Desert Trip (Day 8)

Friday, Day 8 of our Desert Trip was a busy day. We started out looking for a hiking trail on the north side of the island along the water's edge. We never could find the trail following a somewhat vague descripton in one of the local travel guides. We did see two more of the 18 minature light houses that have been constructed along the river in the Lake Havasu area.

After giving up on finding the shoreline hiking trail, we headed for Rotary Park , a really nice community park just south of London Bridge. In the northern end of the park, and part of it, is the RC model car track we had walked to from the bridge a few days ago. The park is well done and has apparently been (and still is) a major community service projecct of the local Rotary clubs. It has walking paths (1-mile loop trail and shoreline promenade) a large swimming beach, many covered picnic pavillions, bocci ball courts, a skateboard park, and even a launching and recovery area for remote controlled model seaplanes.

After walking around Rotary Park, it was time for lunch so we decided to check out the restaurants and shoppes on the west side on London Bridge. By then, the morning clouds had moved on and it was another sunny day. We ate at an excellent restaurant called Shugrue's on the waterfront. The clam chowder is the best we have had in a while and the sandwiches were very good.

After lunch we walked across the bridge, gaining another perspective of the bridgewater channel under it and a closer look at the archtecturial details of the bridge. We took pictures of the statue by the bridge of Lake Havasu City founder, R.P. McCulloch Sr. and the city master planner, C.V. Wood Jr.

The weather was still great so we decided to take another hike and walk off a little of our lunch. We drove to Lake Havasu State Park, a few miles north of town, and hiked a mile out and back along the Mojave Sunset Trail. The trail roughly following the shoreline over gently rolling hills and sandy ground, is well maintained and easy to folllow. We came across several "balanced rock sculptures" apparently constructed by previous hikers. We also came across a lot of fairly small (empty) clamshells along the waterline (the picture of the white "pyramid"). It is a mystery, but there are apparently fresh water clams in the lake, probably eaten by seagulls, which are here in large flocks to compete with the many ducks for food.

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The turn around point on our hike was a very nice interpretive native plant garden in the park. It is near the 47-space park campground and has specimens of plants native to the area.

After the hike we thought it might be a good idea to go see the fireworks display being put on by the Western Pyrotechnics Assocition as part of their "Winter Blast" convention. it was billed as "starting at dusk" so we decided to check it out. They were set up at a county park about 5 miles south of town. We got there about 5:00 PM, got bleacher seats in a racetrack that is part of the complex and waited for the show. It was interesting. They were playing cowboy-rock music over an impressive sound system, selling beer, hotdogs and carmel corn while setting off fireworks, mostly very large noisemakers, about the equivelent of 120mm artillery shells.

As it got dark, they began firing off traditional fireworks, a fairly impressive display, but we kept waiting for the main event - lots of fireworks set up in the racetrack infield. An announcer finally came over the PA system talking about the event and saying the "show" would start at 8:00 PM. As it was still 7:00 and we we were getting chilly and hadn't had dinner yet, we decided to leave. This was most likely a very good move because by then the crowd was huge and the only way in and out of the grounds was one narrow road. We went to a local brew pub, had dinner and went back to the RV when it started raining as forecasted and rained hard all night. We were too tired to do the blog last night so we are doing it the next morning, Saturday, February 19th. It is stiil raining so it looks we will be doing inside things today.