Greetings to all our loyal followers. I know, I haven’t
written in a while. Like my Grandmother used to say when she hadn't
heard from me in a while: "What, you died, or something?"
My Grandmother was not short on sarcasm- and I'm pretty sure that's where I get mine
from.



First stop: Beatty,
Nevada.
As of March, we had never even heard of Beatty, NV- but one night
in Quartzsite, after I was closed for the evening, two guys pulled up in front
of the shop and asked if I was closed- which, obviously, I was. But they were persistent. Al was still open, and they told him
they had driven all day to get here and they wanted to buy some Turquoise
jewelry for a shop they were opening in Beatty, NV. They convinced him that they were
serious, and they flashed the cash just long enough for me to decide to stop
cooking dinner and open back up. After
a half-hour long transaction through which my entire inventory of turquoise
jewelry was now headed for Nevada- they said- hey- do you want to make some
money now that the season in Quartzsite is over?
Earlier that day, I had been perusing the show and swap meet lists
trying to decide on a route out of Quartzsite- so I was open to
suggestions. And there it
was- Beatty, NV. Located in
the middle of the only route through the vast, open desert between Reno and
Vegas. A gateway to Death
Valley NP- and 100 miles, at least, in every direction, from anywhere.
But, according to these two guys who just paid cash for my entire stock of
turquoise jewelry, there was still plenty of business in Beatty.
Later that evening, we googled Beatty, NV and it seemed
interesting enough. Ghost
towns, rockhounding, meteorites, gold prospecting, and fossils all in one place
in the middle of the Nevada desert, plus a swap meet to set up at for a while
before heading further north. Sounded
like our kind of place. Besides,
Pahrump was nearby and so was Death Valley, and I knew both of those places
would be good if Beatty didn’t work out. Even if the business wasn't as
good as we had been told, there were lots of opportunities to play in the
Beatty/Pahrump/Death Valley area...and playing was definately at the top of my list right about then.
And anyway, it didn’t matter, really, as long as we weren’t in
Quartzsite anymore. Not
that we don’t love Quartzsite, but it was that point in the season where I was
over it. It was hot, dry,
and we had been battling dust storms since the beginning of March. We were tired and burnt out from a long,
busy season. I was cranky. I had been open 7 days a week since the end of
October.
It was now the middle of March, and we needed to be somewhere
else. Anywhere else. As long as it wasn’t
Quartzsite. We
needed to close, go somewhere else, and play. I didn’t even care if we opened again
before we played, as long as we opened in a different town. I felt a little leap of excitement in
my Spirit. In a couple of days, after some phone calls and some
research, the decision was made. Beatty it would be.
We closed for the season a few weeks later.
We spent several more evenings playing on the dirtbike out in the desert
around Quartzsite. We
visited petroglyphs at Tyson Wash, some stone cabins, and explored the Dome
Rock and Plomosa mountains. Then,
after enjoying our last Quartzsite sunset at the ancient Fisherman Intaglio on
Plomosa Road, we headed north through the dry, dusty desert toward
Beatty. A new adventure had
begun.

Of Dust Storms and Pack Ice by Jenn Jedidiah Free & RocksInMyHead is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://jedidiahfree.blogspot.com.
Of Dust Storms and Pack Ice by Jenn Jedidiah Free & RocksInMyHead is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://jedidiahfree.blogspot.com.
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