Roaming around Parker Dam…

All the news about the engine was good, and it turns out that my engine is special. That very high pressure, special hose I thought I should replace soon is in such good condition, that it just isn’t necessary at this time. The mechanic says it’s not even the same hose as most he’s seen. Better, stronger, no cracks at all. Here’s a picture of the hose, right there in the middle of the picture, has the metal label on it…note there’s no cracks in the rubber like is so typical on other engines. The conflict in the idea of replacing it is that it’s not leaking now, there’s no cracks, so why mess with it? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

So that’s what I’ve decided to do. Not mess with it. I have an excellent hose installed, I have the more reliable design for the HEUI, and according to the mechanic, what I should do is just change the oil more often. That’s it. Keep the oil fresh, and avoid a $5,000 HEUI pump failure.

That engine work only took a couple hours, including lubing the exhaust brake mechanical parts and I’d paid for a month here at this RV park so, time to explore. And since I’m only 2 miles from Parker Dam, that’s where we’ll start. First some pics of the first night along the Colorado River. And the next morning…

Time to go exploring! Over there on the eastern shore of the Colorado is another RV park. Matter of fact, there’s a bunch of them all along the river. Then just 2 miles from the RV park I’m staying in, ya bump into the Parker Dam…

The look is full on 1930’s as you can see.

Ya got yer bird screens, yer water sluice, yer power house, and yer transmission fixtures.

Pretty neat. Like I said, it’s the worlds tallest dam but 2/3rd of it is underground.

So that was fun, but all I was doing was driving by as there’s no tours of the dam any longer. It’s got cracks. You can drive a car across it, but no trucks, trailers, or RVs of any kind. Which is why I had to travel the long way round to get to the RV park. On the other side of the dam within 1 mile is a nice little store that services the relatively large community on the Arizona side of the river, as well as the California side where I’m staying. And in that store, I found 1.5 quart size of Chocolate Mocha Fudge ice cream. Dahum was it good.

Anyway, a couple days later, after recovering from too much ice cream, headed up river to Lake Havasu. This town was established in 1964, the year I graduated from high school. And in 1968 I was married with a 2 month old baby when some door to door salesmen came by and sold us a chunk of land on the island near where they were installing the recently purchased London Bridge. We bought a large double corner lot, at a special close out of $3,000 as it was supposedly one of the few properties still left available according to their sales maps, payable at a small monthly after a down payment. And of course the yearly maintenance fees, and taxes. Seemed like a good deal…until we had a chance to think about it. Who would want to live in the desert there? Checked the library and found that the summers were brutally hot and uncomfortable. And that the town was only 4 years old, basically a ghost town at that point. So I canceled our down payment check before it passed the bank. Signed a quit claim deed and washed my hands of the deal.

I kept the property map and every few years when I ‘d happen on it, I’d check what the value of that particular property was. There were several realtors selling on that island so it was easy to find info. The first few years it stayed under $5,000 value. Ten years after I had bought it for $3,000, it was selling for $90,000. Ten years after that, it was over $800,000. I have no doubt it’s worth over a million now. I can no longer visualize exactly where the property is/was but I believe it was one of the chunks of land just past the bridge on the island. My recent visit showed that those properties are now commercial lots with very big buildings on them. Worth quite a lot now as the town, for whatever strange reason, got popular and wildly successful. Place is bustling, full of tourists and retirees.

So yeah, I screwed up when I quit claimed it. Should have at least kept it as an investment.

Anyway, went up there a couple days after visiting the dam. Just to look around. These first few pics are on the dock under and near the London Bridge. The Island I talked about is on the other side of the bridge.

Stopped at the little seafood restaurant in the shadow of the London Bridge and had a nice bowl of clam chowder. Damn it was good. BUT, way to salty.

Then I crossed over the London Bridge for a visit to the island. Here’s a shot of the largest RV park there. Must be 400 odd RVs here. Boat launches too plus storage lots so really a huge amount of rolling stock and pleasure stock here. As you can see, not a lot of grass. The attraction of this place is the lake. Though while I was visiting, I didn’t see a single pleasure boat on the water. Must have been too cool.

Well, that wasn’t much of a visit to Lake Havasu, but I think I’ll head back up and take one of the tour boat rides here soon.

One reason I went was because the mechanic that helped me with my engine, asked if I’d help with a bad motor issue one of the people staying here at the RV park was having. One of their golf cart’s batteries had shorted out, that caused excess current in the drive motor, which caused a motor terminal to melt and the square coil end to melt off. So I looked at it, checked my stock and didn’t have an electrical terminal I could adapt to the end of the aluminum coil. I’d come to visit Lk Havasu to see if there was a hardware store but what I found was a golf cart repair place. Showed him the old motor parts I carried with me and told him what I planned on doing and he came up with a terminal I could adapt. Headed back to Parker Dam, used my needle files and filed the terminal’s round hold so it fit on the square terminal post, another guy had a special crimper that would handle large and square wiring and got it crimped nice and tight to the coil and boom, good as new. It’s been used quite a few times since then and is working fine. Saved the guy a bit of money and had fun in the process.

A couple more days after the Lake Havasu visit and I felt like roaming around again and several times on the way to the dam I’d passed a turn off sign that said ‘Black Meadow Landing’. The day after we had a gully washer, with warnings of flash floods over, I decided to head up that road and see what this Black Meadow was about. The sign said it was 10 miles, so an up and back visit wouldn’t take long.

The first 5 miles was uneventful, past a reservoir and some pumping and transmission facility, but along the road, kept running into these washes that spilled dirt and rock across the road. Could see evidence of flash flooding every 100 feet or so. Some big, some small. But none that would stop me and cause me to turn the car around and head back. But still, interesting.

Got around 3 miles from the landing and there was a big flood damaged area. And 3 guys shoveling mud and rock out of the road. So I guessed, based on what I saw there, that the road had been blocked due to a flash flood. You’d call it a wash out maybe. But, it was in pretty good shape when I passed through and there wasn’t any traffic to speak of anyway so didn’t even have to stop.

You can see the type of aggregate the mountains around here are made from. Not very solid at all, like the hills are just waiting for the next big rain to send more rock and dirt to the valley floor.

When I get to this remote place, there’s a guard gate and guard house there. Stopped and the gal gave me a window number, a site map, and price list. Why they think they needed that nice building when the park is in such poor shape I’ll never know? Government mandate maybe? As it’s a cooperative venture with the feds? Anyway, it was a surprise considering how far from civilization the park is, check out the map linked above.

I stopped and used the rest room and yuk, it’s out of the ’70’s. So are the roads. And there’s block walls for some reason and all they do is make driving around the park more difficult I guess. I was not impressed with the park, or the facilities. And they wanted over $500 per month, over $600 for shore line spaces. Check out their web site: Black Meadow Landing 

They show a monthly rate on their web site. If the park wasn’t so remote, and so run down, I might consider the place, but as it is now, a big NO from me. They show a golf course but I didn’t see it. On the way back to the highway took some more shots of the hills.

That last picture shows what all of the flash flooding looked like on this road after that particular storm. I’d wager it could have been much worse.

So that was my first week at River Lodge RV Resort. Thanks for reading!