Photo-of-the-Week #203 The RV Village at the Quechan Casino, Winterhaven, California, March 21, 2015

This photo shows a small portion of the RV, vandweller and truck parking area at the Quechan Casino on the Quechan Indian Reservation near Winterhaven, California and Yuma, Arizona. The casino is behind where I was standing when I took this photo and is a beautiful resort hotel and casino with good restaurants and live entertainment. It's located on Algodones Road and is located just a mile and a half from the U.S. - Mexican border at the small town of Los Algodones, Sonora, Mexico.

Here you see only a small number of the RV's and vans still in the RV Village as the "snowbird" season winds down. They represent about 10% of the RV's and vans that can fill this "village" when at capacity still here as the "snowbird" season is drawing to an end. There are no amenities (water, sewage, shore power), so you have to be self-contained. However, there is no charge to park here for as long as you choose to.

If you look dead center in the photo, you'll see the "famous" My McVansion, dwarfed by much larger RV's. It's a very friendly village for the most part, but sometimes one needs to change location in the village. Many of the "big rigs" have large generators that make considerable amounts of noise when you're parked in front or beside them. Also, the very large diesel pusher RV's make a substantial amount of noise when they are started and warm up.

A couple days before I shot this photo there were three of us vandwellers and we created our own small courtyard so we could take advantage of the shade provided by our vehicles. With a nice breeze and some shade, the 90+ daytime temperatures are actually very comfortable.

In the background beyond the casino's water treatment plant is the small Mexican town of Los Algodones about a mile and a half from the RV Village. Los Algodones is famous, especially among RVers and vandwellers, as THE place to get any kind of dental work you can think of (including implants and cosmetic). It's also noted for glasses and contact lenses and pharmaceuticals. To a lesser degree there are some MD's and chiropractors, too. Americans and Canadians flock to Algodones every winter primarily to get all their dental work done, by excellent dentists, at 25% to 33% of what the same procedures cost in the U.S. and Canada. Pharmaceuticals of all kinds are available at extremely low costs.

I'll be telling you more about the dental and pharmaceuticals in later articles based on my personal experience. But, I can tell you, at this time, my experience has been excellent.