Week ending Nov 28, 2019 Laughlin

Friday morning at 9:30 PST, we caught the London Bridge Jet Boat.  We took the smaller of their two boats, as the water levels are too low (17 inches in places) for the larger boat.

Shallow River

There were 24 people on the trip, of the 36 person capacity.  We were warned that there were no washrooms on the boat, so were prepared for that. 

It is a 2 hour trip the 68 miles down the Colorado River to Lake Havasu City.  Along the way we saw many birds, ducks, egrets, herons, snow geese, and even a flock of canoers.   We didn't know why the pilot used the horn until we got close to them, as our seat was close to the back of the boat on the other side.   Once in a while, the pilot would bank the boat to stay in the deepest water. 

  Travelling at 40 mph, it wasn't always easy to get a steady shot.

At Topock, we went under the first bridge over the Colorado, the arched span ahead, which was built as part of Route 66.  It is no longer used  for vehicles, but now carries pipelines over the river which transport natural gas from Texas to California.

Stagecoach statue at Topock

Past this point we could see the Needles.

South of where I40 crosses the river, we entered the Topock Gorge, where the hills come right down to the river.  This area is only visible from boats and planes.  

the occasional palm tree

There is a small natural arch.  

Natural Arch

The Devil's Elbow is two fairly sharp turns that made it difficult for steamboats to navigate the river.
South of the gorge, there are sand dunes, first one by itself, then an area that is mostly dunes.

Sandbar

The last 3 miles of the trip is on Lake Havasu.

Entering the Lake Havasu Marina

When we arrived at Lake Havasu City, we docked beside London Bridge. 

London Bridge Jet Boat

We had a 2 hour lay-over.  We had lunch at Barley Brothers Brewery, one of 5 or so restaurants next to the boat dock (many others within easy walking distance). 

After lunch we did a short walk.  We were planning on walking down the peninsula, but soon decided there wasn't much to see in that direction, so we walked back towards town, across London Bridge, over Highway 95 to the next lights, then back to boat.

On the way back, we stopped to take a look at some petroglyphs at the lake end of the gorge.

The pilot turned the boat, so both sides could see them.   A bit later one of the people on the side of the boat opposite to us saw a bighorn sheep on the crest of the hill.  The pilot turned the boat again.

Near Laughlin, we took pictures of the hotel that was abandoned after most of the concrete work was done.

The boat is quite noisy, as it travels at 40mph, except for several 'no wake' areas, where we coasted more quietly.  At these times, the pilot gave us some information on the river, the power dams (the pilot needs to know the plans for power from Davis Dam each day, as it affects the water levels).   


Sunday we paid for another week here.  We will leave next Sunday unless the weather takes a turn for the worse.

Then we tried to drive to the spot marked as Fort Mojave on the other side of the river about 9 miles south on the east side of the river (as marked on the Arizona Topo map).  It turns out that it is on the Mojave Indian Reservation, and that you can't drive to it.  We got as close to as we could, and were stopped by closed gates with no trespassing signs.  Then we went to the Rotary Park in Bullhead, and walked the mile along the river in the park and back.

At the south end, there was a canoe tour group getting ready to head out.

Monday, we drove back to Cal-Nev-Ari for another mine hike.  The target today was the Roman Mine.  We would then have done both the Roman and Empire Mines down the same road.  From the junction we parked at to do the Empire Mine, we headed south for about a mile before we looked for a spot we could turn the truck around.  We did have to park on the road, but there was plenty of room for vehicles to pass. That turned out to not be an issue, as we didn't see anyone else the whole time we were there. Not even a rabbit, and very few birds.  About another mile down the road, we came to another junction, where we could have parked. 

From here, we headed east downhill toward the mine.  This mine had quite a large area cleared, but there were no structures left,  only a small opening into the hill.  We are not sure whether they found anything worth clearing the amount of rock that was pushed out.

Back up the hill a bit, we found what looks like a couple of water tanks covered by a sun shield.  We had our lunch near there.  This hike was 5.8 miles in 3 hours, so much easier than the day we did Empire Mine.  We climbed to 150 feet to the junction, then down about 300 feet , and up 85 feet to the mine.

Thursday morning, we got quite a bit of rain again.  We walked north along the river, and quite a few areas had silt run across the pavement.   We didn't take the camera with us, which was unfortunate as we saw a couple of ruby hummingbirds sipping the nectar from a bush.  We also saw another, or maybe the same resident roadrunner.