Happy St Patrick's Day (yesterday), to everyone!!

Our last day on the river. Tomorrow we pack up camp and move east, not far, to Alamo Lake St Park. We have a few more weeks to spend around Arizona before beginning to head east in earnest to make our way back home.
On Friday we took a day trip south to the Arizona town of Quartzite. This is a huge snowbird destination in the winter and they get several hundred thousand campers spread out for miles in the desert on BLM land. We saw lots of campers still scattered around in the distance off the highway, but it is nothing compared to December and January when they are having their rock and gem shows and huge flea markets.
There really isn't much of a town here, just businesses along the intersection of I-10 and Highway 95. We found a big laundromat to wash clothes and a station to fill a propane tank and then continued south toward Yuma into California. We saw some of this area from the south earlier in the winter, but now drove to it from the north. There is a tremendous amount of wilderness here and a huge wildlife refuge. Also the US Army Yuma Proving Grounds that we visited earlier in February. North of the Army proving grounds we saw GM's desert proving grounds where they do their hot weather vehicle testing.
The last dam on the Colorado is here as well on the Arizona California border. It diverts water to the agricultural canals to irrigate the fields south into Yuma, California and eventually to Mexico.
Back at camp on Friday evening the motorcycles started coming in. We had about thirty bikes and their support team move into the group campo site in the park. These were the Sober Putters and they were doing a poker run on Saturday and a ride north to Lake Havasu. They were no trouble and the roar of the Harleys added a little excitement to the day on Saturday morning.
Saturday before lunch we took a five mile hike into the hills across the highway from camp. When we got a couple of miles in we came to a road that the dune buggies were using. It took them back into the boonies for miles and later looking at the map I saw it went to the desert bar that we visited last time we were in this area three years ago!

Off roaders in the hills. This was a popular trail going back to the Desert Bar.

We watched about a dozen dune buggies and a Jeep go by.

Cactus flowering in the park.

The blooms were gorgeous!