Day 5 Arizona West RV Park Yuma, Arizona

We began the day with a picnic packed and a general idea to head toward Imperial Dam. We crossed the Colorado River into California and took the back roads. On our way, we found BLM camping areas and so we wandered through to investigate. There were 100’s of RV’s parked in the desert. Some in groups and others in isolated areas. There are no hookups so you have to go in with sanitation tanks empty and propane and fresh water full. There are areas where you can stay long term…not sure that we would be interested in that…but it might be cool to stay out in the desert and see the night sky.

We stumbled upon the an old antique museum and didn’t go in but, there were some old trucks out front.

Our next great find was the date store. There are several groves full of date palms and the dates are ripe now. We could see forklifts with man cages high in the trees as the dates were being harvested. We went into the Imperial Date Gardens to do some shopping. We got fresh dates, local honey, fresh figs, and best of all a loaf of fresh date nut bread. We were hardly out of the parking lot before we were devouring the delicious, still warm bread.

The small Laguna Dam is a rock filled diversion dam on the Colorado River.

We traveled on and found a 4WD hill to climb for the best vantage point to see the Imperial Dam and Reservoir.

Yuma Proving Ground had exhibits of tanks and other military vehicles.

We drove to Kofa Wildlife Refuge to the King Valley Road entrance. We found a lunch spot.

We plotted a route on the rough gravel roads through the refuge, taking care to be sure the road passed all the way through! The brittlebush was in full bloom here.

The views were gorgeous.

This woman on horseback passed us on the trail.

Some more beauty…

There are 500-800 bighorn sheep living in this refuge. I scanned the mountain ridges all day looking for them. We were about a mile from the end of the trail when I spotted two. See if you can spot them on the ridge.

We stayed watching the sheep for a long while. As we approached the end of the road we saw that there was a gate that appeared to be padlocked and there was a sign that said PRIVATE PROPERTY. We were not sure that we were in the right place but then again there was no other place to turn…we tried the gate and it wasn’t really locked. We passed through that gate and two more before we found ourselves back on the main road. Always an adventure!!

Enough wandering for today. Time to go home!