Sedona to Bouse, AZ
I left my dispersed site outside of Sedona and pointed the van south, planning to stop in Cottonwood to sort out the next leg of the trip.
There are two Starbucks in Cottonwood, AZ — one mostly drive-thru with barely any seating and another inside a busy grocery store. I’ve been asked more than once why I use Starbucks at all. The answer is simple: predictability. I know what I’m getting — decent seating, strong and consistent wifi, and clean restrooms. It’s about the coffee as well as the infrastructure. Cottonwood, didn’t deliver on all the criteria.
I kept moving and dropped into the Starbucks in Camp Verde just off I-17. The place looked familiar, and then it hit me — I had been to this exact spot three years ago in 2023. Same parking lot. Same highway hum in the background. I settled in for three hours and worked through the Antelope Canyon images from yesterday. It felt productive, steady, controlled. The kind of morning that makes van life workable.
By early afternoon I was heading south toward Phoenix and then west toward what I thought was Quartzsite. As I slowed to merge onto AZ 303, something massive rose to my right — the new Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) fabrication plant. The scale of it stopped me. I had watch a news show about the plan which provided a tour of the current plan and simulations of how the plant would operate.
TSMC is the world’s leading contract chip manufacturer, producing the most advanced semiconductors for companies that design but don’t fabricate their own chips. This Arizona project is enormous: multiple fabrication facilities spread across more than a thousand acres in north Phoenix, designed to produce advanced five-nanometer and eventually even smaller process chips. The investment is staggering — tens of billions of dollars — supported in part by funding from the CHIPS and Science Act signed in 2022. The idea is straightforward: secure domestic semiconductor manufacturing, reduce dependence on overseas supply chains, and create a high-tech workforce here in the United States. Watching news coverage is one thing. Seeing the physical scale of it from the highway is something else entirely. It looks like a city being built from scratch.
Somewhere after that, the day drifted off course. I asked Google to take me to Quartzsite. I didn’t realize it had routed me to the geographic center of the area labeled “Quartzsite,” not the actual town. The pavement narrowed. Homes became scattered clusters. Eventually I rolled into Bouse, Arizona — a small desert town that feels part permanent settlement, part long-term campground. Trailer homes and RVs dominated the landscape. Dirt lots instead of lawns. ATVs parked out front like daily drivers. Shipping containers beside campers, likely for storage. It had a practical, no-frills feel — people set up to live simply and stay a while.
On the south end of Bouse the road turned to dirt, and I followed it for nearly 30 minutes into open desert. I saw only two trailers pulled off in the distance. Signs referenced shooting restrictions, but they were vague — binocular symbols, warnings about areas beyond certain points. It wasn’t entirely clear what was allowed or where. What was clear was this: I was nowhere near the town of Quartzsite. I was alone in the middle of BLM land with the sun dropping fast. That was enough information. I turned around.
By the time I retraced my path I realized I was still about 40 minutes north of Quartzsite and losing daylight. Just south of Bouse I began seeing more BLM pull-offs with camping rigs scattered well apart from one another. At 5:30 I pulled into one. A sign read “14-Day Maximum Camping.” The rest outlined standard BLM rules. The rigs were spaced roughly a hundred yards apart. I spotted a simple fire ring made of stones and decided that was good enough.
I slid open the side door and let the low sun pour in. The mountains to the west caught the last light. It hadn’t been the day I planned. I wasn’t in Quartzsite. I wasn’t exactly anywhere I meant to be. But the view was wide and quiet, and that counts for something. I made dinner, worked a bit more on the blog, and decided I’d stay put. Tomorrow would be for state and federal taxes — not glamorous, but necessary. The desert, at least, doesn’t care about plans. It just offers space.
