California’s Highways to Arizona’s Lake Havasu City

The highways that we have traveled on in southern California have been endlessly interesting to me. I’ve ridden on a lot of America’s roads in my life, but the state was mostly a mystery before this winter. I often toss my stitching or a book in the truck on travel day, but not here. I’m normally not able to get pictures since we are usually zipping down the highway.

To me, just seeing America’s roadways is a big part of the RV life.

I was so eager to dive into the San Diego blogs that I didn’t mention the incredible landscape that we had had on I-8 going from Yuma to San Diego. We started out traveling at sea level through windy sand dunes, with sand visibly swirling in the air. Later, we went through mountains of rocks.

Toward the end, there was a larger mountain to cross over, which we summitted at 4,100 feet in a snow squall. Cal said he felt as if he’d driven through four seasons all in one day.

I wrote in my last blog about our entrance to the Coachella Valley, which was short but no less dramatic. From Desert Hot Springs, we continued on I-10 through the valley floor to its eastern end near Desert Center. And I really don’t know if Desert Center is a town, because I never saw it.

We had an adjustment to make with our RV reservation in Lake Havasu City and, as a consequence, I’d needed to find us a park for one night before our arrival there. I found one on Lake Tamarisk, two miles north of the highway. It lay in the middle of the desert.

This place contained a mix of mostly permanent trailers but also some RV’s. There are 150 sites at this resort, and if you buy into it, you therefore own 1/150th of the entire park. It’s governed by a park committee, all owners. They maintain a handful of sites for us folks passing through.

There was a trail around the lake, which was smaller than I thought it would be, but beautiful nonetheless with ducks and a crane, and an occasional fish jumping.

A trail also wound in and around the park. It was not fancy, but had very homey feeling not unlike Andy Griffith’s Mayberry. On our walk, we passed by one of the trailers, and the owners were out having a late afternoon beer and popcorn on their patio. We’d seen them earlier in the day, so they invited us over. Gene and Dawn are from Oregon and, visiting from next door, Ken and his adult daughter are from Vancouver, Canada. We had a lovely visit and they told us the park is mostly owned by 50% golfers and 50% ATV owners. The whole desert is right out there to be hiked or ridden in. But, the nearest grocery store is fifty miles away. Most folks return to homes up North during the summer.

The whole experience was so far “out there” that we wondered if we’d stumbled into some sort of desert mirage. Was this Shangri-La? Being neither golfers nor ATV drivers, would we enjoy staying here for a week or two? For the entire winter? Would we get bored? We weren’t sure, but these were all things to ponder as we drove away the next morning.

From I-10, we had two choices in our route north to Lake Havasu City: state route 95 in California, or the same-numbered road in Arizona. We opted for the California route, because I could see on the map that the Colorado River went right alongside it after some miles. The scenery was stunning. Cal found a turnoff where we could have one of our lawn chair picnics.

Across the river and once again heading north, but this time on Arizona Route 95, there were more rocky hills to see. This is where I took the picture at the top of the blog. We landed at Lake Havasu City to find our next RV park.

It was a very small park for very large RV’s, mostly those big Class A “diesel pushers”. Our 34-foot 5th wheel was at the lowest limit for size. The park road was one small oval inside a cinder block wall, and one thing I had neglected to note while reserving: absolutely no amenities, which meant no laundry. We 5th wheels were allotted just a handful of sites together, humbly grateful just to be allowed to the party. There was not a shred of anything green, but we had a huge paved site with plenty of room, along with an extra spot for our ATV, if we’d had one. The on-line pictures had made it look a lot greener. Open RV sites are hard to come by in this town.

There was some fine entertainment to be had at this park, though. The weather was so nice that we were eating dinner out at our picnic table. Every evening around 5:30 or 6:00 PM, we’d start to see many birds flying in our direction from far in the distance. More would arrive, and, after much circling, they would fly over our heads to the top of a tree on the other side of the fence. We would marvel at their wing spans as they soared over us. They were turkey buzzards! By the end of the evening, there was much jockeying for the best perches, and invariably one or two would get knocked off, but finally they would all settle down. And in the morning, they opened their wings to stretch for awhile, and they’d all be off again.

Later, we rode our bikes over to another RV park to visit a couple that we’d met in Desert Hot Springs. Their sites were so close that there was no room side to side. We had to visit in front of their RV, in the park road. And the RV park was sitting on the busy state route. Suddenly our spot looked great, with all of our space and those turkey buzzards to provide our evening entertainment.

So, we dipped our toes back into Arizona for a six night stay. This is a boating, ATVing, and weekend partying area. That’s why it’s very hard to get a spot in any RV park here, even during the week. What is there to see in Lake Havasu City? That will be the subject of my next post, but here’s a little bit of a sneak preview:

Next time – what’s to see in Lake Havasu City?