Victor Valley Gem and Mineral Tailgate

The Victor Valley Gem and Mineral Club holds a Tailgate every year (this was the 35th) on BLM land where neither vendors or attendees are charged a fee. They do ask for donations to cover the cost of the porta-potties they bring in, and ask that you don't compete with their food booth. Other than that, there is no restrictions on what you can sell, but almost everything there is rocks or equipment to work with rocks. Rocks went from $.50/pound to $50/gram or higher, and while I think some stuff was cheap most was higher than in Quartzsite. There was also an outing to collect Tri-Color Marble about 3 miles away on 4wd road. There are also deposits of other kinds of marble and minerals in the area that have been mined in the past.

It's about 100 miles from Los Angeles, and I got a late start Thursday so I didn't arrive until it was getting dark. I took the first reasonable place I could find, then moved in the morning so I could be by "Mountain Tramp" and his friend Perry. Mountain Tramp was the one that let me know this existed by posting it on the Cheap RV Living Forum.

While I eventually sold quite a bit of the stuff I brought for sale, I would have needed to bring a lot more to make gas money, and I don't have a lot more of the kinds of things that sold well there. The pretty rocks and other trinkets are what sold best, and I only got a fraction of what they had cost me over the years to collect. The little bit of computer stuff I brought didn't sell at all, but some of the books, DVDs, and videos did. The only thing I purchased was a long #10 extension cord that I can change the ends on to 30A RV connectors.

While still desert, this had a lot more wildlife than the area around Quartzsite. There was dew in the mornings, small wildflowers on the ground, insects, birds, and we had a kangaroo rat come up to our firepit one night, within a few inches of my feet. The Verizon signal was somewhat intermittent (one morning I couldn't get online) and other carriers were reportedly worse. A ways down the road where you could see towers between the hills the signal was better. There were motorcycle and ATVers who rode around during the afternoon and evening, some of whom were quite inconsiderate and made a lot of noise and kicked up a lot of dust. (With plenty of desert available, there was no need to do it within 100 feet of other people camping.) This section of Stoddard Wells Road is fairly well maintained two-lane dirt road, with some washboarding and dips.