A Return Trip to Palm Canyon

After our stay at the American Girl Mine, we decided to make a return trip to Palm Canyon, near Quartzsite. Quartzsite, Arizona may be the RV boondocking capital of the world. Quartzsite is also a mecca for rocks, gems, mineral specimens and fossils during the town’s famous two-month-long gem show and swap meet every January and February. Throw in the popular RV show at the end of January and the town with a permanent population of just over 3700 swells to almost 1 million with almost another million filtering in and out during the winter. There are many places for boonbockers to park your RV but most of them put us in too close a proximity to others. That’s why we like to get away from it all about 20 miles south at Palm Canyon.

Palm Canyon and Kofa Wildlife Management Area

There’s plenty of room to spread out and there aren’t many trails for the OHV crowd, limiting the noise and dust created by them. We stayed here a couple weeks on the BLM land near the Kofa Wildlife Management Area last year (read about that here) and really enjoyed the solitude and scenery. The nights skies are dark, the stars are bright and it’s very quiet. It’s a great place to be.

This year we traveled further up Palm Canyon Road into the Wildlife Management Area. We were hoping to see some big horn sheep but all we saw was a coyote cutting through our area. There are fewer people up there but the drawback is you can only get a maximum of 100 feet off the road. The traffic to the popular Palm Canyon Trail hike can kick up some dust and being so close to the road . . . well, you get the idea. One of the neat things to see is how the nearby mountains change color depending on the lighting during the day.

And the surrounding scenery is fantastic.

And, of course, the desert sunrises and sunsets are sensational.

Palm Canyon Trail

At the end of Palm Canyon Road is the trailhead for Palm Canyon. It’s a relatively easy hike but quite scenic. The attraction on this hike is the palm trees tucked up in a narrow crevice in the canyon. These California fan palms are the only native palm trees in Arizona. How they got here is a mystery. They survive up there because of the limited sunshine and the availability of some water.

Do the hike around mid-day when the sun is shining into the crevice. Otherwise, the palms are hard to see and photograph. There is a rugged, difficult trail that goes up to the palms for the more intrepid hikers. Last year we followed a trail past the palms to a ledge overlooking the canyon. We couldn’t find the trail this year. Perhaps the powers that be haven’t maintained it. Too bad because it was a great spot to have a snack and photograph the canyon.

Spiral Labyrinth

Here’s something we didn’t find last year on our stay at Palm Canyon. There is a 60-foot-diameter spiral labyrinth scraped out of the desert floor about a half mile before you get to the Kofa Wildlife Management Area. It’s almost impossible to see from the road and we had to use Google Maps to find it. Nobody knows who made it, but it’s been there for years, and it’s obviously maintained. The spiral leads to a pile of rocks in the center along with small beads and trinkets left by people who have walked the labyrinth. We were there so we walked the spiral to the center and Cathy left a little heart-shaped rock to add to the pile.

Quartzsite Sports, Vacation and RV Show

Quartzsite is know as the RV Capital of the US so what better place to have a RV show? The Quartzsite RV Show is advertised as the largest gathering of RVs in the world. Attendance for this event is around the 750,000 mark. The last couple years, attendance has been smaller due to Covid. But this year, with a lot of the restrictions lifted, a lot more people than usual will probably be here. That’s a lot of people at one time for such a small town.

We pulled into Palm Canyon at the tail end of the show and decided to check it out. In the middle of it all is a large tent with vendors hawking their RV related wares. There was even some non-RV related things like kitchen gadgets and bird feeders. I got a chance to question a couple different vendors regarding solar power for our trailer. Around the edges of the tent are several food trucks, a stage for and musical entertainment and a lot of new and used RVs for sale. We didn’t see anything that we would trade our trailer for. Some of these new models are HUGE and have all the luxuries of home. I want the money it takes to buy one of these. That doesn’t mean I would buy one. I just want the money.

Moving On . . .

It’s time to pack up Freebird and find some new sites to visit. The American southwest has so many great places to visit that we haven’t been to yet. I feel like we’re just getting started. We’re thinking we may make a stop at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument for a few days before heading back to another familiar stop near Florence, Arizona. See you there.