Quartzsite, AZ
I finished my taxes in the early afternoon and pulled out of my BLM site near Bouse, Arizona. It felt good to close the laptop and be done with it for another year. Thirty minutes south, I rolled into Quartzsite — a place I’d heard about for years but never really experienced for myself.
Quartzsite has built an identity around winter RV culture on a massive scale. Every January, hundreds of thousands of RVers descend on the desert surrounding the town for the annual RV show and the swap meets. What looks like empty desert most of the year transforms into a temporary city — motorhomes, vans, fifth wheels, and tents scattered across vast stretches of Bureau of Land Management land. From the highway, you can see rigs in every direction, like someone spilled an RV dealership across the desert floor.
The town is also famous for its gem and mineral shows. Rockhounds and collectors come from all over the country to buy, sell, and trade everything from raw desert stone to polished gemstones and fossils. Tyson Wells and Desert Gardens turn into sprawling open-air markets during peak season. Even now, after the big January rush, you can still feel the infrastructure of it all — the tents, the signage, the sense that this place knows how to host a crowd.
Part of what makes Quartzsite work is the surrounding BLM long-term visitor areas. For a seasonal permit, snowbirds can stay for months at a time with basic services like dump stations and water. It’s one of the most affordable winter setups in the Southwest. The town grew into that role decades ago. Its location along I-10, the mild winter climate, and the enormous amount of public land made it a natural magnet for seasonal RVers. By the 1970s and 1980s, the winter gatherings and gem shows were already drawing large crowds — long before YouTube and long before “van life” became a brand.
In more recent years, figures like Bob Wells amplified a different side of the Quartzsite scene. Through CheapRVLiving (YouTube) and the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, he brought attention to people living in vans and smaller rigs — some by choice, some by necessity. That group feels more DIY and budget-focused than the traditional snowbird crowd in large Class-A motorhomes. It’s a parallel culture that overlaps here in the desert each winter.
As I drove into town, I could see every type of rig imaginable lining both sides of the road. The massive January gatherings were over, but plenty of RVs remained. Quartzsite has some traditional houses, but what stood out were the long-term trailer parks filled with camper vans, fifth wheels, and older motorhomes that looked like they hadn’t moved in years. The town itself has grown into a support system for this lifestyle. On the main drag there are gas stations, small markets, restaurants, gem shops, palm readers, and every kind of desert curiosity you can imagine.
I mostly drove around to get a feel for the place. I was in a caffeine funk when, at the edge of town, a Starbucks appeared like an oasis. The building looked brand new, almost out of place against the older storefronts and RV lots. I pulled in, ordered a coffee, and caught up on a few emails. It felt oddly modern in a town that otherwise leans hard into its desert-swap-meet roots.
After sunset, I tried Mexican food at Taco Mio. I ordered a chicken and bean burrito. It was large — very large — but leaned more toward quantity than quality. I made a dent in it but couldn’t finish the whole thing.
Later, I headed back out toward the Hi Jolly BLM dispersed camping area I had passed on the way into town. The name isn’t random desert branding — it’s tied to one of the more unusual stories in Arizona history. It was already dark when I turned off the highway, so I took it slow. Well-worn tracks crisscrossed the desert in every direction, headlights catching dust and the occasional reflective strip on someone’s rig. I chose a spot with a little breathing room, though spacing didn’t seem to matter much out there. There’s a fourteen-day limit for camping in one location, but a few setups looked less temporary than the rules suggest.
Hi Jolly was the nickname of Hadji Ali, an Ottoman camel driver hired by the U.S. Army in the 1850s. The government had this idea that camels would be better suited for hauling supplies across the arid Southwest than horses or mules. For a short time, camels really did move cargo across what people then called the “Great American Desert.” The experiment faded with the Civil War, but Ali stayed in Arizona, working as a packer and prospector. He’s buried in Quartzsite under a small pyramid monument. So when you camp out there under a wide desert sky, you’re parked near the legacy of a camel trainer who once helped test one of the strangest military experiments in American history.
It’s free camping on BLM land. The roads are rough, and the desert is wide open. Yet despite the number of rigs scattered across the landscape, it was extremely quiet. No traffic noise. No city hum. Just stillness. After a day of taxes, driving, and burritos, that silence felt like the best part of Quartzsite.