Laughlin - Oatman

Wow!  I had only been relatively stationary for a few days at Lake Havasu, but it is sure good to get on the move again!

I have a few days to spare until hopefully, my satellite internet rig shows up!  So I checked the map and decided to head north from Havasu, through Golden Shores, and up towards Bullhead City.  I didn’t know what was up there, but since i had not been there before, I thought it was certainly worth some exploration.

The first few miles north was wide open and scenic, but not spectacular, but around the Mile 19 mark the road gets up into the edge of the mountains, with a great view back into the valley.

Just prior to Oatman, I dropped the trailer at the road junction and took a drive down toward Bullhead City. At the edge of Fort Mojave, there was a great crop of flowers on the edge of a golf course.

Next, I cruised on up through Bullhead City, then crossed over briefly into Laughlin, Nevada.  I wanted to see if camping in an RV was still permitted at the hotels and casinos there, and it appeared that it is allowed, and quite popular.

On the way back to pick up the trailer, I took a shortcut on the Silver Creek road.  There is a problem with illegal dumping along this road, but the far end goes through a lot of old, and current mining operations as you approach Oatman.

Oatman was quite a surprise, as I expected a ‘normal’ small town.      Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find a very rustic frontier town with hitching rails on the very narrow main street.  I had to drive around a burrow that was sleeping in the street.

Some more burros that were looking to some tourists for handouts!

 

 

There was one really spectacular camp spot with a view at Mile 21, and I did check it out, but a large bus conversion was already on site and the closest alternate spot may have been a little close for his comfort, so I kept looking.  I went down a few side trails with the truck, but some of them turned into full-on 4X4 routes, and were certainly not 5th wheel country.

When I was almost ready to concede defeat and stay in the flat dusty lot with highways on both sides (although there was another 5th wheel there that must have thought it was OK), I did manage to find a little trail to get out of sight of the highway without losing any important parts of the trailer to trees or rocks.  Red-rock mountains all around, a bit of a view down towards Needles, California across the Colorado river, and all the privacy you could ask for.  I saw a few bunnies hopping about as I set up, and when I went for an after-supper stroll in the dark to a convenient viewpoint, some burros very close by started talking to me in burro-speak.