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Sunday, November 10, 2013

Lake Havasu City

We will be  settling in for the winter tomorrow in Apache Junction after enjoying a few days in Lake Havasu State Park.  It was so nice not to be crowded in and to have some very quiet nights.  We woke up to quail and rabbits outside our RV.  Our first night we had this spectacular sunset.

Lake Havasu City is of course known for having The London Bridge, brought over and rebuilt in 1970 by Robert McCulloch, an oil tycoon.

The city has also placed around the lake and river channels 21 1/3 size replicas of western lighthouses.
 
We wanted to spend some time here to visit the wildlife refuges that are near by.
We walked the peninsula trail at the Bill Williams NWR a couple of times hoping to see the Blue footed Booby, we didn't but we did see the White wing Scoter.  We were disappointed in the auto tour route as it turned out to be a high clearance vehicle route.
We drove up to visit the Havasu NWR we could see some of it from the hwy but it's roads were for 4 wheel drive vehicles and the sloughs were dry. The river would be great to canoe though, we didn't see many birds just the usual coots, grebes and a few Am. Pelicans. 
We did see the Brown Booby at the lower unit of the Havasu NWR just outside of Lake Havasu City.
Lake Havasu was hosting a bicycle and jogging endurance marathon this weekend, we had bikes going though the state park and over the bridge and joggers and bikers all over the island.
 
We stopped by to see some of the classic cars on Saturday.
Today we took a drive to see the Parker Dam, that's in the background in this photo, and we finally saw the burros on the road we kept being warned about.  We stopped to take photos and they walked right up to our window, people aren't supposed to feed them but it seems they are quite the beggars.
We are looking forward in seeing our family in the next few days and spending the holidays with them.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Vegas

Our week is about up here at Sam's Town RV in Las Vegas, we have had a good time but we did miss not having the grandkids here to visit, they are now in AZ.  Our favorite place to visit here is Henderson Birding Preserve, we can walk around the ponds watch the ducks and look for other birds  we can add to our year list like the Gambles Quail, Roadrunner and Costa Hummingbird.

We drove out to the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, it is a large refuge north of Vegas.  They are building a big beautiful visitor center which seems a bit much for a refuge with just a few short trails and the all roads in the refuge are for high clearance vehicles only even the road into the refuge is a rough gravel road.  I think building better roads would be better than a fancy visitor center.

Another park that is very popular is the Red Rock Conservation Area just outside Summerlin, NV, we took the drive and stopped and walked the boardwalk where we did see a Hermit Thrush much to our surprise. 

Before we moved down to Las Vegas we visited the Valley of Fire State Park which is between Mesquite and Vegas.
 
We did visit the strip Tuesday, Sam's Town has a free shuttle bus to the Strip and to Freemont St. so we took it down.  We decided to see a couple of places we hadn't been before Circus Circus and the Mirage. It was a long walk to  Circus Circus and back to the Mirage!  We watched the free circus act and  bought a ticket to see Mirage's Secret Garden with the beautiful white tigers and Dolphin pools.  We didn't put a penny in a machine and we ate at Subway.  Big spenders we aren't!!

 
 
I have cousins that live here and we called and had lunch with them, it was nice to see them it has been a few years.
 
We also like to visit the cactus garden at Ethel M Candies,  they were decorating it for Christmas but we enjoyed it and saw a couple of birds.  We of course went in and watched them make the candy and had a couple of free samples also had some ice cream.  The candy factory was started by the Mars family, yes the very same who make M&M's, etc but the father wanted to create gourmet chocolates the
Ethel M Candies.  They were making chocolates hearts for Valentines.

Maybe tomorrow I'll get some laundry done before we head down to Lake Havasu City, AZ.