Alamo Lake

Monday, Jan. 30

Ar'gent

Here's our traveling princess, all ready to head out for today's adventure.

Alamo Lake

Our last adventure of this excellent adventure (at least we think it is) is a drive up to Alamo Lake State Park.  The crappie fishing at Roosevelt Lake has been so poor in recent years, and now the bass and catfish have mercury in them, that Dave and Mazie thought they might look for better fishing grounds.  They had been here about 10 years ago, but it was our first trip.  But for years friends of theirs have been singing the praises of the crappie they catch here at Alamo, so we had to check it out.

We first checked out the campgrounds -- the first campground had water and electric, but there is one closer to the lake with full hookups.  But the campsites there were smaller, so we liked the first one better.  A little pricey though, $22 per night would add up pretty fast for us retired fisher-folk.  We drove down to the boat ramp and saw a beaver swimming across, along with a cluster of about 10 fishing boats, and a few ducks.

We drove down to the dam, and there was a nice lookout here. 

We read all the history of the dam, and even Ar'gent got a little exercise here.

We drove back to the other camping area, stopped at the ranger station/general store and asked some questions.  But we concluded this was not for us -- too far off the beaten path (it's about 100 miles from Quartzsite, but probably 3 hours from home for us, and maybe 6 hours for the Johnsons), and it's a pretty small lake compared to Roosevelt.  We assume it gets pretty busy out there during the crappie spawn, so we are probably better off staying with Roosevelt Lake.

There is one public campground in the area, Wayside, so we drove back to it, but it is mostly full of permanent, or long-term residents.  We did have great hamburgers in the little restaurant/bar there.  We had seen a lot of burro droppings on the road, but never did see any of the critters.  They apparently mostly roam around at night, and stay in the shade of canyons during the day.

So we drove back to Salome, making one more side trip by another campground in the area.  We were in farming country here, some nut farms (pistachio) and cotton fields.

 We had a short day and were back in camp about 2:00 p.m.  We got to relax a little, I helped Mazie a little on the computer, and Joe and Dave installed a new blind in their front window since theirs had broken in Pahrump, and they were able to find a replacement in Quartzsite.  Then it was happy hour time, and suddenly the day was over.  Heading home tomorrow!