Thom & Carol's Adventures: Along the Desert Trail

First, let me apologize for not keeping the blog up at my once a week target. Nothing since June 19. I’m going to put myself on report !!!

From Parker strip, we headed north up to Laughlin, NV, Bullhead City, AZ for our first two week stay. We stayed at Ridegview RV Park located right across the Arizona- Nevada bridge. Our site has an unobstructed view of the river and Casino Row, which was particularly beautiful at night. I can’t say we enjoyed the weather as the average high temp was about 120 degrees with our last full day capping out at 127. Almost as bad as home, but when you’re living in a “giant hallway” and not able to get outside unless you want to drop from heat stroke, it can be trying. Out next summer road trip will be moving rapidly up north (Lesson #1)

Day trips started included trips to Oatman, AZ, Davis dam and lake Mohave behind the dam, Laughlin (several times), AVI Golf Resort and Lake Mead Recreation area.

Oatman, AZ is an old mining town that survived after the mines closed by adapting as to and attraction along the Mother Route 66 because of the wild burros (descendants of the old mine work burros) allowed to freely roam around the town. While comfortable and somewhat tame around people, Carol learned why they warn you about them being wild. Her purse of the day was made of straw and one of the burros sneaked up behind her and began to eat her purse! Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough to get photo or video. I would have had a “priceless” commercial. She was fighting that beast with vigor and eventually won the battle. Too funny!

Lake Mohave is located behind Davis Dam and is the smallest of the three lakes on the Colorado River project. It’s fairly narrow and not too far down river from Hoover (Boulder) Dam, so it’s not a long ride to the Lake Mead recreation area up river. There are some nice resorts and camping sites along the river and lake. The old Davis dam community is now a Mohave County Park along the river and clearly one of the river rats’ favorite weekend spots.

Golf at the AVI resort, located on the Nevada side of the river, down river from Laughlin and located on the Mohave Indian reservation is a beautiful desert oasis. While we did not go into the Casino and hotel complex, it looks like a very comfortable place, similar to the Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale for you Arizona readers and others who have visited it. I played the course in 3 hours because no other fool was crazy enough to be out there in the sun (I won’t report my score for this one).Track was great and I would recommend it a good golf weekend trip location. The resort also had a really nice KOA RV park next to the gold course. Affordable prices even at winter rates.

Two weeks at one location for road trip purposes seems too long if the day trip opportunities are limited (Lesson # 2).

Well, we’re off for our last road trip for the Pahrump stop, so will close this post out and report hopefully before we leave for Walker River in northern Nevada Monday. WiFi at this stop is horribly slow, so need to look into that issue (Lesson # 3).

So long for now and hope all is well with you guys ……. We’re still singing Happy Trails.