On windy days in Lake Havasu, it is always nice to get away and one of our favorite escapes is across the border into Algodones, Mexico. The border crossing is just a few miles west of Yuma, Arizona on I-8. As you're you are getting close to the boarder, there is a large, fenced parking lot on the right, with a list of the parking fees.
We paid at the gate to enter, then drove in to find a spot. There is always plenty of room, but it may be a hike if it's crowded.
Then we walked through the border gate. There was no search of any kind walking through the border, but they were stopping all of the cars that were going across. The weird thing was it wasn't the Mexican border authorities that were stopping the cars going into Mexico, it was the US authorities. As we came through on the Mexican side, there were public restrooms right there, which I thought was really nice.
Each time we go down, it's a slight culture shock for the first few minutes. We always forget how pushy the vendors can be. But once we got off the main street, it was much better and we could settle into a browsing rhythm. There is so much stuff! And the number of dentists and eye doctors right on the border is astonishing!
But the hot spot in the town is always the big purple pharmacy/grocery/liquor store.
As you leave Mexico, you have to declare anything you bought to the immigration services. I guess that sometimes there are fees for certain purchases, but we've never had to pay any. As we understand it each adult may bring across 1-liter of liquor duty fee. Again, once we got through border security, there was another public restroom on the U.S. side. There are times when it can take hours to get back across the border from Mexico, but today it only took us about 10 minutes. The lines were very short.
Yuma is a farming town, and right now they are harvesting cauliflower. There were harvesting stations in the fields all along the highway. They bring in the field workers on buses, and each bus has three port-a-potties attached to the back of it.
They had harvesting stations set up in the rows of cauliflower. The workers stand in the shade of canopys and cut the heads of cauliflower and put them directly into boxes that were then loaded onto trucks for transport. We didn't realize that the vegetables were boxed right in the field.
Other vegetables that weren't ready for harvest yet were being weeded by hand.
We're guessing that this is lettuce and arugula. So pretty in the field.
It's always interesting to see the border wall. I think it runs all the way through Arizona, but I'm not positive.
Just north of Yuma on highway 95, there is an area called the Army Proving grounds. We've always wondered what it is, so we decided to do some exploring. These signs surround the entire proving ground area.
At the intersection of highway 95 and Imperial Dam road, there are these big guns. We turned at the guns and headed west.
The rest area on this road was closed, but it looked really interesting with all these tanks on display.
The entrance to the army base also has an interesting entrance.
As we went a little further down Imperial Dam road, we can across the tank test hills where they were testing a tank.
The Imperial Dam Recreation Area is at the end of Imperial Dam road. It is just over the border in California.
There area lakes and rivers all over this area. The Imperial Dam is the last dam on the Colorado river, and it's where they store water for the crop irrigation in the imperial valley (areas like Yuma).
It appears that a lot of people take advantage of the $75 annual pass fee. There are campers that look like they live permanently in this area, off the grid with sheds, wind turbans and even solar.
These spillways send the water from the Colorado River into the various canals.
Then, in this same area, we stumbled upon a little community right next to the imperial dam. We weren't sure what a cooperative management area was, so we decided to stop at the guards desk and ask.
It turns out that this community is made up of RV spots, houses, parks, boat ramps, a club house, swimming pools, etc that are all built on BLM land. It is a full resort type community, but because it is built on BLM land, the residences can only be there up to five months out of the year. It looked really nice, but we thought it was a really strange concept.
A view of the Imperial Dam from the community.
We had a really fun day in Mexico, talking with the vendors and doing a little shopping, and we enjoyed our Imperial Dam adventure on the way home. It was a great way to get away from the wind in Lake Havasu and see something new and different.
