh.

Forepaugh is roughly halfway between Aguila and Wickenburg. There’s no town, but a bunch of people live near the main road on small ranchettes. Its claim to fame goes back to World War II, when glider pilots were trained at its old airport, which has since been wiped off the map, most likely by the guys who like to fly their toy airplanes there.

The ranch Janet and Steve were staying at belonged to their friend Rosie. I’d stayed there before. This time, I was staying for a day or two to configure my cargo trailer so it could neatly and efficiently hold all the extra gear I had crammed into the back seat area of my truck and my camper.

You see, Janet and Steve use this stuff called E-Track to create flexible anchor points inside their cargo-hauling vehicles. They had to configure Janet’s new old truck so they were down in Phoenix, in part, to buy some E-Track. While they were there, they picked up two 10-foot lengths with connections for me. I needed to pick that stuff up, but I also needed to borrow their tools to install it. So I had a small ton of work ahead of me at the ranch before I moved on.

Rosie’s ranch is a working cattle ranch with free range cattle and other cattle that’s kept in pens not far from where Janet, Steve, and I camped. There are also lots of horses and dogs. There’s no electricity and Rosie doesn’t have any solar panels, so she fires up a big generator when it gets dark and lets it run all night. Fortunately, we weren’t close enough for it to be a bother. The rest of us had low power needs and solar panels so we didn’t have to run our generators much at all.

Rosie's Ranch
Rosie’s Ranch from the air, as shot from my drone one day.

I didn’t get anything done that first day I was there — Wednesday — but I did do most of the necessary configuration the next day. The E-Track, which I’d never used before, seemed like a good solution when you want to fasten something to the walls of a trailer or truck back. The trick was installing it so that the screws would catch something other than the plywood inside the trailer.

Of course, they didn’t come with hardware so I wound up going back into Wickenburg with Janet to fetch some self-tapping screws while she mailed a package. Then back to work. I managed to catch a few screws on the trailer’s metal frame. The others went into the plywood. But when I was done with the first rail it was not going anywhere without the trailer.

Steve cut the other piece for me since the trailer, which is 12 feet long, has a door on one side. I think we went with 7 feet plus 3 feet. I put the long piece lower on the short wall and put the short piece very close to the floor near the back end of the other wall.

Next, I had to assemble and secure the heavy duty plastic shelving I’d bought at Lowes on Tuesday. I decided to put that on the long wall, right across from the man door on the side of the trailer. I had ratchet tie down straps and with the rings that fit into the E-Track, it was very quick and easy to secure the shelves to the wall.

Shelves
I installed the shelves opposite the man door on the side of the trailer. The gas can and jugs on the upper shelves are empty (of course).

Once I had the shelves in, I began filling them with the various boxes of tools, raw materials, and finished products for my jewelry business. These things were scattered all over my camper: plastic bins of tools and metal in a cabinet over my table, more plastic bins of tools and soldering equipment secured on a cubbyhole countertop, glass-topped compartmented trays of cabochons, large glass-fronted case with finished pendants, etc., etc. Everything fit into place neatly and I was able to secure them with bungee cords I’d also bought at Lowe’s.

Cargo Trailer
I could fit my bike, unfolded, against one wall. In this picture, you can also see my work table with the other tables beneath it.

With that mostly done, I started working on the other items I wanted to get out of my camper and the back seat area of my truck. My generator. My barbecue grill. Those tables. My tall director’s chair. My bicycle. I was able to fit everything into the trailer and secure it with the E-Track.

What I liked best was that I was able to open my small table — it’s 2 x 4 feet and has adjustable height — and secure it over the other two tables that were folded up and strapped against the wall. This made it possible to maintain a work area inside the trailer — no more dealing with desert dust on windy days!

Inside the Back Door
Here’s a look inside the trailer’s back door. Although I considered replacing the rearmost floor board, I’ve since decided to cover it with carpet.

Later in the day, Janet and Steve helped me get my folding canopy tent and inflatable kayak off the roof of the camper. The canopy fit easily by the back door of the trailer with its fabric top and sides strapped against the opposite wall. The kayak, however, was too big to be strapped anywhere — at least not with the current configuration. I left its bag on the floor near the shelves, hoping its weight would keep it from moving around too much in transit.

When I was finished, I was very pleased with the setup. I’d used up just about all of the wall space while leaving a path in the middle of the trailer. This made everything accessible without having to move much of anything else. While not exactly the mobile workshop I’d imagined when I first began thinking of a cargo trailer for my winter travel and work, it was definitely a start.

I already had plans to replace the big shelves with a narrower set when I got home and could put my workbench drawers inside the trailer for my next jewelry work-related trip. Then all those tools and metals could come out of their bins and be better organized in drawers.

I had pretty much everything settled and strapped down by late Thursday. On Friday morning, I finalized and checked the setup. I was good to go.

Latte and Away

Not long after arriving in Forepaugh, I got a text from my airport friend, Stan. He remembered the approximate time I said I’d be back in town and was following up with an invitation for lattes at the airport. (No, Wickenburg Airport does not have a coffee shop. Stan has a cappuccino machine in his hangar.) I had to pass that day, but got back to him on Thursday with a suggestion for Friday morning. We set the time for 11 AM.

I pulled out of Rosie’s Ranch at about 9:30 AM on Friday morning, with my camper back on board and the trailer behind me. I ran two errands — post office and supermarket — and arrived at the airport just a few minutes late. Stan had invited the airport gang. There were lots of hugs all around. I had to update everyone about what I’d been up to for the past year. The latte was good and strong.

It was after noon when I finally got on the road to my next destination. I had one stop planned along the way — but you can read about that in the next post about this year’s snowbirding trip.