View from the Edge

Monday starts off all wrong, with Marc feeling the effects of another sleepless night as he starts calling in search of a C-pap mask. It turns out even the masks require a prescription form, which adds another impediment to the process. He finally finds his scanned copy of his prescription in a file on his computer, good in perpetuity or for 99 years, which the medical supply houses in Cottonwood seem to have a problem with. He decides to try in person so leaves on a couple hour sojourn where he does return successfully but by then it is nearly 11 a.m. before we can break camp and go. The place where he purchased the mask insists on making an account for him, despite his saying that he is just traveling through, paying cash, and then to add insult to injury further insisted upon having his social security number. He argued the point but they weren’t relenting so he acquiesced and gave them a social security number—just not his! Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. 


We decide to take the longer scenic route back to Yuma via Prescott and out the western side on Hwy. 89. Prescott is blowing and cold, around 52 degrees when we arrive and very hectic. We pull over for lunch in the Lowe’s parking lot and decide to not waste our time staying when it will be too cold to enjoy and has the possibility of frozen pipes for morning. Our drop back to the desert becomes twisty immediately on curvy Hwy. 89 which quickly loses the pines and has us back in scrub brush and Pinions. This is ranching country and the small burgs are few and far between and very tiny. Yarnell appears out of the farm fields with its few cute antique stores and the countryside suddenly sports huge boulders, looking like a child’s dream playground. Suddenly we start a one-way road decent that clings to a mountainside and affords spectacular views over the desert valley ahead. The views must extend west for a hundred miles.

Starting to search in earnest now for our evening’s boondock, we pause in tiny Wendon, while Marc fuels the Freightliner from the saddle tank. It’s a godforsaken, ramshackle place on the flat plains of desert agriculture fields but the proprietor of the Outback obviously has a sense of humor with his sign that reads: “Hot beer, Lousy food, Bad service, Welcome” .

We aren’t that far from Quartzsite but it is getting beyond our usual time for stopping so when a dirt road directly opposite from Brenda’s Black Rock RV Park appears we make the turn and hasten down the dusty dirt road to a gravel site. This becomes camp for the night where we enjoy a nice barbecued steak dinner. It’s quiet and we retire very early because Marc finally has his mask and can get more than three hours of sleep for a change.

Too soon Tuesday, we arrive back in Yuma, noting on the two hour drive south from Quartzsite that we are being passed by RV after RV, headed north. They are swarming out of Yuma like locust and with my appetite just barely whetted by this mini-road trip, I silently yearn after them. The trip ended too soon with too many things left undone. I didn’t get my Sedona hiking, I didn’t get to just chill out and read and relax, and I didn’t get to explore Prescott’s historical frontier old town saloons. But I did get to see new to me country, and we did get to officially meet new RV friends so overall the trip away was a balm to the senses and emotions.