Thursday, February 16, 2017 (La Posa South LTVA, Quartzsite, AZ)

We had a rather extraordinary sunrise this morning...the clouds to the west were pink...

After a quick breakfast and showers, we headed off in the truck. Today we thought we'd make a trip down to the Imperial Dam BLM LTVA area. It is another popular winter spot for boondockers. We've met people that think it's a great area and others not so much so we wanted to check it out.

Before heading south on hwy 95, we made a quick trip into Q to run a few errands...propane, drinking water and a quick stop at Herb's Hardware. It was 11:00 when we were finally on the road south..

We can't get over how much greenery is sprouting up everywhere...an indication of all the rain the area has had this year....

About an hour later we turned right onto E. Imperial Dam Road ...

And stopped at the Yuma Proving Grounds Open Air Museum. We had no idea this was here...

                                                          (Click on photos to enlarge)

Anti aircraft tank...

120 mm gun on this bad boy...

Yuma Proving Ground US Army Base in the distance. You can get a pass at the Open Air Museum to go into the base. There's another museum there that might be interesting to check out in the future...

As we neared the dam, we took the first road to the right...and found Hidden Shores Resort (the name sounded familiar...I think we have friends that had/have a spot here).

Hidden Shores Resort is water-front setting overlooking the Colorado River, surrounded by natural wildlife. With top amenities, including a 20,000 square foot clubhouse, heated pool, golf course, launch ramps and more, it is the ideal vacation home resort community for winter snowbird visitors and summer-time family fun on the Colorado River and surrounding desert.

A golf course...

The very nice fellow at the gatehouse gave us a "tour pass" to drive through and take a look (but we couldn't get out of the truck). He said you can buy an RV or Park Model lot but you don't actually own the land if that makes sense. The land is owned by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) Some people have even built homes in excess of $400,000 here!

Clubhouse, store and pool area....

Park Models...

Beach...

The RV sites...

We had our little drive through...and then dropped the visitor pass off and said goodbye to the fellow at the gatehouse.

Map of the Imperial Dam BLM area...

Colourful hillside...

Senator Wash Reservoir....

We stopped at Senator Wash Boat Ramp and Day Use Area...

A good spot to have our lunch...

Some folks have managed to make their way over to the far shore and some nice camping spots. With the lack of RV's over there it mustn't be big rig friendly or easy to get to...

Squaw Lake campground...

We took a drive down but weren't impressed with the parking lot style of camping...

Lots of RV's camped along the road at Hurricane Ridge...

We took a drive through the South Mesa camping area...

Day use area...

Other than the RV's on the far shore this was the only other camping area that would interest us.

And that concludes our drive through the Imperial Dam LTVA. We're glad we saw it but quite frankly, we weren't impressed with the camping areas. Some areas even reminded us of Slab City. I'm glad we checked it out on a day trip instead of bringing our rig...we'll stick with Quartzsite. There is supposed to be some good ATVing here though...

We started back towards hwy 95...a couple of more pictures of the canals along the Colorado River...

We stopped at the intersection with hwy 95, where the big cannons are, and I took over driving the rest of the way home...allowing Steve to take some pictures for a change.

We can see this surveillance balloon from our campsite...

Above and below the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge...

It was after 4:00 by the time we got home...just in time to relax in the shade as the sun gets lower in the sky. Enough clouds to produce a sunset...beautiful but not quite as "fiery" as usual...