Lake Havasu at Mesquite Bay

Well, as you can see "We are not in Kansas Florence anymore, Toto!"
Yes, hold the presses, but totally according to plan, we actually did leave on Wednesday!

After picking up the RV on Monday we cleaned it (it was actually surprisingly clean), and moved all our stuff back in.
On Tuesday we cleaned the house, had a little fare-well happy-hour with the neighbors, and spend the night already in the RV (while still in the driveway).

On Wednesday morning we were up bright and early due to the little white monster, aka Merlin, who didn't want to settle, and yelled non-stop through the night! We didn't sleep a wink!
Oh well, it got us out even earlier than we thought, so not all was lost ..

Morning rush hour around Phoenix was done and over with when we drove through, and the rest of the drive to Lake Havasu was smooth and uneventful ..

Our first glimpse of the Colorado River, just past Parker

We arrived at the campground at the north end of town around 2pm and quickly set up.
By that time the temperature had risen to 85F, not too bad but we very happy to be able to turn on the AC!
We had a few small repairs to take care off, the kitchen faucet was plugged and both microwave lights were kaput, but fortunately there was a Home depot not even 10 minutes away (and a Walmart and a whole shopping-mall!) so we got that quickly resolved!

Just in time for happy hour! This sunset was actually the next evening, and by the time I took the shot it was almost over, but you get the picture!

We actually managed to get a good night of sleep that night. Merlin had seemingly come to terms that the RV was home again and only yelled twice. Good boy, Merl!
While it was still cool, we went for a short early-morning walk into the Havasu National Wildlife refuge. There's a trail-head entrance right at the back of the campground. Cool!

After that we spend the rest of the morning checking out the campgrounds in this northern part of town, to see if any of them would qualify for a future snow-bird destination, which was the reason we made this detour to Lake Havasu to begin with.

Funny enough, we since than have come to the conclusion that we like our park the best. Several others were pretty enough but either too expensive, too cramped or too busy, so we would actually pick the one we're at!

While in the neighborhood, we checked out a few of the pretty bays along the Colorado River. These are only about 5 to 10 minutes away from the campground, so very convenient for cooling of or/while swimming on a hot day!

Even closer by is Castle Rock Bay, I could actually walk over there in about 10-15 minutes..

It's pretty and quiet and perfect for fishing or swimming, and if you have a canoe or kayak you can actually make your way through the reeds and reach the river.

While we were there early the next morning it was very quiet and we met some of the local wildlife ..

  That's a Western Grebe there on the right in the picture.

Another thing we're taking into consideration while considering an area for future stays, is of course how many golf courses there are!
And in that aspect Lake Havasu is rather lacking unfortunately. There are only three courses of which one is an executive one, which can be fun, but is not too much of an interest for long-term use.
One of the other two has 2 separate courses, which adds another course to the equation, but it is rather pricey, Actually, both are.
All in all, they will work, but there's not too much to choose from of course .. not like Palm Springs for instance, where you have almost too many to choose from!

So, we'll keep Lake Havasu in mind. Maybe for a month's stay or so in the fall or spring, while going north or south, but maybe not for much longer than that.

James golfed bot courses, and picked up a brochure at one of them that mentions a lot of RV parks and golf in Yuma. We of course know that it is a major hub for snow-birders, but we had not really looked into it that much.
We will now though, since it looks like the RV parks there are cheaper, as well as the golf, with many courses to choose from. Even two interesting looking RV & Golf Resorts!
We'll see. We're still 2 years out from coming south for the winter again, so we have some time to think things over.

For now, we spend some nice and quiet days out here. Just enough to recuperate from all the activity lately of finishing the job, packing and planning and being on the road again after 5 months.

 

Tomorrow we'll be moving on again. 

Palm Springs, here we come!