| Date: January 30, 2009 | | Location Big Bend of the Colorado Hike #2 | | Where: Big Bend of the Colorado Recreation Area | Every day that we have been here at the Big Bend of the Colorado Recreation Area Campground we have spent time bird watching or hiking. Yesterday was the exception; we unplugged the motor home and drove to Laughlin to do laundry. We also drove down Casino Drive and over to Bullhead City for lunch and some groceries. The magnitude of the casinos, parking lots, people and congestion was---well shocking! I guess we are definitely not in the main stream. Our campground is only a mile from Casino Drive, yet it seems hundreds of miles away. There are no lavish multi-story casinos, flashing neon lights, or gross parking lots crammed with motor homes, cars and pickups. Nor are there any stumbling drunks or street corner beggars. What we do see here are the stars at night, the sunrise in the morning, and the sunset at night. Wildlife in the form of coyotes, roadrunners and multiple other birds pass through our campsite. So today, after the stress of yesterday, it was a great sense of relief when we stepped out of our motor home and hiked up a nearby canyon with only the wind to assault our senses.
|  | |  | |  | We feel so fortunate to have a dense network of canyons right at our doorstep to explore. It is kind of like putting together a puzzle as we seek to figure where various canyons lead in this maze of eroded rock. The choices we made at junctions in the canyons did not lead to exactly where we thought, and at one point we had to make a reverse to find our way out, but it was a fine morning of hiking. We also saw the first miniature buds of flowers on some cactus. I'm sure more beauty will follow.
Statistics for the day:
Distance - 3.8 miles
Accum climb - 1200 feet
Time 2:40 hours |  | |
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