Arizona - Lake Havasu City, London Bridge, and Kingman

Kingman KOA, Kingman

Monday, 21 February 2022

today's route

Today's drive was only about 160 miles, but you can see I covered a good part of western AZ.  I'd never seen Lake Havasu, let alone Lake Havasu City, but I just couldn't imagine being in Arizona without seeing the London Bridge, since I'm unlikely ever to get to London and it's not still there anymore anyway.  So that's where I headed today.

I kept finding lots of RV parks and very bumpy roads and mostly small towns.  Part of the way went through the Colorado River Indian Reservation. and a great deal of it went past Lake Havasu, created by damming the Colorado River and shared with California, since the river creates the state border.

The lake is flanked by mountains on both sides and the road wound and climbed through the mountains.  Or at least, it felt like it was climbing.  Actually Lake Havasu City, at 575' in elevation, is substantially lower than Salome's 1,880'.  I had to contend with strong winds up to 40 mph today, so that meant I was driving those mountain roads cautiously.  Still, I could often get views of the lake, which is turquoise, making the drive much more pleasant.

Lake Havasu City, with a population in 2020 of 57,144, is a new town, established in 1968 to be a self-sufficient planned community.  That was the same year London Bridge got bought and moved here in hopes it'd be a tourist attraction to the town.  It worked.  It's why I was there.  And I saw many boondocked RVs there too.

Lots of other people wanted to see the bridge and I had a hard time getting a good view of it.  This is the best photo I could take.

London Bridge

The trouble is that it's a mild-mannered Clark Kent of a bridge, quiet and unassuming.  As far as I can tell, it was built in London in 1831 and was in use until it was moved here.  I found a better photo online.

This one shows more detail in the bridge as well as the beautiful water.  I sure don't know how the Colorado River acquired this color; I don't remember seeing it look like this anywhere else.

The flags in this area were both US and British flags, which is nice.

Not far from here I picked up the interstate, only to find I was far from being the only one having trouble with these strong winds.  One semi couldn't even stay in his lane, and I had to lower my speed even more than usual just to keep control of my driving.

Western and southwestern AZ are a good place to find people who don't like Pres. Biden.  I saw lots of flags saying "Impeach Biden," and I saw a license plate that said "LETSGBD," which I'm pretty sure means what it looks like.  Such a shame to have so many sore losers in this country that they'll swallow all kinds of lies.  Let's face it, not many Democrats were happy that their candidate (Clinton) won the popular vote in 2016 but lost the Electoral College.  And sure there was lots of grousing.  But that's different from what we've been seeing since the 2020 election. 

You know, I've come to decide that AZ's roads aren't much better than NM's.  All of them are rough - from the interstates to the US highways to the state highways to the local roads.

The Kingman KOA has a lot of oleanders all over the campground.  They provide thick walls between campsites.  This place is probably beautiful when they're all blooming.  It's a shame they're poisonous to dogs because I had to watch mine closely.