Riding Buttercup, Imperial Sand Dunes (Monday, February 12th, 2018)

The plank road and the border wall were very interesting, but the reason we really came to Buttercup was to ride.  These dunes are so beautiful, and we are excited to get out there!



Each time we visit the dunes, they are different than the time before.  The wind reshapes them and moves them, so although they remain somewhat consistent, they are never the same, but always beautiful!

Our friend Tony.....I told him that next time he has to carry the camera so there are some pictures of us.

Back at camp, we played a little golf between rides.  We would drive the balls and try to hit them right into the center of the power poles.  Tony got quite a few in. Steve made it once.  I guess we know who the better golf is! 

At both Glamis and Buttercup, there is a hill that is called Competition Hill.  It is a very long, steep hill that everyone likes to challenge themselves and their cars on to see if they can get to the top first.  This is the Competition Hill of Buttercup, and those are our friends climbing.  I wanted to get some pictures of Steve climbing, so I had him let me out.  He stands out because he is the only one with a white roof.

Here he is coming back down to pick me up.

 When I am taking pictures in the dunes, it is really hard to get the perspective of how big these dunes really are.  But I got a few that will help you see it.  

I took these pictures from the top of competition hill after we climbed it.  The dots below are three RZRs driving by, right where we just were at the bottom of the hill.

Here we are looking back down at our friends at the bottom.

Then back to the ride.

The views in the dunes are spectacular!

There are a lot of burned out cars in the dunes.  

As we understand it, prior to the border wall, as illegals would cross from Mexico into the U.S., they would drive their cars through the sand as far as they could.  Once the car got stuck, they would burn it so it couldn't be identified.  Then they would cross the rest of the way on foot.  

As we would come across one, it was always fun to stop and look.

Another car.

When we finished riding the dunes, we took another short ride to the Dunes Diner.  It is a restaurant just off the highway near Buttercup.  We had to cross the highway  on an overpass to get there, so that wasn't good with sand paddles, but it was fun to see anyway.

Just outside the diner, there is a gated mansion.  A little paradise in the desert.  I'm not sure who would want their mansion out here, but someone does.

It's so well concealed by the trees that you can't really see it, but it is huge.

This is the Dunes Diner.  It is closed for remodeling this year. People like to take the sand highway in their sand car, side-by-side or whatever and ride from Glamis and come up here for a meal.  Maybe some day we will have a chance to do it!

We met some great new friends on this trip that we look forward to getting together with again, and we truly enjoyed our time in the dunes.  I think we are finally learning how to ride them!

The Imperial Sand Dunes is such a pretty place, I told Steve I would love to come back sometime and just photograph it.  Not at high speed from a RZR, but up close and personal. 

The Border Wall (Monday, February 12th, 2018)

Another interesting part of visiting Buttercup in the Imperial Sand Dunes is the border wall.  The border wall is real, and it's crazy to see it out in the middle of the desert.  Border Patrol trucks run up and down the wall, but our understanding is that most of the surveillance is now done electronically.

There has to be constant maintenance along the wall to keep the sand from drifting over it.

A couple of border patrol trucks.

Much further east, they were doing some work on the U.S. side of the wall.

It appeared that they were putting in a road or something.  I don't know how they'll keep the sand off of this.

The wall goes on for miles in both directions.

We hear about the wall, but to see it up close is crazy.  It is one of those things that is hard to wrap your brain around. 

The Plank Road, Imperial Sand Dunes (Sunday, February 11th, 2017)

So much for the rest and relaxation, time to hit the road again.  We headed out today for the Imperial Sand Dunes.  We usually go to an area of the dunes called Glamis, but this time we went further south to a place called Buttercup.  

Glamis is the yellow dot, Buttercup is the red dot.

Buttercup is just west of Yuma.  It is very close to Interstate 8 which goes between Tucson, AZ and San Diego, CA.  We haven't been here before, so we are excited to try it out.  We drove down today, and will be camping here until Tuesday.

One of the first sights we saw at Buttercup was the plank road.  It is the remains of a road that was built in 1915 to allow the first automobiles to cross the Imperial Sand Dunes, giving them access to San Diego and Los Angeles from Arizona.  It was used from 1915 - 1916 when it wore out and a new plank road had to be built.  The second plank road was used until 1926 when a 20 foot wide asphalt-like concrete road was finally built. 

This replica of the plank road shows what it would have looked like when it was first built.

The original plank road had been completely covered by sand over the years, but was dug up and revitalized from 1973 - 1974, and this is what it looks like today.

This plank road was not far from our campsite at Midway, and was really fun to ride over and see.

Algodones,Mexico and the Imperial Dam (Monday, December 4th, 2017)

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.