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It didn't take too long to get to Bullhead City, AZ from Kanab; it was around 300 miles--only around 5 hours in the RV. Patrick had booked our reservation at Davis Camp way back in the fall of 2012, at the same time he'd booked our Kanab reservation after we'd reached Camp Verde. Though we toyed with the idea of staying in Kanab through the winter of '13 instead of heading south, he never cancelled the Davis Camp reservation in Bullhead City (hereafter to be referred to as Bullhead). Turned out to be a good thing, since we changed our minds as the weather grew pretty chilly as fall progressed. We wakened to snow the morning of October 31st, our departure date.
The trip south was a steady drop in altitude as well. Kanab is just under 5000'; when we reached Hurricane, 70 miles west of Kanab, the altitude dropped to 3248'. Another 100 miles southwest to Vegas found us at 2001'. By the time we reached the rim of the Lower Colorado River Valley, we started a sharper descent that took us to 500' above sea level (give or take) at the bottom of the basin. The lower the altitude, the warmer it gets, so though we'd left snow at 8:00 that morning, by the time we arrived in Bullhead, the cold had vanished and we were warm again. Leaving conifers, cottonwoods and mulberry behind, we now found palm, prickly pear and yucca.
Bullhead City, is a 'young town' on the Colorado River, having incorporated only in 1984. However, the history of the area goes waaay back, having been home to indigenous Mojave for hundreds of years. Spanish explorers reached the area as early as the mid-1500s; in 1864 the settlement formally became known as Hardyville and was a port of commerce along the river. The region is also dotted with many of the mines the 'wild west' is known for, now mostly played out. The construction of Davis Dam in the mid-20th century on the Colorado River gave rise to a community that came to be known as Bullhead City, a few miles south of the Dam. It was named after a huge rock in Lake Mohave that looks like...you guessed it...a bull's head. However, the rising waters caused by the dam submerged the stone and it can no longer been seen. The actual Hardyville is considered to 'have gone ghost', buried under Bullhead City.
Davis Camp was originally a sort of 'shanty town' built for the workers who constructed Davis Dam. There is still at least one gloomy old abandoned government building on the property, juxtaposed with ancient petroglyphs carved into nearby rock walls. Where temporary lodging once stood to house the itinerant dam workers, now you see RV sites, small vacation cottages, stone bathhouses and grassy areas for picnicking. And palm trees galore!
Directly across the river from Bullhead is Laughlin, NV. Laughlin is a kind of mini Las Vegas, being home to around eleven or so resorts and casinos. There is very little else there except for residential areas, two movie theaters and a few small market/convenience stores. Oh, and a nearly dead outlet mall, which by the time we left the area, was getting a shot of new life by new ownership. Most shopping is done in Bullhead, but if you want to go to the movies, you have to go to Laughlin!
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| South Beach at Davis Camp, AZ Nevada on the other side of the river. |
The population of Laughlin is around 7,400, while Bullhead's population is just shy of 40,000. As you might guess, much of Bullhead's population works across the river at one of the casinos, restaurants or resort hotels or in Bullhead in one of the stores, eateries or medical facilities. At night, you can see the glittering lights of the casinos across the river and hear the music floating down the river from the entertainment venues. This place was a far cry from our peaceful and remote surroundings of the Verde Valley or southern Utah! But the novelty appealed to me...at first.
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| View of Laughlin, NV across the Colorado River from Davis Camp, AZ |
Once we arrived and were assigned a spot, it took some doing to get our three vehicles into our site. It was on the short side, so Patrick had to maneuver in very tight and partially on the grass to unhook Ruby-Deaux. Then he circled around again and pulled in close to her and parked, while I parked the van perpendicular to the front of the RV. Though the length of the site didn't allow us to keep my little camper hooked up, we were lucky to get a site that had a wide 'yard' to our right. And a palm tree of our own! I thought that was so cool then, but later not so much! That palm turned out to be a condominium for dozens of pigeons and grackles.
Patrick was excited when we drove in, because right away he noticed there was no insulation on the water hook-ups as in all the other parks we'd stayed in. That meant it must never get cold enough for winter freeze-ups. He was pretty thrilled about that. (I told you we were easily entertained!) At any rate, we got everything parked, hooked up and began to settle into our new surroundings. I loved that we had such a great view of the river and the imported palms everywhere lent such a tropical look to the place.
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| Patrick sitting next to Ruby-Deaux |
Patrick opened the door and "TRICK OR TREAT!" Oh, good grief! We'd totally spaced that it was Halloween! And there stood three short, but 'terrifying' gremlins expectantly holding out treat bags. Well, two little creepy characters and and one princess waving a fairy wand rather recklessly.
Dear Lord! We had no candy! We hadn't had trick-or-treaters in years. Why did they stop? The outside light wasn't on...in the midwest, you put your front light on if kids are welcome to stop. If no light, no one stops. We stared at each other, minds racing. "I know!" I said, and hauling out my stash of Hostess chocolate cupcakes, doled out one to each of the three little kids. "Thank you!" they chorused and off they ran. I had 2 cupcakes left. Hopefully that was the first AND the last of the trick-or-treaters. But, nooo. Fifteen minutes later, more were knocking on our door. This time Patrick had to sacrifice most of the remains of his Twinkies and I gave up my last two cupcakes to the five kids standing outside. "Well, if any more come, I only have one Twinkie left," Patrick said, glumly looking into the Twinkie box. We crossed our fingers. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! We stared at each other in alarm. Hopefully, it was just a lone kid, but there was a lot of noise outside for only one child. Then Patrick's eyes lit up. "The penny jar!" he said. I quickly grabbed it from the storage area under the dinette seat and opened the door. Six! Teenagers! I scooped loose change out of the cup and gave each one a handful.
"Great idea!" I told my husband when they were gone. "Quick thinking!" Mercifully, that was the end of our Halloween visitors. And that was our first night in Bullhead. Now here's the odd thing. We were still in Bullhead a year later and recalling the raiding of the Hostess goodies, we got 2 big bags of candy in preparation for Halloween. I even painted my entire face to look like a skull--it took me two hours! And not one single trick-or-treater showed up! What a letdown! What a waste of a great face-paint job!
The winter we spent there was great temperature-wise. It never got cold enough to freeze. But THE WIND! If I thought the wind at Meteor Crater was bad, it had nothing on the wind that rips up and down the Colorado River. It's nearly constant. It roars for days on end. It's absolutely maddening. But strangely, you get kind of used to it after months and months. And we learned that it didn't matter whether it was winter or summer---in the winter the wind comes from the north...and in the summer it blows hot from the south.
When spring came in late February, it was fabulous...for about six weeks. It began to grow very warm in April and by May it was hot. But we knew it would get even hotter. Here was the hitch. By this time in our lives, Patrick and I were beginning to grow tired. Not tired of the traveling, but fatigued. With his COPD, the simplest tasks were beginning to wipe him out. And some things I just could not do either; at my age I just don't have the strength... Staying put started to appeal to me. We decided to try to stick out the summer and give ourselves a travel break.
By mid-July, we were looking at each other and saying "What the heck were we thinking!? We must have been out of our flaming minds!" But we were pretty much stuck in that it was too darn hot to even escape. We couldn't think of putting good old Georgie Boy (the RV) through the hoops of trying to make it up out of the basin we were in. The incredible heat would take too much of a toll on our rig, not to mention the tires.The incline from Laughlin up to Searchlight alone was nearly 40 miles long; if we continued going north, it was all pretty much uphill. The prospect of trying it brought visions of major repair bills, smoking tires, and all sorts of potential calamities. We weren't willing to take the risk.
Imagine: 117° F. Thirty to forty MPH winds blowing gritty dust for days on end. Too hot for birds to even fly and they hop from patch of shade to patch of shade because the ground burns their itty-bitty birdie feet. The relentless sun beats down and your A/C hammers away non-stop 24/7; the coolest it will get inside during the hottest part of the day is 90°. One heat-beating strategy is going grocery shopping at 6 a.m. while the temps are still in the 90s before the heat becomes unbearable around 10 a.m. and all you really want to do is lay in a steamy, listless heap. It's like pre-heating your oven. You know how once it reaches temperature, you open the door to pop in whatever it is you're going to bake and you get that blast of hot air rushing out into your face? That's summer in Bullhead City. All day long. Every day. You stay inside or you are cooked--literally. A local remarked to us one day that he was thankful for the mild summer; he claimed the previous summer had been hitting 120° to 125° with great regularity. I just can't imagine how miserable that must be if our tolerance for heat started giving out past 104°. By the end of August, Patrick and I were shaking our heads at each other and saying 'Never again.' I was longing to leave, but Patrick argued that if we made it through this Bullhead summer, he deserved another Bullhead winter. (Meaning a winter without any possibility of freezing; he so hates being cold.) I acquiesced, but we began plotting our departure plans for the spring of 2015.
Till next time,
"Where do you want to go?" "Away." ~ Unknown
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