As I type Cari & I’ve been retired for 3 months, and it seems like a lifetime ago!
Gone are the alarm clocks and early rise of a workday, vegging out in front of a wall sized TV to de-stress after a day’s work. In fact we have not watched any TV or movies except for a Firefly series marathon at our daughter’s house on Christmas day…and THAT was a fun time.
This post shares some highlights of our trip from our property in Pahrump Nevada south on the way to that holiday visit. I’ll make the journey in two blog posts, this one will be from Pahrump NV to Vicksburg AZ. The next post will share our time in and around Phoenix.
Another milestone for us is we have been unplugged and 100% solar powered for over 150 days. Even on the handful of cloudy days are battery bank is fully charged by about 2 pm, and by noon if clear winter skies. Typically, as mentioned in other posts we prefer to find a spot to set up away from others and enjoy the quietness we’ve come to expect in our camps. This leg of the journey had stops at several free BLM areas in Arizona that had nice views of mountains, cacti, sunsets, and sunrises ( < the view out our window from under the cozy comforter of course!)
On the day out we stopped by Henderson Nevada Sportsman’s Warehouse to pick up a different ice cooler in our newly modified cooler drawer which works amazing over the original design (which broke while coming down from Lovell Summit Road, a single track more suited for jeeps than our RAM Promaster). We continued south into Arizona to “Lone Tree BLM” which is north of Lake Havasu about 15 miles.
our camp for a couple nights:
not much to look at but we did have a nice sunset:
The first night was quiet and uneventful and we enjoyed a nice hike the next day. We found a spot off the road on a single track that we saw a couple side by sides drive by on. The second night had a bit of excitement in the way of a visit from some sort of curious critter that decided to check out the engine compartment of the Promaster. Cari was the first to hear the under hood activity and quickly jumped out of bed and the movement stopped things for a bit, but then continued. Cari would jump out again, noise would stop….this went on for a while. IIRC Cari slept in the next morning. With THAT going on in camp we decided to move south to “Standard Wash” which is south of Lake Havasu City by about 5 miles…
We wandered around town and found a nice lake access road for a photo op 🙂
There were a few kayakers and fishing skiffs out there…
I’ve got to say at this point we were both impressed with Lake Havasu City. At the time of our visit in early December it was clean and shops and staff were some of the nicest we’ve seen in any city so far. Which reminds me, we have noticed the people in the southwest to be happy to a fault, even the workers. I’m thinking it has to do with the sunshine and vitamin D!?
Since I’m usually in the lead in the Chevy I put in the next stop into the nav and hope all makes sense while I’m getting close to the next camp…sometimes it doesn’t work out and I miss the turnoff and end up in a place that is close, but NOT. This happened when I turned into what I thought was “Standard Wash BLM”, and it was, sort of. It all looked good until the first side by side went zooming down a single track 50 or so yards from camp just after a beautiful sunrise on what would become another ~70f day. After looking at google maps with satellite imagery I found I’d overshot the real area by a quarter mile or so and we were camped on BLM land but a OHV staging area, so we easily broke camp and went north on the frontage road and set up in the right area.
And some clear skies to use Cari’s new favorite camp kitchen tool… her All American Sun Oven:
After a few nights (we occasionally lose track, we are on “Vacation” after all !) we decided to travel the next leg to an area called “Vicksburg Pit” just outside Vicksburg Arizona. Even though we planned on being in this location only a couple nights it was a real treat and it is included in our “Favorites” so far.
Nearly every night was a spectacular sunset!
One night i turned around after a shot to see a rainbow:
And that will bring this post and “leg” to a close. Next blog post will take us north east to Phoenix and time with our daughter for Christmas.