Wild Burros by Senator Wash

We went over to the California side of the river.  There is a long term dry camping area there.  People park out in the desert in this area.  Its on BLM land so they just pay under a hundred dollars to stay up to 6 months.  Of course there is no water, electricity or sewer hookups so they have to use generators, solar panels, carry big water tanks and use blue totes to haul their "black water" to the dump station.  The wild burros like to hang out here because its close to water and some of the visitors feed them. 

There are two "lakes" here.  One is called Senator Wash and its just a water reservoir but the other is Squaw Lake, a backwater of the Colorado River.   It has some short term camping - up to 14 days- flush toilets, a boat ramp and picnic tables.  Its very pretty and there are some hot springs in this lake where the sunfish like to hang out.  We haven't fished it but a friend of ours has and he actually got a meal of sunnies once. 

Desert Bighorn Sheep

Finally, we saw bighorn sheep up close in the desert.  It has rained a few times now so things are growing like these ocotillo bushes.  The bighorns were munching on the leaves.  If you've seen one of these bushes up close you would see the large thorns that cover every inch of them.  How the sheep eat around the thorns is amazing.   There is a good population of these sheep that live close to the Colorado River.  The land along the river is mostly owned by the federal government so the habitat for the sheep is protected. 

Most of the land along the river is fairly hilly, almost mountainous, and very remote.  There are not a lot of roads - mostly 4wheel drive tracks in the non wilderness section.  These sheep that we saw were actually pretty close to Yuma.  We were about five miles north of town by the river near the old Laguna Dam.  They may have been on the move because its the start of the mating season.

Scorpion Gold

We went out to look for gold and while we were looking for a place to park the truck I found a scorpion out scurrying around.  Not sure you can see it in the picture of the ground because they blend right in with their translucent body.  This guy was busy looking for a meal which was strange since its winter and they do kind of bury themselves under soil and rock and stay there til it warms up. 

We worked our new dry washer using dirt from a bank where we found a little gold before but this time really no luck.  Jim then started working a different area in redder dirt and by George we found a few nice pieces.  So we are going back to work that area again and maybe we will find more.  We talked to the guy that taught us how to run a dry washer and he tells us we can run dirt even if its a little wet.  It rained here again so now we have to dig farther in the bank to get to dry dirt but at least a third of the dirt we run can be damp so we will try it.