Sunday, February 26, 2006
Craggy Wash BLM, Lake Havasu City, AZ - Feb 20-26
Since parking at SARA Park is only allowed for the 4 days of Winterblast, we moved to a boondocking area just north of town on Monday. We learned of Craggy Wash when we were boondocking near Parker. We were camped with a number of other Escapees, the exact number changing day-to-day as people left and others arrived. The area is gorgeous. It derives its name from the volcanic rock that the wash cuts through. There are quite a few natural arches here, formed when large gas bubbles were trapped in lava, then the sides eroded away.We used our time here to socialize, relax, and see the sights, including London Bridge. The peninsula accessed via London Bridge has 1/2-scale replicas of U.S. lighthouses positioned around it -- Atlantic replicas on the east, Pacific on the west, and Great Lakes north.
North of Lake Havasu, the Colorado River runs through Topock Gorge, a Wildlife Refuge and National Wilderness Area. We had heard that it was drop-dead gorgeous, and were encouraging friends Jackie & Kaz to paddle their kayaks down the Colorado through it. They wanted us to come along, but we were somewhat daunted by the length of the paddle. In the end we all wound up renting a pontoon boat for a half-day. The gorge was nice, but certainly not as gorgeous as expected, actually no better than the scenery around Craggy Wash. What's worse, we ran the pontoon boat over some shallow rocks coming into port and damaged the propeller, to the tune of $60. As a final insult, Kaz left his cell-phone on the boat and we had to drive all over town to get it back.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 10:03 PM 
