The Quartzite problem spreads

My main gripe about Quartzsite during snowbird season is clogged cellular bandwidth. The various signals are strong but there are too many people trying to use them at once. The only relief is in the middle of the night.

So there I was, back at my regular campsite in the southeast corner of California, reconnected to Verizon and T-Mobile instead of Telcel, but the web was extremely sluggish, nearly unusable. Because the holiday weekend sand dune users were clogging the bandwidth. Just like in Quartzsite. Sigh.

Did I want to spend the next four days with essentially no useable net access? Hell no! But where could I easily and freely camp in the general area this time if year? What place would be near cell towers but not overflowing with people like me?

Ehrenburg, Arizona. Yes, thats’s a popular public land camping area, but nowhere near as crowded as Quartzsite on the other side of the mountains. And the population of Blythe CA on the other side of the river is fairly constant. No big surge.

This morning I hit the road north. Very little traffic. I imagine most people were already settled into their Thanksgiving locations.

As I turned onto the public land access road I wondered just how crowded or uncrowded the area would be. Had I come for nothing? There were a surprising number of rigs camped along the first quarter mile or so. Was it because the mesa was full, or had they decided they had gone far enough? And the usually well maintained dirt road to the gravel pit was very rough. Had exceptionally heavy use messed it up?

However, when I got up on the mesa I saw it was far less crowded than the other times I’d been there. Plenty of easily accessible room. Nearest neighbors hundreds of yards away. But the big test: how was the cell service? Very good. Yay!

Ehrenburg isn’t one of my favorite places, but it serves a useful purpose. It’s utilitarian. I’m mulling whether I want to continue north to Lake Havasu City after I’m done here. The forecast looks good, but it gets crowded too. Oh, the problems of a picky nomad.