More Quartzsite fun with friends and fire lanterns

I didn't want to post again until I finished replying to the comments from my last post about the BloggerFest.  I don't usually reply to comments, but these were so special I wanted to add my two cents to each one.   It didn't feel like the post was complete until I responded to everyone.

The BloggerFest kind of felt like a family reunion where you meet the aunts, uncles and cousins you've heard about but never met.  I'm hoping for a BloggerFest 2016 where conversations will be easier now that we've met a lot of the other bloggers we follow.  Maybe reading about all the fun will encourage some other RVers to start their own blogs, too. 

I've been camping over here in the La Posa West LTVA in Quartzsite, AZ with the LazyDaze group.  My friend Jeanne is here, and also Nancy, who are both LazyDaze'ers.   Kim is here, too, so we've had a few visits and walks and lunches.  Denise is down in another La Posa area, but we still manage to meet up from time to time.

Had a nice walk with Kim and Jeanne and Riley - I wish Katie could have come, too, but she just doesn't' walk far and the terrain is too rocky here for the stroller.  We did a big circle going to Kim's rig then across the desert to Old Yuma Road, down to our "exit" then back to the rigs.  Perfect weather for walking.  I took a bunch of shots; these were the best I thought:

Me and Kim:

Jeanne and Kim and Riley:


I didn't realize they were fuzzy until I put them in the blog - oh, well, you get the idea.  :)

As of lunch today all of the LazyDaze people have left, and we're down to Jeanne, Kim and Me.  The diehards - the holdouts.  The crazy three staying with rain in the forecast.   I love the rain, though, it's so warm and cozy in The Palms and I love the rain on the roof.

Denise, Jeanne, Kim and I had brunch today at the Mountain Quail Cafe in town.

We had such a good time - I hope we weren't too loud.  We were all talking a mile a minute and laughing and laughing.  Really fun group! 

Here's the view in front of the Palms out my windshield:

So pretty - I love the mountains around here.  That's not snow on the mountain, just the sun's reflection.

So far this has been a great winter.  The Big Tent is down and many of the smaller vendors have buttoned things up so it's much quieter in town, but there's still enough going on to make it interesting.

Jeanne took some photos the other night at the group campfire when they were getting the fire lantern ready to fly.  I wanted to see how they did it, so I walked over to watch.  I'd never seen these before this year.  It's a small hot air balloon made of paper with wire crossed over the bottom and some kind of fire started on the wire.  You light the fire starter, wait until the lantern is expanded from the heat, then you let it go and it floats up and up and up and the night air and breezes float it up and out of sight.  It was really neat to watch.  They call them Sky Lanterns, Chinese Lanterns or Fire Lanterns.

They are just ready to let it go:

Thanks for the photo, Jeanne!

The picture below shows the lantern in more detail - photo from Wikipedia.  There are lots and lots of them in the sky above:

The first night I was here at this site I took Katie out for her potty walk, and looked up into the dark sky and there were four of them floating in the distance.  I couldn't figure out what in the heck they were.  I guess they aren't new, and they sell them on Amazon, but I've never even heard of them until this year.  

That's about it for today - cloudy skies but no wind and not cold outside.  And beautiful desert all around us.

From me and Katie, have a great Thursday, everyone!  :)