Travel: Parked in The Middle of Nowhere

"Here you can do as you diddly darn," says Gerry Bloomquist, 65, a retired dress-shop keeper from Minnesota who is wintering in the outskirts of Quartzsite, Ariz. She sips a drink, relaxing in front of her 33-ft. Holiday Monitor recreation vehicle, or RV, in a lawn chair set on a piece of Astroturf. "My grass," she calls it. While the sun, rattlesnakes and tarantulas bed down, Bloomquist and tens of thousands of other tanned retirees enjoy another happy hour parked out in the desert, gazing at the mountains, puttering around their mobile homes, filling hummingbird feeders, thriftily sidestepping the cruelties of...