Road Trip!
Today we drove a loop from Lake Havasu to Laughlin, Nevada and back. We were gone about 7 hours, we took the scenic "route 66" on the way there through Oatman, AZ.

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/az-kingmantocalifornia.html

 This was an amazing drive and just beautiful.  I am so lucky to be able to just sit and enjoy!  The road was very narrow and windy and it was a long way down.  I would not want to be in a big truck or RV on this highway.

 On the way we passed many desert washes.  They are also called "xeroriparian habitats" to indicate their relationship with rivers.  Washes, like rivers, are linear, chronically disturbed habitats that concentrate water and nutrients from a large area.  They are corridors for plants and animals.  Washes, unlike rivers, only have surface water for brief periods, often just a few hours in a year.  Many have warnings, if there is water on them do not cross.  It is amazing to see how the water has worn grooves in the sand and these washes.



Oatman, is a former mining town, it has a very small population but a very interesting main street where you can usually see burros wandering the street.  We could definitely see and smell that they had been there but were not lucky enough to see one close up.

 The buildings are all lined up for about 2 blocks, old wooden structures like you would see in a  very old town.  There is burro poop everywhere! In the parks they discourage feeding of burros but it seems they encourage it here as they sell "burro food" in every little store.

 They sell all kinds of gifty touristy items and some really nice pottery and metal sculptures.  I really like this little magnet and if I had a metal surface in my RV I would have bought it.

This is called desert rose.  Formed in arid areas, desert roses are crystal-like in nature and have a rosette shape. They can look like flowers that have turned to stone. They can also appear like breakfast cereal flakes bound together haphazardly. Since the outsides of the stone have bonded with sand, they take on the color of the sand.

Read more: About Desert Roses | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_4577488_desert-roses.html#ixzz2DlEgN0ps

Can you see the burros near the bottom of the picture?  There were about 7 or 8 of them.
http://oatmangoldroad.org/burros.htm










We drove on to Laughlin and had some lunch and walked a little ways along the Colorado river. There are a lot of casino's all along the river as well.

I bet there were 100 koi in the pond by one of the casinos.  As soon as they saw anyone come near the rail they all came over with mouths open.  One even jumped up out of the water.  It was pretty funny to watch.  There were also tons of sea gulls which people were feeding, they were not shy at all and were climbing all over the people.  I like birds - but no way do I want a gull landing on me!

You can see the Colorado river in the front of the picture.
This is one place we actually saw green, real grass as there is actually a water source.  We also drove by a huge sheep farm.  Strangely enough it had tons of new born sheep. Seemed really strange to see babies this time of year.  Have to put that on my google list.