It was about 150 miles from Palm Springs to Earp, California, the site of the Emerald Cove RV Resort. Earp is just across the river from Parker, Arizona, site of the Parker Dam. Most of the trip was across barren (and boring) desert, with surprisingly good roads, and that made the trip a piece of cake. There are a number of RV parks and other recreational places on the Earp side, most of which is Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land.
Across the river is a pretty depressing city, 22 square miles in size, with about 3,000 people, located entirely on the Colorado River Indian Reservation, with, of course, a huge casino and a lot of pretty dull scenery.
The RV park is huge, nice, and reasonably priced.
There is a place just below the dam on the Parker side, Tommy’s Paradise Bar and Grill, which has an all-you-can-eat Fish & Chips special on Friday. There were 20 of us from the RV park that went there on Friday afternoon.
The special starts at 2:00 PM, and the price of the meal starts at $6.99 and goes up a dollar every hour or two. By the time we left, there had to be several hundred people eating, leaving, or waiting. It was a lot of fun and the food and service were very good.
On Saturday, we took the 40-mile trip to Quartzsite, Arizona, to see this incredible place. There are 3,000 residents for most of the year. In the winter, the population rises to about 1,000,000, due to the world’s largest continuous swap meet/county fair, focused largely on RVers.
They are everywhere---in RV parks, boon docking (i.e., with no electricity, water, or sewer service) in open fields, parked by the side of the road. Everywhere. The place is amazing.
Sunday was our day to visit The Desert Bar (also known as the Nellie E. Saloon), an amazing place tucked into the Buckskin Mountains just a few miles north of Parker---reached via five miles of (rough) dirt road. The place is only open Saturday and Sunday, and only nine months of the year.
It was built on the site of an old copper mine. It's very unpretentious, to say the least; and fun. There had to be several hundred people there, and the entertainment (good) was a live band.
Sunday evening, there was a potluck supper hosted by some nearby neighbors. Becky's homemade chili was a big hit. Attending, among others, were Ron and Caroline Pennington and Larry and Robbie Sypkens, all four of whom we first met as co-workers at the North Rim, Larry and Claudette Van Dusen, whom we first met while working at Zion, and Bill Wheeler (Pat is still in Michigan tending to her father). It was a fun reunion.
Monday was devoted to an 80-mile roundtrip to see Lake Havasu City, which I had never seen and Becky last visited in 1971. Parts of it were kind of depressing; a bit run down. We walked across the London Bridge and hit the local Walmart Supercenter (always an upper). We were not impressed.
Tuesday, we visited the Blue Water Hotel and Casino across the river from us. It was pretty normal, and unexciting, for the genre; mostly filled with old people like us. We had a nice buffet lunch in the coffee shop.
The rest of Tuesday was spent wrapping up our stay at the river, preparing to head for Wilderness Lakes on Wednesday.
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