A Good Day in Arizona: Nothing Went Wrong!

A view of the park from the surrounding foot hills

We are camped in Buckskin Mountain State Park alongside the Colorado River. The river is beautiful and the park is very well maintained. There are lots of mature trees planted between RV sites which impart a tranquil and serene atmosphere. It is a pleasure to be in the park.

The Colorado River passes alongside our park

This morning we took a hike into the foothills overlooking the campground. Just across the river is California. As we neared the first vista point on the trail we heard and then saw some of the wild burros that inhabit parts of southwest Arizona and southeast California. Legend says that they are descendants of burros abondoned by gold and silver miners. Too bad we were not close enough for photos, but we could easily see them across the river with our binoculars.

Parker Dam was built between 1934 and 1938

Our next stop was at the Parker Dam on the Colorado River. This is the dam that creates Lake Havasu and is an important source of hydro-electric power. Since 9/11 security restricts access to parts of the dam so getting good pictures was not as easy as I would have liked.  From Wikipedia here are a few facts about Parker Dam.  The dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam that crosses the Colorado River 155 miles downstream of Hoover Dam. It is 320 feet high, making it the deepest dam in the world. The dam's primary functions are to act as a reservoir, and to generate hydroelectric power. Half of the electricity the plant produces is used to pump water along the Colorado River Aqueduct, and the rest is sold to utilities in California, Arizona and Nevada.


Next we drove into nearby Parker and stopped at the local casino. After a nice lunch and about 40 minutes of playing the nickel slots, we quit while we were ahead. We won just a little over $8.00. Woo hoo!
Later in the afternoon we spent quite a bit of time talking to our neighbors Harold and Carolyn from Oregon. They are really friendly people, and we swapped experiences and talked about resources and we all learned new things. One of the best things we learned from talking to them was that our intended next stop in Barstow, CA is kind of a windy and lackluster desert town. So Sandy cancelled that reservation and added the week to the front end of our stay in the next location after Barstow.
Sandy also made some delicious chocolate chip cookies and gave a big bunch of them to the ranger who helped us with our car/tire issue when we came into the park on Tuesday.  My job is to make the remainder of them disappear.

An image from our morning hike

All in all -- a great day on the road.

Stay tuned.