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Wednesday, March 7, 2018

A visit to Oatman

March 6 (Tuesday)
We headed south of Bullhead and then East into the hills. Our destination was Oatman. The town of Oatman was established in 1906 as a gold mining camp and did very well for itself until 1942 when the war effort meant mothballing gold mines and enhancing copper and nickel mines. The town did survive and many small gold mines are operational in the surrounding hills today. The town is mostly a tourist attraction now and lies on the historic Route 66. Lots of shops, the wild burros and of course the gunfights!
















Some of the buildings are showing their age.

A Fordson tractor. 





The burros were in fine form today. Many tourists feeding them burro feed.

This guy was a couple of miles out of town. Banished no doubt.

Part of the herd.

Traffic jam!

Salt lick.

Another day at work.

Too cute!

More of them!!

Wandering through a gunfight.

Time for a nap.

Can I borrow a dollar?

We saw three gunfights. Not surprisingly they all ended the same way. The bad guys got shot and the surviving member of the gang rides off with the gold.

A singing gunfighter.




A little late on the draw.

He died good!




This guy was quite the actor!


Sheriff and a furry deputy.


Sheriff gets his man......and the gold!

We headed north out of Oatman on a very twisty, and incredibly beautiful road with rugged landscapes. Hard to believe this was Route 66 and a major roadway across America before the Interstate system created new, modern and wider highways.




One twisty road.



Mine entrance

Active mine


Laughlin casinos in the distance. Behind the rocks.

The back road to Bullhead City. Only 15 miles of rough road.




We stopped at Cool Springs, a rebuilt and rejuvinated tourist stop on the way toward Kingman. It was run by a very enthusiastic merchant, Crazy Ray! He is quite a character. He gives the patrons a history lesson of the area and what he plans to do with future expansion. It was hard not to support his efforts by buying some of his goods so we bought some apple and some pepperoni peanut brittle. (Yes, it was very good) and a couple bottles of pop, cream soda and a root beer.






Crazy Ray!!


We took some back roads around Kingman and into Bullhead City from the north. A great big circle route. Wonderful scenery and an overall great day!

....and that was Our View From Here!

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

First days in Bullhead City

March 1 (Thursday)
We arrived at Silver View RV Resort in Bullhead City about 2 PM. Good timing as that was check-in time for the park. So we made our way to the end of the park (yes, the END of the park, not the entrance) to the office. I went in to check in and the lady says yes your spot is ready, so we headed over only to find the spot occupied. Back to the office. They call the person in the site and find out they are paid up until the 5th, so they need to find us a new site. After some searching they say ok, we have upgraded you to a pull-through, no additional charge. Great, so off we head to the new site. Uh, yeah but that is occupied too!! So......back to the office again dragging the trailer. This time I'm not quite as nice. It appears this park has a broken reservation system. I asked to speak to the park manager, but was ignored and they went about trying to find another site. Apparently they are booked solid (although we saw plenty of open sites). Anyway, a few minutes later they found yet another site. This time the gal phones the maintenance guy to check if the site was in fact open. The guy calls back two minutes later and yes.....it was vacant. So off we went and sure enough we had an open pull-through site and we didn't have to change sites. We had it for the month.

A short time later we saw one of the office gals walking around the park with a map and a note pad marking down the status of each site. Obviously checking against what the computer says and confirming the reservation system. Hmmm. Next morning I stopped in the office to confirm the delivery address of the park so I can get an Amazon parcel delivered and they hardly had time for me. They were busy working the phones calling folks to confirm what day they were scheduled to leave. Not a good sign that management had a firm grasp on the park. We'll see.

Now don't get me wrong. other than the management issues, and maybe the uneven sites, this is a very nice park. Nicely treed, well kept sites, an on-site deli that even delivers to your site! The park is located about mid-way up the ridge, so yes it's windy. It is close to shopping though, and readily accessible to the major roads.

Our site

Nice wide site

Up the street

Down the nicely treed street

Some sites along the road have great views of the casinos across the river in Laughlin.
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The deli and swimming pool at the front entrance.


The office at the back of the park.

The park does have wildlife. There seems to be three Roadrunners that have made the park home. The ady in the blue car had left her door open to unload groceries and she was sure the Roadrunner was going to jump right in!










March 2 (Friday)
Laughlin Nevada is just across the river from Bullhead City so you just knew it wasn't going to take us long to make our way over there.........just to look around. Laughlin is like Vegas-lite. There are ten casinos all with famous Vegas names like Harrah's, Tropicana and Golden Nugget, plus a few other less well known. The reason we went over was to find the Visitor Bureau and pick up some tourist information. Once that was done we took a drive down Casino Drive and see the sights. Not nearly as crowded as Vegas of course....which is a good thing. We turned around at the end of the strip and on the return trip we decided to stop at the Pioneer Casino.........cause the sign said they had a great happy hour! Good enough reason for us!

We signed up for the Players card and with our free $5 betting voucher we found the penny slots. Minimum bet was 30 cents so we couldn't get into much trouble here! So we played for a while, won some, lost some, then won, and won some more! Cheryl hit one lucky spin that paid her $54 and I hit one for $12, then she got another one for about $14. At that point we cashed out. Time to hit the bar.

So we get to the bar and the bartender says if we put a minimum of $10 in the poker machines in front of us at the bar he would give us a free drink. OK! To make a long story short, we stayed about three hours, enjoyed free drinks and some free tacos, and walked out up about $10. Not a bad evening and combined with our slot winning we were about $70 ahead. Enough to enjoy some supper before heading home. A fun day......but we better not spend too many like this.

March 3, 4 (Saturday, Sunday)
We didn't go too far or do too much on the weekend. We did some shopping, talked and Skyped to family back home, and did some chores around the trailer.

I put a hose hanger on the new gas heater, and found a couple of rubber ends to cover the hose and coupler when not in use.

Added a hose hanger and a rubber end to cover the hose end.

Added a cover for the coupler.

I was pretty sure our bath grey tank was about half full but when I pulled the handle to drain it only a small trickle came out. How could that be? I tried the galley grey tank and it drained fine. The bath grey tank must be plugged with 'something'. I had noticed lately the bath tank had some lumpy, soapy gunk coming out when I drained it so maybe that had it finally plugged. Not good. So off the Walmart to get some Mr Plumber. I used it in both grey tanks and after about an hour I tried to drain the bath grey tank again. Nothing at first, the woosh, the gunky plug let go and the tank drained rapidly. But did I get it all cleaned out? Not sure, so Monday morning I went to the local RV supply store and bought some digester. They claim it works well so we'll see.

Also Sunday, while at Walmart, I bought another mouse for the laptop. Sunday morning it was working, then all of a sudden quit. Battery dead? Nope. Tried a new mouse......same thing! the mouse touch pad on the laptop works fine, but the handheld mouse does not. The laptop seems to recognize there is a receiver plugged in to the laptop, but the software from Logitech says no receiver is installed. Aaargh! I have a feeling Microsoft has done something to mess this up. A couple of days ago the laptop went through some updates from Microsoft. Coincidence? Maybe, but Windows 10 has messed up before. So now I use the laptop touchpad mouse. I hate these things, but it's all I can use now. :-(

March 5 (Monday)
Today we wanted to get out and see some sights. We started off by heading over to Laughlin and down Hwy 95 to the Big Bend State Rec Area. There is a nice campground there we wanted to check out and a day use area. When we get to the entrance they wanted $10 for the day. So I ask the guy are there some nice hiking trails? Well, not really, just gravel trail through the scrub. How about an interpretive trail? No, we're just starting to work on that. There is a beach though, he says. But it's like 50 degrees outside. Not beach weather. So we decide to keep our $10 and head somewhere else.

We headed further south to the Avi Casino road. This is on an Indian Reservation. Nice golf course, nice casino, nice drive. Been there......seen it. Back toward Laughlin we head.


Roadrunner on the golf course.

Avi Casino and RV Park

We next stopped at the Outlet Mall. About one third the shops are closed up, the others really had no deals to be had. Cheryl did find a couple of items but we still got out of there with most of our cash in hand!






Next stop would be the Davis Dam. This dam was finished in 1953 and holds back Lake Mohave. I think we have seen all the dams on the Colorado River now. Glen Canyon on the Arizona/Utah border which formed Lake Powell, then Hoover Dam which forms Lake Mead, next is Davis Dam, then below here is Parker Dam that forms Lake Havasu, and finally Imperial Dam that holds back Senator Wash and assorted water bodies. The remaining water is used by irrigation in Arizona, California and Mexico. The Colorado is entirely used up and is dry before it reaches the Sea of Cortez.



Lake Mohave


Five generators, Tail race below the dam.

The workings of the Davis Dam.

No tours here!

Above the dam.

Unfortunately you can't tour the Davis Dam, just interpretive panels scattered around. The wind was blowing hard and the temperature was too cool to do much wandering around, so we got a few pictures and may come back on a nicer day.

We did get some nice sunsets this past week. here is a sample......







.....and that was Our View From Here!