Arizona

After leaving Red Rock Canyon on a hot windy, Sunday morning we had a long drive through the moonscape of the high country desert past the Mojave National Preserve, the temperatures rising as we went further east. Early afternoon we crossed the Colorado River and passed into Arizona where the highway speeds increased and the gas prices took a sharp drop. We arrived at our reserved site at Lake Havasu State Park at about 3:30 and were surprised to find there was no time change as Arizona does not recognized daylight saving time. We settled into our lakefront site, had a quick walk around and I had a quick swim (the temperatures here were in the high 80's to low 90's and we decided to extend our stay here from 2 - 4 days as our site was open for reservations for the extra days. After 5 days on the road it was time for a break from setting up and taking down camp. However, that evening after a lovely sunset we were invaded by hundreds of little midge like bugs that made sitting out impossible and they were even able to make it through the holes in the window screening and covered the lights and ceiling in the trailer. Oh well, just like one year at Maui.

Our days at Lake Havasu were a combination of putsing around and a day of driving down into the desert around Quartzsite and the Kofa Wildlife Refuge. We stopped in at the Long term visitor area at La Posa to see what boonddocking would have been like if we had chosen to do that instead of staying at LH.

 Our last two days at the Lake were in the middle of "a wind event". It started Tuesday night with very strong gusts rocking the trailer and although it died down Wednesday night, it started up again as we were breaking camp Thursday morning.

Our drive east towards the Phoenix area was a bit bumpy but nothing serious and we arrived at our next destination, Queen Valley RV Resort around 1:30. This was our first experience of an RV "resort" and I have to say it was a good one. Most of the sites (about 90%) are filled with Park Model trailer homes for snowbirds (only 12 or so of the 196 sites stay year round we were told), but everyone we met was extremely friendly and welcoming and the facility was exceptionally clean and well equipped from the pool area, craft rooms, library/computer room, activity hall, billiards and card room. Most of the snowbirds have returned home so not much going on so it was a very quiet atmosphere to enjoy for a couple of days.

We did take a walk out into the Arizona trust lands to get up close and personal with a few cacti but no rattlers. Just lovely views of the surrounding Superstition Mountains and the clear blue sky.