Once we settled in, we never sought a different spot – it was perfect. We picked a spot, further back across a few washes with a beautiful saguaro out our back door, surrounded by mountains, where the sunrises and sunsets dazzled and awed. We arrived before the onslaught and by the time we prepared to leave in April, it was fast becoming a ghost town again. The population of this tiny little town explodes during the winter season from 879 to estimates of hundreds of thousands! There are four different camping areas available and during the height of the winter season, all are filled with the assorted extreme of campers - from tents to vans to pickup campers to the fancy schmantzy class A’s. The total acreage of the BLM land in Quartzsite is over 11,000 acres. All that we knew for sure was that our $180 long-term camping pass bought us a camping spot from October 15 to April 15 and access to trash dumpsters, water and a dump station. We came here not knowing all the how’s and when’s and where’s of setting up camp in the middle of a desert … new territory with new experiences. We’ve been here for 151 days, a total of five months camping off the grid on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land where hundreds of thousands gather every winter to escape the cold and snow.

In two days, the wheels will start turning once again as we begin our trek back to Missouri to visit family and friends after spending 40 days and 40 nights in the desert in Quartzsite.

The magic circle quartzsite az