David and Enid's Travels

Joshua Trees along Nevada highway 164 west of Searchlight

We were up fairly early this morning, had a quick shower in the public campground shower, and it was very cold as we walked back to the trailer with wet hair.  We saw why when we were disconnecting the water to leave, as there was ice on the water hose, so it was below freezing this morning.

We had a good trip across the Mohave Desert, through Needles, then north to Searchlight.  The GPS wanted us to keep going north to Las Vegas; however we didn’t want to go that way so instead drove across state highway 164 towards Nipton, where it joins with I15 (the main freeway between Las Vegas and Los Angeles).  We were glad we went this way, as there were many large Joshua trees along the small state road, and it was not at all busy.  I15 is a different story, as it has 3 lanes in each direction going up (and generally down) all the mountain ranges that you cross.

At Baker we turned north from the freeway, and drove to Death Valley.  It was a pretty drive through the Mojave Desert, with a lot of barren rugged rocky mountains, and white badland hills.  We arrived here in mid-afternoon, got our trailer set up after filling it with water.  That took a long time as the connection to the park water hose leaked, and I couldn’t get it very tight.  There was a large puddle of water on the ground, so it looks like we were not the first campers to have trouble.

Moonrise in Death Valley

Our altitude here in the park is about 60 meters below sea level.  We are on Pacific Standard Time, which meant a very early sunset, just around 4:30.  We haven’t bothered to change our watches, as we will revert back to Mountain Time when we leave on Sunday and enter Nevada.

London Bridge, Lake Havasu City

This morning we drove in to Lake Havasu City, to London Bridge.  We walked around the waterfront a bit.  It was very cold and windy, but a bright sun.  There were a few people bundled up against the wind and walking, but mostly the walkway was deserted.  The literature about the history of the bridge implies that the original stones were transported from London to Lake Havasu City, but that isn’t completely true according to Wikipedia.  The bridge is actually a modern concrete structure faced with stones from the original bridge.

Enid at dry waterfall in slot canyon in SARA park, Lake Havasu City

We bought a few groceries, but no fruit since we have to cross into California tomorrow morning and go through a fruit quarantine checkpoint.  Then we drove to SARA park, and hiked in to a slot canyon.  At the point where there is a seven foot dry waterfall, I slid down, but Enid didn’t want to.  It is incredibly slippery rock at that point, much like going down a kid’s slide.  It would be really hard to get back up except that someone has left a weathered rope there.  Enid sat on the rope and held it with her arms so that I could climb back up.

It wasn’t so windy in the canyon, but it was pretty cool except when you were standing in the direct sunlight.

It’s been pretty cold here, at least cold for the Arizona desert, and very windy the past two days.  Yesterday, December 4 we just took it easy, and did some reading, though I went for a short bike ride in the morning.

Lake Havasu on Colorado River, Whyte's Retreat Trail

Today we hiked to Whyte’s Retreat, a boat-in campsite on Lake Havasu which is about 3 kilometers from this campground.  It was cold and windy.  We wore our jackets to break the wind.  Even though it has been cool, it is nice to walk through the desert along the lake.

This afternoon I went for another bike ride.  Part of it was down a wash, which was very soft and hard to peddle, though most of it was along the highway and the road into the campground.  Enid had fun this afternoon as she baked pecan-oatmeal cookies.  They are very good.

Lake Havasu on the Colorado River

We left the senior citizens home this morning.  Yuma, Arizona, must be populated with a huge number of retirees.  It is wall to wall RV parks, almost every one of them that we saw a “55+” park.

Enid and I are both convinced that we much prefer the type of setting we have in a state or national park, and so we’re happy that will be staying here till Wednesday, and then in Death Valley National Park until we pack up for home on December 11.  We are here in Cattail Cove which is on the shore of Lake Havasu.  We are close to the water, and can see out across the water of the lake to California on the far shore about a kilometer and a half away.

It was quite windy, a cross wind, as we drove up from Yuma this morning.  We got here right at noon, so ate our lunch before we set up the trailer.  Then we went for a short walk along the lake and through the desert.  It is pretty cool here, especially with the wind.  However we didn’t think it was quite cold enough to need the bomber aviator cap one of the park rangers was wearing down by the lake.  Our neighbours, from Nova Scotia, were laughing about it as well, but we did wear our light fleece and jackets on our walk

Enid on Painted Desert Trail, Imperial Wildlife Refuge

Since the forecast for the rest of the week isn’t very good, we decided to go today to the Imperial Wildlife Refuge on the Colorado River north of Yuma.  It was a really lovely day, sunny, light breeze, and a very comfortable temperature.  We didn’t see a lot of wildlife though, just a few birds (and one racoon) on some of the small backwater lakes and marshes which come off the river.

We hiked around the Painted Desert trail, an easy walk of about 2 kilometers, though it took us quite a while to walk it as I took the video camera with me.  Halfway around we ate lunch just above a wash which had a few green barked paloverde trees and some mesquite.

The road gradually got poorer as we travelled farther north, and we turned around at the last viewpoint, Smoketree point.  Here you can see the actual Colorado, and across to California.

Lettuce fields at Yuma

On the way back to Yuma we stopped at a farm produce stand, and bought some fresh vegetables.  Across the road were large fields of many different kinds of lettuce, in a variety of shades of greens and red.

Finally we stopped at “Martha’s Garden Date Farm” where Enid bought a “small” date shake.  More like a blizzard than a shake, it was also large enough that she hasn’t finished it yet, and it’s stored in the freezer.

Yuma Territorial Prison

We went to jail today.  The Yuma Territorial Prison is a state park on the site where this jail used to be until it closed in 1909.  Like all historical jails it showed the kind of treatment that the prisoners got here, which wasn’t too bad compared to what we saw last year at Port Arthur in Australia.

The Colorado River “flows” just below the jail.  Actually it would be more appropriate to say that there is a canal right below the jail.  There isn’t much river water left here (and even less farther down, as the river no longer flows into the ocean), and the river isn’t much bigger than the Little Red in Prince Albert.

After lunch we came back to the trailer, after shopping for a few supplies.  I bought a soldering iron, some wire and some shrink tubing and properly fixed the wiring where it got pinched in the hitch.

Today we drove to Yuma from Tucson.  We got to our RV Park (Desert Paradise) just after 1 pm and checked in.  Since they have a nice heated pool we went for a swim, and Enid enjoyed the hot tub.  It was a nice warm day as well.

I needed to get an adapter for the cable TV so after swimming went to the office.  I walked back a different way to our trailer and was really surprised when I passed a trailer with a sign “Ken Haugen, Prince Albert” on the front.  Since Ken and I taught together at Carlton years ago (he retired in 1996), I knocked on their door, but they weren’t home.   However, later on in the afternoon I saw that their truck was there, and so walked over and we visited for a couple of hours.  It is quite a coincidence that we are parked so close.  Had they been in the same park, but farther away (since there are 250 sites here) we would never have run across them.

Staghorn Cholla and Saguaro Cactus, Catalina State Park

It was a really nice warm day again today, and no wind unlike yesterday.  We went for a bike ride this afternoon, but along the way we stopped at the short hike around the Romero Ruins.  This is an archaeological site that is at least 1000 years old.  There are old stone ruins that have been excavated and show where the Hohokum Indian people lived here.  The site is called the Romero Ruins because that was the name of the Mexican settler who settled here in the mid 1800’s.  He used many of the stones from the Indian ruins to build his own buildings.

It is too bad that we didn’t know how nice this state park would be when we booked it online.  If we had, we’d probably have stayed here a few more days.  Although it is right on the outskirts of Tucson, it still feels “wild”.  Every night and morning we can hear a lot of coyotes yipping all around the park very close to us.

Romero Pools, Catalina State Park

It rained the night before last (November 25) and when we got up it was cool and cloudy.  We thought about going to Biosphere 2, but decided against it, and just took it easy all day.  I did beat Enid in a game of Scrabble though!

This morning we hiked up to the Romero Pools.  It was about 4.5 km to the top.  The middle part, about 2 km in length before you reach the pools, is quite steep and rough.  There was a small trickle of water that forms several clear pools there.  I climbed up a bit farther, but the trail wasn’t very well used, though I did see several fire rings where people have camped in the past.

There were quite a few people on the trail today, not surprisingly as it is Saturday, and the weather was very nice.

It is American Thanksgiving today.  The state park we are in is full of motorhomes, trailers, and 5th wheels.  Several of them seemed to have deep fryers for turkeys set up.  I could smell turkey cooking in the campsite tonight.  We didn’t have turkey, but we did have barbequed chicken and pumpkin pie with ice cream for dessert.

David cycling on the 50 Year Trail, Catalina State Park

We felt that we could afford the calories in the pie today, since we cycled and hiked (admittedly not all that far, but …)   We started riding on the “50 Year Trail” which is marked in our trail guide that we got from the park as “easy”.  Well, it would be a fairly easy hike, but it was not an easy bike.  The trail is very rocky and rough, and where there weren’t rocks, it was loose sand.  It was also uphill most of the way (of course that meant it was down coming back).  We got a few kilometers along the trail, and decided it was just way too hard for our liking, so we locked our bikes together and left them by the side of the trail.

Then we hiked for another 3 kilometers to a high spot where we ate our lunch.  We met another couple that were also hiking, somewhat older than us, and the man said that he used to ride the trail, but didn’t anymore as it was just too hard.  He said on biking maps this trail is listed as medium to extreme mountain biking!  We also saw a couple of people riding horses.

While hiking back to our bikes we met a couple more cyclists.  One of them was slightly older than me, and was having a very hard time keeping up to his younger (fortyish) son.  They both passed us after we’d got back to our bikes and started riding downhill.  The son went whipping by Enid with no warning, so fortunately the trail was wide enough at that point, or either he or Enid could have gone for a spill.  We could see why we became so tired going in, for on the way back it was obvious that the trail went downhill all the way from where we had stopped.