Burros and Bars (Saturday, April 1st, 2017)

We started our day with a trip across the Parker Dam to see the 'wild' burros in California.  Once we were across the dam, we didn't have to drive far to find them, and they seemed pretty happy to see us.

In fact, if you roll down your window, they will practically crawl in to see you.  They are super friendly!

As we headed back across the dam, we took a few minutes to look at the dam facts. 

I did my first blog on the Parker Dam in September, 2015, capturing all of the details about the dam and its importance.  You can refer back to it for more information.

Then, after our educational experience at the dam, we made a stop at our first bar.  Fox's is a floating dock bar on the Colorado River. It's a very unique experience, that about sums it up.  It is decorated in dollar bills that patrons have signed and stapled to whatever they can find.

The band "Three Blind Mice" was playing.  They were fun, and play all kinds of rock.

I have to say that Fox's does have great food!  It's bar food at its best.  We highly recommend the BLT or fish and chips.  They're yummy!

Back in 2012, our oldest daughter signed her own bill and stapled it to the rafters.  We were able to find if today.



After a bit, we moved from Fox's, down the river to the Sun Dance.

Of course, we found a table out on the floating dock at this bar too. They also have pretty good food, but we had already eaten, so nothing here for us today.

You can see the band set up behind us on the dock.

Then on to the Desert Bar.  It is a bar, that is literally five miles from the highway, down a dirt road, in the middle of the desert. They have only well water, and have to haul everything in and out. They also only have battery and solar power...but this doesn't slow them down! It's really a fun place to visit.

Our daughter was kind enough to climb a hill and take a flower picture for me, cause she knows I love desert flowers.  She's so cute!  Look at the stickers on that thing!

More pictures of the desert bar.  They close at 6:00 pm, and it was closing time when I took these pictures, so it had emptied out.

The owner is constantly adding to the bar.  All of the downstairs area is new since the last time we were here, and it's still being added to.

This "church" is in the parking lot.  It's a flat church that doesn't hold any people.

The views as we drove back out to the highway on the dirt road.

The kids chose one of their favorite restaurants for dinner, Mudsharks Brewery.  We ordered one bbq chicken pizza and three oriental chicken salads.  Always a good choice!

This was our last night with the kids, which makes us so sad, but we've had such a great week!  We will miss them so much!

California and Burros (Saturday, October 1st, 2016)

We took the day off from boating today, and headed down to the Parker strip.  We had a BLT sandwich and salad at Road Runner's before heading across the Parker Dam into California.  Just on the other side of the Parker Dam, there is a really nice overlook, where you can look down the Colorado River at all of the houses and boats.

A lot of boats will pull up close to the dam, and turn off their engines and just float.  It is really interesting if you watch them for a few minutes.  They will usually get into the same current, and pretty soon they are all lined up, following each other down the river.

We headed to California today because I really wanted to see some of the wild burros that we have heard are plentiful on the California side of the river.  And as we hit the main road, there was a sign that said "Wild Burros on Road".  So that got me excited, and I was sure that we were going to see some of the wild burros that we had heard about. 

Just a few minutes into our drive, we spotted this burro standing by the road.

So I rolled down my window to take a picture of it, and before I could get my camera up, he was literally climbing into the car with us.  We both started laughing, and Steve said "The only thing wild about these burros is that they don't have an owner".  And he was right.  They aren't even slightly shy!

But we decided to keep looking anyway, even though we now knew that these burros are very tame.  The next two we ran into were hiding in the shade of the truck shed at the dam facility.  They too came to see me when I got out to take a picture of them.

And all of the others were just hanging out at an RV park, eating the nice green grass in the shade of the trees.

This little guy had a bad itch

Then he got distracted and just started eating the tree that he was scratching on before

Most of them came running to see us as well!  Our day of burro hunting didn't turn our quite the way we planned, but we did see a lot of burros, and they were much closer up than we ever anticipated!

Parker Dam (Saturday, September 19th, 2015)

Through the years we have been to several of the dams and reservoirs along the Colorado River, and are always amazed at the size of all of them. But today we decided to visit the Parker Dam just for something to do, and were amazed at the importance of Lake Havasu and this particular dam.

The Colorado River runs 1450 miles from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to the Gulf of California and has a series of 15 dams on the main system of the Colorado River, and hundreds more on the tributaries. The Colorado River basin provides irrigation and drinking water sources for more than 35 million people in the desert southwest.

There are 5 major dams on the Colorado, the first of which is the Glen Canyon Dam that created Lake Powell, then the Hoover Dam for Lake Meade, the Davis Dam for Lake Mohave, and then the Parker Dam that created Lake Havasu, which stores 210 billion gallons of water, and has become a recreational highlight for the southwest.   

A view of Parker Dam from Lake Havasu

A view of Parker Dam showing the lake, the river below and the power generators

The claim to fame of the Parker Dam is that it is the deepest dam in the world. It is 328 feet high, 235 feet of which are below the river bed. It was started in 1934 and completed in 1938.

A view of Parker Dam from the river below

A view from the top of the dam, looking down the Colorado River

The hydroelectric generators

When you look at the Parker Dam, it looks quite insignificant, but it is the headway for the Colorado River Aquaduct which supplies water to almost all cities in the Los Angeles, San Bernadino and San Diego areas. It is also the water source for the Central Arizona Aquaduct which provides irrigation and drinking water to several Arizona communities including Phoenix and Tucson. Most of the water that runs beyond the Parker Dam in the Colorado River is captured by the Imperial Dam that provides irrigation water to the Imperial Valley of California, one of the most productive farming valleys in the United States.