Quartzsite RVers Have ‘A Little’ More In Grocery Choices

For years if you spent your winters in Quartzsite, a huge problem has been, “Where do I buy groceries?” While the Quartzsite General Store proves to be a great place to buy meat, plain old grocery shopping at a reasonable price usually meant shopping out of town. Up north in Parker, both a Safeway and Bashas compete for the trade, but closer away in Blythe, the “only game in town” has been Albertson’s–or as my pappy used to say, “Scalper-sons.” Our early years of RVing in Quartzsite were spent growling about both the unreasonably high prices (which would go down in summer, after the snowbirds left) or the really RANK smell coming from the fish department that permeates the whole store.

Well, now you have another choice: The Blythe Ranch Market is now a reality, opened in the old furniture store building near K-Mart on the west end of Hobson Way. Ranch Market seems to lean toward those with a tongue appreciating Latino foods, in fact, their grocery advertisements are biligual. If you want bargains on Latino foods, Ranch Market beats old Albertsons manos down. On other items more in the mainstream, our experience is that the Ranch Market is still competitive, not quite on the same scale as on the Latino fixins, but still, shopping there smells, oh so much nicer.

And yeah, we’ll still be looking for the Walmart in Parker; but at least the pain of “local” shopping isn’t as bad as it used to be.