 More 2020 Adventures |
Los Angeles, CA → Quartzsite, AZ → Los Angeles, CA 555 mi (893.2 km) |
 More 2020 Adventures |
Let’s rock and roll, everyone!
The whole time I’ve lived in California, I’ve wondered about the famous Desert Gardens Gem, Mineral, and Jewelry Show that takes place every January and February in Quartzsite (with an “s”), Arizona, and this year, I decided the time had come to check it out! I headed three and a half hours east to this quirky city!
The self-proclaimed “Rock Capital of the World,” Quartzsite gets its name, not from the stone quartzite, but from the quartz-gold placers that gave it a mining boom in the 1860s! Every year since 1967, Quartzsite has hosted one of the nation’s largest shows celebrating rocks, gems, and minerals of all kinds. It draws over a million rockhounds each year!
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The show runs from January through February, but when I arrived, only three rows of vendors were left! I guess the peak is in early February, but nevertheless, there was plenty to see! Wholesalers sold beautiful agate slabs by the tub, and jewelers had lovely wire-wrapped gems and cabochons on display. Being so close to the end of the show, some were offering entire tables of rocks for sale! The prices were very reasonable, but I just don’t have space for that many rocks!
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For me, though, the highlights of any rock show are the fossils! There were so many mosasaur jaws, trilobites, and the most diverse display of ammonites I’d ever seen: huge ones, tiny ones, trumpet-shaped ones, and some, called ammolites, with iridescent mother-of-pearl preserved in the stone! I might have taken home some souvenirs…
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Alas, since the show was in its final days of the season, I ran through all the vendors much faster than I anticipated! What else was there to do out here? Well, Quartzsite is the final resting place of Hadji Ali, a.k.a. “Hi Jolly,” who worked alongside Greek George as a camel herder during the U.S. Army’s Camel Corps experiment between 1857 and 1861. The camels were super useful at carrying equipment while Lt. Edward Beale mapped a wagon route across Arizona and New Mexico! Sadly, the Civil War put an end to the Camel Corps, and “Hi Jolly” finished out his days mining the hills here in Quartzsite!
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Just as “Hi Jolly” was Arizona’s Greek George, the hills around Quartzsite hold another parallel to a California historical landmark! Very similar to the Blythe Intaglios, the Bouse Fisherman intaglio still puzzles visitors to this day!
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Like its Blythe counterparts, this ancient geoglyph was created by scraping away the top layer of soil to create an image that could be viewed from above! It’s hard to date, but it’s widely believed to represent the god, Kumastamo, who struck the ground with his spear and created the Colorado River! This, and the land between two mountain ranges, is sacred to many different tribes!
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With the afternoon wearing on, I headed back into the Golden State but had one more stop to make while I was this far east, a location so peculiar that you might as well say it’s bananas! Yes, folks, I mean the International Banana Museum on the shores of the Salton Sea!
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Back in 1999, the International Banana Museum broke the Guinness World Record for “Largest collection of banana-related memorabilia” at 17,000 pieces! It was the project of one Ken Bannister, who started off collecting stickers at trade shows in 1976, and grew his collection into an a-peeling bunch of potassium-rich pieces, first as the International Banana Club and now as the International Banana Museum!
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Today, the Museum boasts a banamazing 25,000 collectables from tchotchkes to T-shirts to telephones! There are homages to monkeys and the eternally relevant UC Santa Cruz Banana Slug! There are bananas both in and out of pajamas! It’s an amazing collection, but equally amazing were the crowds waiting to get inside! Unlike its Arabian counterpart, California’s Mecca is pretty tiny, but while I visited this museum, a line had started to form outside!
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I didn’t want to stall too many people from enjoying this banasterpiece, so I ordered a signature bananas foster ice cream and went out back to enjoy the banana mural by local artist, Nicholas McPherson (a.k.a. Nicholas Danger)!
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The last few years, I’ve spent so much time hopping on planes to far-off places that I’ve forgotten how much fun hopping in the car and going can be! This road trip to Quartzsite and back has been a great reminder of that! I wonder what other neat, new spots I can find without hopping on a plane. Bananswers coming soon!
Rock on!
More 2020 Adventures |
Total Ground Covered: 555 mi (893.2 km) |
More 2020 Adventures |