Imperial Dam Long Term Visitors Area
Operated by BLM – $40/ 2 week pass
Thursday, March 23 – stayed 4 nights

So Hubs and I got up the morning after the first night at Salton Sea. He’s the one that really wanted to go there again, as he was wanting to do volunteer work. But after siting outside for just a few minutes we both looked at each other. “These flies!,” I said. “Would you consider going somewhere else where there’s less flies?” He surprised me with his quick “Yes!” He had a relieved look on his face! So even though we hadn’t even had breakfast, we packed up in record time and headed south.

Our view

We decided to head for the Imperial Dam Long Term Visitor’s Area. It had been on our list of possible places to stay outside of Yuma – that and the American Girl Mine Road dispersed camping area. We headed back south on SR 111 and caught I-8 back east and back over the Imperial Dunes. Our GPS didn’t have a listing for the Imperial Dam LTVA so we used the Google Maps GPS for the first time. It worked ok, but didn’t tell us often enough when we were on the right road (IMHO). But she took us on SR 24, I think it was, and that has to be one of the worst roads ever! It was a good hour’s trip over bad road, and the father we went, the worse the road got. Considering how many RVs must come and go from the LTVA, I couldn’t believe they all had to go over this road. It was 25 mph max most of the time and the edges of the road were badly broken off everywhere. On one bad blind turn, we nearly bought it when the edge of the road disappeared into a gully. I barely kept the rig on the road and not the ditch! We FINALLY made it to Senator Wash Road which leads into the LTVA, and we started seeing RVs parked on the bluffs. There are many “named” areas in IDLTVA, and there were road signs for them, but having read mostly about Senator Wash, I decided to follow the signs for that area. Turns out that is the main area with water stations, dump stations, and the government fee station, marked, as usual, with an American flag on a tall pole so you can see it from a good distance. So we watered, dumped our gray, and went over and bought our 2 week pass for $40. The station was manned by a very nice and helpful volunteer couple from Idaho. They had a very cute elderly Black and Tan Doxie with them who was very sweet too. There were a lot more rigs at this LVTA than we had seen at the Plomosa LTVA in Quartzsite. I was surprised at that. But still, it was easy to find a flat space not too close to any other rigs to claim for our own. It didn’t take long at all to set up our camp, but the wind, which had been blowing strongly, was picking up even more. At times, I had to close my eyes and turn my back to the wind when it whipped up huge clouds of dust. The weather report was calling for scattered showers that afternoon, and judging from the clouds building up over the adjoining mountain ridge, we figured we would be in for some fairly soon. We had seen a couple of pretty bad looking storms off in the distance during the drive from SS. You could see the rain areas, but it looked like a lot of dust was blowing up inside those storms.

Sunset, our first night at IDLTVA

After we set up camp, Bob went for one of his hour-long walks while I stayed in camp to chill. We both noted that the rain clouds were looking closer and more dense, and the wind was getting even stronger. After about half an hour,  the wind was just howling, and I started hearing what sounded like some rain mixed in with the wind. It wasn’t a lot of rain but it was blowing hard against the windward side of the trailer. I tried it go outside to put away the dog fence, but I could not open the trailer door because the wind was blowing so hard against it! The windows on that side were becoming covered with splats of mud making it hard to see out, whereas the leeward side of the trailer was perfectly clean and dry! Bob was not yet back from his walk and I began to worry that he would be soaked to the skin at the least, and find it extremely hard to walk back to the trailer against all that wind. I hoped that he had made a quick friend and taken shelter with them!

Dirt buildup from storm on fridge vents

After perhaps a hour the rain stopped, although the wind continued to howl terribly, rocking the trailer and sounding like we were in a terrible blizzard! Surprisingly, Bob came home in the midst of it and was barely wet! He said the outside of the trailer was a mess covered with mud. Several more bands of rain came through about every hour and washed a lot of the mess off the trailer and truck, but the heavy wind continued all night and all the next day.

Wind rocked the support board right out from under the stabilizer

It was too windy to sit out, so we decided to drive in to Yuma to refuel and maybe get something to eat. On the map, it’s shorter to go into Yuma via the same horrible road we came in on, so we decided to take the longer route which leads through the Yuma Army Proving Grounds and out to US-95, then south to Yuma. About a 50 minute drive but WAY better than going that SR-24 again!! Found a Circle K with diesel along the way and fueled up there and went to their mini-mart to get bread and hopefully some almond milk. They had neither. There was another gas station on the opposite corner that also had a mini mart. No bread their either – just tortillas. I guess that IS bread in this part of the country! While at the gas station, a Carpool Van came in pulling a trailer that had two porta-johns on it. Makes sense out here in the middle of nowhere! The carpool vans making the Fredericksburg to DC run could use those too! LOL!

This Vanpool brings their own bathrooms with them!

Since we had the dogs with us, we decided to just grab some fast food for lunch. The GPS took us to a McDonalds at a Wal-Mart not too far from where we fueled, and it turned it to be the same shopping area for all the mobile home/RV parks we’d gone to visit last Sunday. Another plus for choosing that area to winter! Back at camp the wind was still blowing hard (as it was in town) so we just ate and chilled for the rest of the day. By nighttime, the wind was blowing almost as hard as it was the first night, but at least there was no rain! It continued to howl until we woke up some time during the night and found it quiet. The wind had finally stopped. Today there’s just a pleasant breeze, a cloudless sky, and comfortable temperatures. I cleaned some of the dried dirt off the camper and the truck, and set up the solar panel. I’m not sure it’s charging right. The indicator lights on the PWM controller say it’s charging, but I’m not seeing the voltage go up on the volt meter. It’s been at 12.4 all day. All we’ve used are lights and water pump. I think our little 13 watt briefcase charger topped off the batteries quicker than this 100 watt setup! It’s so pleasant and quiet here. I think we’d like too stay as long as we can if it doesn’t get hot again!

Go to All My Flickr Photos from Imperial Dam LTVA

Here’s a sample of them: