Time to Catch up on Things

When I posted the short blog entry last week, I had not yet downloaded some pictures we took in Quartzsite, so I would like to back track so I can include them now.

 This cute little van is the only public transportation I know of in that small town.  As you can see, it is called the Camel Express.  That amused me.

 I had to show you the Hi Ali swapmeet!!!!!
If you are looking for something you have not found ANYWHERE else, you might find it here.  Some say if you can't find it here, it just does not exist.
 
 This gives you an idea of how empty this town gets after most of the RVers leave town.....  
This is one of the restaurants in Q.  It is called The Grubstake.  More often than one would want to believe this place has run out of food before they ran out of customers in line outside! 

 On Sunday we drove out Plomosa Road to where we had read we would find the Intaglios and the Bouse Fisherman.  We did NOT find the Intaglios, but we parked at the "second viewing area parking" and hiked almost a mile to where we thought we would see this stone image of a fisherman.  This stone tablet to the right is all we found.  We saw hiking trails that led up into the hills, but it was getting hot, and we knew we couldn't go that far, so we started back.

We did see lots of cactus plants.
 

 
 On the way back, we took some pictures of some of the remaining "boondockers" out in this area.
 






 Our last day in Q we did something we have always meant to do, but had not.  We went to the Tyson's Wells Stage Station Museum.

This building on the 
right was out behind the main building.  These stone buildings are miniatures created, and donated by the Barrett family. 

I'm sorry my shadow got in this one.

 






After this we went inside the building. 
 These two scenes were carved entirely from a piece of wood.

These were from the "gold mining" room.  There is a rock hound group that you can join and they have land where you can still pan for gold!

This was what they have on display about Hi Jolly.


The docent said nobody remembers who this man was, or where the wheel chair might have come from.

This was the original post office for the  town of Tyson's Wells.  Later it was closed down.  Some time later they wanted to open it again, but the postal service does NOT re-open any closed offices, so that was why the name of the town of Tyson's Wells became the town of Quartzsite, Arizona.

This is an old baptismal font.
The picture on the right shows that the inside was coated with mercury.  Babies were baptized to save their souls, but the holy water may have been tainted with mercury!
 
This is outside the main building an represents the best place in town to spend the night back then............sleeping on a dirt floor.  OMG.

This is also out front of the museum.
Jim wanted to take this guy home with us, but he just didn't want to go........
That was our tour of the museum.  It is well worth the time, and was very interesting to learn so much of the local history of the area.
The next morning we packed up to leave, but had to get our tires replaced before we could head out to Tucson.  On my next post I will fill you in on all we saw and did at the FMCA rally.  We had a good time, but were disappointed in some parts of it.  More news and pictures to come.  I will also TRY to attach a few videos, but I don't know if that will work or not.

One of the golf cart drivers asked us if we had a good time at the rally.  We said we did.  He commented that if you come to a rally like this and don't have a good time, maybe it's your own fault.  At first I felt that was a cold thing to say, but then I realized he was right.  Each day we wake up and we make a choice.  We choose to have a good day, or not to.  We choose to see the good in others, or not to.  We woke up this morning.  God gave us another day to enjoy.  None of us knows if we will have tomorrow, but we do have today.  It's here and we choose how we will use this day.  I don't remember who said it (or I WOULD give that person credit) but life is 10% about WHAT happens, and 90% about HOW we react to what happens.  Please think about that for a minute.  Even when it seems like bad things happen, there could be a silver lining to it.  

When Jim told me that our neighbor in Q said we needed to replace the inside rear dual tire on the passenger side, my first reaction was "why was he under our RV looking at our tires?"  But when we took the motorhome to the tire place, we found out that ALL of our tires were very bad, and not safe to drive anywhere on.  Thank you God for using our neighbor to tell us what may well have saved our lives.  Yes, the new tires cost us a lot of money, but we think it was important to get them when we did.  Not all examples are this dramatic, but even on little things, life IS about how you react to the things that happen.  

You can choose to see all kinds of things from a negative perspective and be disappointed in everything.  OR, and this is huge folks:  you COULD face life with an attitude of joy and gratitude and actually LOOK for the good in things; and by the way, also look for the good in people.  We always hear about the bad things a few people do, but MOST people are good and we seldom take the time to thank folks for their little acts of kindness.  I would like to suggest taking a moment to thank people for their kindness AND then pass it along.  That may not seem like much, but it can change your day, and just maybe it will also change the day for the people you see each day.  You don't have to always be in a hurry, and angry with anyone who slows you down.  Maybe you should thank them for allowing you to stop and smell the roses!  Like an old song says:  "Don't worry, be happy" and pass it on.