Winterhaven, CA

We had a sedate start, and rolled down I-8 towards Yuma.  Several things struck me. One, was how huge the military areas are in Arizona.  The Barry M. Goldwater AirForce Range runs from Ajo to Gila Bend north-south, and from Gila Bend to Yuma east-west; the last day and 1/2 of our journeys.  Two, was how they mine the water around here.  Take a look on google maps from Gila Bend to Yuma, nothing but desert, except for the bright green irrigated agriculture along the Colorado River.  It is politically expedient to over-estimate the river flows, and over-allocate irrigation water based on those estimates.  Taking more water than exists means the ground water is not replenished, and water tables drop even further.  It almost took an act of congress to release a slug of water, not allocate it, and ensure it got to the dry mouth of the river to try to rehabilitate the marsh/estuary.  It doesn’t help things that the mouth is in Mexico…

We did see a roughly square mile of evacuated tube solar collectors; quite impressive, sorry the picture’s so bad.  I also saw my first date palms, strangely enough in a place called Dateland, very Middle East.

Along the way, we decided that we weren’t really casino types, but we did like the sound of free camping, and that being around water sounded pretty good.  We came up with Mittry Lake Wildlife Area.  We found our way in, and started exploring for a site.  A nice guy on a Harley from Alberta dialled us in.  Sites low around the water had mosquitoes.  Too close to the road was dusty.  His site was higher up, and had a nice overlook of the lake.  We had lunch, I had a snooze, and Nancy & Kirk went for a walk to explore.  The road in was silt gravel with a 5mph harmonic ripple; a slow dusty drive.  While we were lunching, over 20 vehicles went by, some at a high rate of knots.  Final decision; too much dust, too little anything else.

Driving into Mittry Lake ran us through some agricultural areas, square miles of red lettuce, iceberg lettuce, broccoli, onions, etc., in all stages of production.  School buses with two portapottis on the back were everywhere.  Mexicans were harvesting lettuce, 20 or 30 out in the middle of a square mile of emerging greenery, hoeing.  Weird to see where your winter vegetables come from.  

 Note my cane for scale, large pine of some sort along the river.

Crowded, but homey.

Plan B was the River’s Edge RV Resort, very large, but with no dust, along the river, shade trees, a pool and other amenities, across the line in Winterhaven, California.

243 Km. today.