Kluane Lake to Alaska

At 9:30 in the evening of June 3, 1998 on the shores of Kluane Lake in the Yukon Territory in Canada, the sun was casting lengthening shadows through the delicate smoky haze from a distant forest fire over near Haines Junction. Hastily-erected road signs directed us to tune to a radio frequency that broadcasted a continuous update on the fire. Firefighters had it under control and completely surrounded, but they were letting it burn off the miles of dead and dying timber that had been heavily infested by some boring (as in drilling) beetle that had killed much of the forests in the area. Forest fires are a natural way to kill off these destructive insects that live and thrive mightily in the skeletons of the trees they kill.

Our RV was backed into a campsite right on the lake in the Yukon Government Congdon Creek Campground, located along the western shores of Kluane Lake in Kluane National Park. It was a gorgeous, icy, and crystal-clear lake surrounded by rugged snow-capped mountains.

No electricity or hook-ups available – just the unspoiled beauty of this majestic province. We are apparently part of the ‘pre-season’ visitors roaming around this part of the country. Most of this pre-season crowd is made up of people who are about 10 years or more older than we are, who love to travel during the time before all the younger people get out of work or school and hit the roads. The main “high season” doesn’t begin in earnest until June 15th. Sometimes, we may go 100 miles along the Alaska Highway and see less than a dozen other vehicles.

On our way up here, we stopped in Watson Lake, Yukon, which is the home of the famous signpost forest. A U.S. Army soldier working on the construction of the original Alaska Highway back in 1942 was lonely for his hometown, so he put up a sign showing how many miles he was from home. Others started putting up mileage signs to where their hometowns were located, and thousands of visitors continued to do the same for all the years since that first sign posting in 1942. By 1998 when we arrived, there were over 42,000 signs posted. We knew about Watson Lake’s signpost forest from our research of the Alaska Highway prior to embarking on our trip, so I had made a sign for us to put up in the forest to mark our passage. I had sealed it in many, many coats of heavy acrylic and Paul mounted it using stainless steel aircraft screws so they wouldn’t just rust away in the extreme weather and have our sign fall down.

On our way to Kluane Lake, we spent a couple nights in Whitehorse, which has been the capital of Yukon Territory since 1953. It was the largest city in the province with a whopping 24,000 people in residence. There were only 33,000 people total in all of the Yukon at that time, and clearly, most of them lived in Whitehorse. It is located right on the Yukon River and it still had the feel of the typical Klondike gold rush boomtown it once was. In modern times, most all of their gold comes from the pockets and purses of visiting tourists. Lest you think this is just an old sourdough camp-type town, you could get a room at the primo High Country Inn, in downtown Yukon, that had a grand piano right in your room – next to the king-size bed and in-room fireplace. I’ve never heard of that before.

While in town, we dined on fresh, grilled arctic char, the first we’d ever eaten. Arctic Char is a relative of trout and salmon, only it has a more delicate flavor and lighter-colored flesh. It only comes from the frigid waters of the far north. It was absolutely delicious and we would certainly order it again if we got the chance. We also spent an evening at a performance at the Frantic Follies – a two-hour old-time vaudeville revue – that was hilarious and very well performed, using lots of skits and ballads from the writings of Robert W. Service. Their rendition of his famous recounting of The Cremation of Sam McGee was exceptionally outstanding.

We also visited a wonderful museum there – the Beringia Interpretive Center. It told the history of the ancient land bridge, Beringia, which briefly formed during the ice age and connected Asia with Canada. Plants, wildlife and people migrated across this bridge – populating Canada and moving down into North America from Asia.

They displayed many fossils, and skeletons of long-extinct animals found in the Whitehorse area. There were skeletons of wooly mammoths, lions, and gigantic beavers weighing two tons! A two-ton, 12-foot tall beaver would have been something to behold!

After leaving Whitehorse and while stopped for the night at Kluane Lake, I took the opportunity to make a homemade dinner for us – Beer Cheese Soup, fresh Alpine Bakery (in Whitehorse) sourdough bread (mere hours old), and fresh pears poached in cherry brandy with raspberry puree. Just because we traveled in an RV doesn’t mean we had to eat hot dogs and baked beans for four months.

I could cook the same foods when we traveled that I could cook when we were living in our home in Michigan. I had all my usual, and unusual, ingredients along with us, and we bought the fresh local meats and vegetables from stores along our way. Sometimes that included bison, reindeer, moose, yak, and arctic char. We were not shy about trying something local and different from what we could get in the United States. Our RV had a generously-sized refrigerator and freezer which ran on propane, as well as a gas stove, oven and a microwave.

Not only that, but my little gourmet kitchen window looked out onto the splendid wild beauty of wherever we happened to be parked for the evening.

After dinner, we decided to walk down the shore of the lake to an observation platform erected for campground visitors to view wildlife and the surrounding mountains and scenery. It had spotting scopes mounted along the railings so you could focus in on creatures and have a close-up view. While standing there taking in the beauty of the views, a very large grizzly bear came lumbering out of the woods just down the lake from the platform. Yikes!! Paul said not to worry about it because he thought it was still a quarter of a mile away from us, but I didn’t believe him. I thought he was just trying to make me feel safer, but I thought the bear was a lot closer than that. And, it was also moving steadily in our direction. I headed back to the safety of our RV, before briefly turning to take one last photo of my fearless husband before he got eaten by the approaching grizzly.

The next morning we left Kluane Lake, heading north deeper into the wilderness toward our next goal of reaching Tok, Alaska. We had hoped to get there in one more day, however, we got too late of a start the next morning. We noticed that when we would go to sleep at night in an RV park or campground, the place was usually full of other adventurers. But when we’d wake up the next morning, we were the ONLY people left in camp. All the other people had gotten up very early and gotten back on the road while we still slept.

We were unhurried and we loved it. We ended up catching up to a lot of them anyway, as they often drove very slowly. Since that time of year, that far north, it never really got completely dark at night. Dusk and dawn would linger for many hours which distorted one’s sense of what time it was. So we often didn’t get to sleep until one in the morning which meant we slept in later. I don’t think we set an alarm clock the whole four months we were traveling that summer.

The highway between Kluane Lake, Yukon, and Tok, Alaska, was at that time intermittent gravel and pavement. We reached the Alaska border in the late afternoon still a ways east of Tok, Alaska. Tok is a major junction where the road splits up into Alaska Highway 2 that goes on north to Fairbanks, and Alaska Highway 1 which goes to Anchorage. We were aiming for Anchorage, so we would take Highway 1 at Tok.

I was driving that stretch of road, and as we went over a bridge over a little glacial creek, and headed up a long hill, the rear driver’s side tire on the truck utterly exploded. I could see it smoking in my side mirror, so I carefully guided our rig right down the middle of the gravel road while I slowed down and stopped as quickly as possible, while still maintaining control, so we wouldn’t veer over a steep embankment with no guard rail. I gingerly pulled over to the side of the road and we got out and assessed the damage.

The tire was completely shredded and the rough gravel had also chewed up the rim of the wheel. It would probably also need replacing when we got to Anchorage – an even more expensive proposition than just getting a new tire. Several other fellow travelers stopped to offer Paul help in changing the tire, and he gratefully accepted assistance from some twenty-something age guys who stopped. He had all his equipment out and had already started the project, but it was still comforting to see how many people stopped along this remote stretch of road and offered to help. It was like that everywhere in the far north.

This tire changing project took a lot longer than we thought it would, and when we finally got further up the road it was getting late. We came to an RV park that advertised that if you spent the night at their park, they would treat you to a free Salmon Bake dinner around their campfire. We decided to take them up on their offer and spend the night there, and we had a fantastic fresh Alaska salmon dinner – grilled over an open hardwood-fired grill. The only downside of this dinner was that they had a CD player, blaring over loud speakers, playing Slim Whitman singing songs like, “My Way,” “It’s a Small World,” and “Make the World Go Away.” Ish. Almost intolerable.

Oh well. We were off on our way to Tok, Alaska early the next morning.

Traveling the Cassier Highway

During the summer season of 1998, Paul and I drove 20,000 miles in our RV over four months – from our home in Midland, Michigan, through the United States up to Alaska, and the wild Canadian arctic – and back across Canada to Michigan. At the end of each travel day, I wrote down what had happened, where we were, and had been that day. I would like to share some of these adventures with you.

I found the following notice posted on the jobs board at the combination motel, restaurant, gas station/RV park/Laundromat in this 15-person town in Teslin, Yukon, Canada.

Horse Wrangler Wanted – August 23 – Oct. 7

Job includes care of horses, hauling of water, general camp chores and maintenance, caping and skinning of animals, assisting with guiding of hunters. Applicant must be energetic, hard-working, and willing to get up early to bring horses to camp.

For more info or if you’re interested in a great experience and are willing to learn something new this summer call 867-536-2918.

Hah! Who says there are no good summer jobs anymore?

We were spending the night in relative civilization compared to where we have been the past three nights. We lost our cell phone service early into British Columbia, which is a HUGE province. We were traveling through it for three full days and there were no towns, no electricity, no phones, no nothing. We were warned at the beginning of the highway that we needed to have enough fuel with us to go the entire length of the Cassier Highway – almost 450 miles – as there was no fuel available along the way. We had tanks that held 150 gallons of diesel fuel – so we could easily make it all the way. It was a rather strange but exhilarating feeling to be so remote from everything we are used to being close to here in the ‘lower 48.’

We had been driving on the Cassier Highway (a gross misnomer calling it a ‘highway’) which was in 1998, over 65% gravel. It is 446 miles of one-lane wilderness, unimproved road with maximum possible speeds of about 15-20 mph. We only had one flat tire. While Paul was under the truck trying to wrestle the spare tire down from its perch under the rear bumper of the truck, a very nice fellow-RV’er stopped to see if he could help. He lent us a 20-ton jack (which could lift up a barn) then stood by offering Paul a steady stream of helpful advice, such as…..”A lot of guys would move their head out from under that tire before they let it drop down.”

I felt out-of-place in this guy-environment, so I took our dog for a short walk, until I noticed a large, curious bear roaming around nearby. The dog and I got back in the truck.

I thought maybe Paul would be annoyed with this guy’s micro-management of his tire-changing technique, but he said he was grateful for the help in loosening the bolts on the wheel and wrestling the flat tire off of the truck axle. Later in the week when we stopped for a night after finally reaching civilization again, the same guy was staying in the RV campground with us. He came over to find out how the rest of the trip went for us with regard to tires.

Shortly after the tire changing episode we came to a NARROW, one-lane wooden bridge over the Todagin River. Yikes! We carefully measured the width of our rig at its widest point and determined that it would just fit with only 6 inches of clearance on each side. Paul skillfully maneuvered the rig across the bridge – VERY slowly – while I followed behind on foot with a two-way radio, keeping him informed of his progress and clearances.

Later, when we finally arrived in a place that had a shop that did tire repairing, Paul asked the owner what he thought made our tire go flat. The guy looked at Paul like he was daft, and said, “You ran over something sharp that put a hole in it.” Pushing for a more useful opinion so he could evaluate our possible risks traveling on future gravel roads, Paul phrased his question differently and asked him, “So, do you think it was something metallic like a nail, or just a sharp rock?” The repairman replied, “It really doesn’t matter. Whatever you ran over put a hole in it, and all the air leaked out.” No further questions came from Paul.

By then we were in the mood to heed the popular local advice up there, which was to carry two completely mounted spares for each vehicle – both the truck and the RV – for traveling on unimproved roads, which were most all of the roads we planned to be driving on that summer. We decided that when we finally got to Anchorage, Alaska, we’d buy another mounted spare (complete wheel and tire) for each of the vehicles. We had noticed most vehicles with Alaska, Yukon, and British Columbia license plates all carried two mounted spares a piece, and we figured that should be a clue that they knew a lot more about traveling up there – things we just didn’t know – yet.

We were also unnerved by the amount of damage that the sheer vibratory forces of driving on unimproved roads caused to the contents of our 5th wheel trailer. Every time we stopped and opened the door to our RV, we were amazed at what we found. Once we found our refrigerator door and opened and shut by itself several times, despite have double safety catches on it to prevent such happenings. We’d find the kitchen floor a mess of broken eggs, spilled milk, and condiments all jumbled up with pots and pans that had escaped from an adjacent cabinet. Another 50 miles over rutted roads with bone-jarring bumps would find the furniture all upended and lids completely unscrewed from jars where they sat in the cupboards. We had a flashlight that had its end cap unscrew itself and spill its batteries out on the floor.

We looked in one of our kitchen cabinets and found a can of hot chocolate mix that had completely leaked out from under its snap-on plastic lid and coated everything inside that cabinet with hot chocolate powder – and the lid was still snapped on it tightly!! Paul said these were some new kinds of physical forces at work that he was totally unfamiliar with, in spite of having a PhD in nuclear physics!

On one stretch of the trip, we had placed two hard-boiled eggs on one of the wire shelves of the refrigerator to use later at lunch. When we stopped and looked inside to get the eggs, we found them completely peeled with a pile of shells on the shelf underneath them! Just the intense vibration caused by those rough roads had caused all the shells to peel off of the eggs against the wire shelf! Who knew such a thing could happen! We surely didn’t.

So, we unloaded the cabinet and washed the chocolate powder off all its contents. I put a strip of masking tape around the edge of the lid to make an impenetrable seal to see if that helped. If not, we planned to throw away the rest of the hot chocolate powder and do without it.

We discovered another problem we didn’t know we had during our first night in the true Canadian wilderness along the Cassier. The legendary mosquitoes of the far north attacked us with a vengeance. We, of course, had screens on all our RV’s windows, which we opened to let in the cool evening air when we stopped for the night at a campground at Lake Provincial Park. At first we were worried about all the bear warning signs posted all over, but we later realized it was the mosquitoes that were the problem – not the bears! We noticed that mosquitoes – hundreds of them – were somehow getting inside our RV, but how? We observed the windows closely thinking the critters were somehow getting through the mesh of the screens, but we saw that they were squeezing their bodies between the frames of the screens – where the screens fit against the window frames – in order to get inside with us! It was a perfect plot for an Alfred Hitchcock movie!

We ended up having to place masking tape all along the edges of where the screen frames fit into the window frames in order to keep them from getting in. When we eventually arrived in a small town that had a hardware store, we bought 6 feet of no-see-um netting in order to screen off the bedroom of our RV to at least keep the mosquitoes out of where we slept. We just made sure to never open the bedroom windows.

If you look closely, you can see the beige masking tape all over the edges of the windows. It looked incredibly tacky, but at least it helped keep the mosquitoes out. We decided to redesign our window screen systems when we got to a large city, like Anchorage, that would have places like Home Depot where we could buy building supplies to re-design and re-enforce our windows. This would be imperative, as when we traveled farther north into the arctic, the mosquitoes would only get worse and worse.

The scenery along the slow gravel Cassier Highway was spectacular. There were gorgeous snow-capped mountains, lush green forests, and meadows strewn with wildflowers of every color and description. The streams and rivers and lakes were cold and crystal-clear, and we saw wildlife all along the way – bears, moose, beavers, loons, eagles, and one dead porcupine. We were assured of seeing even more wildlife as we got closer to Alaska and traveled its interior.

We spent one of our nights on the Cassier at a place called Moose Meadows which was a combination resort, canoe camp, and hunting camp located at Dease Lake. Their meager electric power came from a large diesel-powered generator. We were parked with our RV’s living room windows overlooking a silvery river and lake with towering mountains in the background. We marveled at the beauty we could see out any of our windows just by parking in a place like that! We met two German couples traveling in a rented RV who were parked near us in the same camp for the night. They were laughing, singing, drinking beer, and doing schnapps shots around their campfire. I greeted them with some of my limited German conversational phrases, and they seemed to appreciate my effort to communicate with them in their own language. They cheerfully invited us to join them for schnapps shots, which we did.

This structure is one we came to see in many places all over the NW Territories and Alaska. It was located at our campground on Dease Lake. It is a bear-proof storage shed. They were quite decorative, very tall, and built like a bomb shelter. You would store your food in the very top part. It is designed to keep grizzly bears from getting into your food cache. They are quite symbolic of the far north and they actually work.

Later, the Germans watched with interest as Paul and I walked out along a very narrow board connecting the shore to a floating dock so we could look at and listen to some loons. We made it out to the dock just fine, but on the way back across the teetering board, Paul got across it, but I lost my balance and fell off of the board into the freezing cold lake. The Germans howled with laughter as I hauled myself out of the lake, soaking wet, but I laughed along with them. Embarrassing to be such a klutz! I think it may have been their generous schnapps shots kicking in, though.

We crossed into the Yukon Territory a few miles southwest of Watson Lake which is located in Yukon Territory and by the next afternoon, we arrived in Watson Lake, Yukon, where we joined up with the famed Alaska Highway. I will tell you about that leg of our journey in another post.

A Nascar Experience

Nascar has been big in the news with the massive 25-car pile-up happening last week in Talladega. Every time something like this happens, people call for making it “safer” but that isn’t really why people go to Nascar races, is it? People go to see the pile-ups. I want to share our one Nascar experience with you. Interesting as it was, one is all we will ever need.

Back in November of 2003, Paul, Dan, and I took a road trip over to the Phoenix International Raceway (PIR) to attend the Checker Auto Parts 500 NASCAR Winston Cup Series race. We had always heard that there is nothing like the experience of attending a NASCAR race live – seeing the race cars up close and feeling the power of them racing around the mile-long oval track. Well, they were right. It was an unbelievable experience.

As an aside, the race is called a “500,” but it is neither 500 miles long, nor 500 kilometers long, nor 500 laps. It turns out it is 312 miles long – 312 laps. I have no idea why this is so.

The gates opened at 8 AM for the 1:30 PM start of the televised race. We were advised to arrive very early and take advantage of seeing all the exhibits, etc. that surrounded the track area. There were sample racecars, racecar safety exhibits, driver booths and official souvenir and memorabilia booths, corporate sponsor exhibits, etc. And there were many, many food booths including the usual hot dog and hamburger stands, Philly Cheese Steaks, fresh Hawaiian Bar-B-Q chicken dinners, ribs, sandwiches, turkey legs, and just about anything else you might want to eat unless what you wanted was a salad or anything vegetarian. They also had beer vendors – LOTS and LOTS of beer vendors – all selling pint aluminum cans of Bud or Bud Light. There was some Miller and Miller Light, but by far, the dominant beer sold absolutely everywhere in this enormous race complex, was Bud and Bud Light.

We were probably the only people of the 100,000 fans who weren’t wearing racing t-shirts and hats, or other racing “flair,” etc. However, we didn’t seem to be the typical NASCAR racing fan in many respects. One, we were sober; two, we didn’t have any tattoos; number three, we didn’t have mullet haircuts; and number four, we weren’t totally decked out in racing paraphernalia. The racing fan demographic according to the Arizona Republic for a typical PIR race attendee is that they are white; make at least $50,000 per year, and average 30 – 45 years of age. Two out of three isn’t bad, I guess. I don’t think any of us noticed a “person of color” at this event but we did notice that nearly everyone was pretty drunk, many with cans of beer in each hand. That way you don’t have to stand in line twice.

Dan and I didn’t look much different than a lot of the other fans except that we had no racing stuff on. Dan looked fine but I maybe should have chosen something other than bib overalls.

As you can see from the price on this ticket – $45.00 – and we needed THREE of them for our family – that you better be making at least the $50,000.00 per year if you are going to spend much time going to these events.

Our seats were located half way up a large grandstand on turns 3 and 4, had a great view of the whole track, as well as a look right down the back straight-away and turn 2. We couldn’t see “pit row” but those seats had been sold out since last year. We were very satisfied with our location.

We ate lunch before the race was to start (Paul and I had Hawaiian Bar-B-Q chicken, and Dan, the Philly Cheese Steak) in our seats and watched the pre-race shows and introductions. The stands rapidly filled up as race-time approached, and there was a heart-stopping low fly-over by some Air Force F-16s right after the National Anthem was sung by all. The racecars all fired up their engines at once and began circling the track behind the official pace car, lining up in the proper pre-determined order before the checkered flag dropped.

Then they were off. The roar of the mega-horsepower engines of the 43 cars in the race was absolutely deafening. It literally, shook the whole earth in our region. It was an incredible experience – just as promised. Everyone was on their feet cheering for their favorite drivers. We all favored Dale Earnhardt, Jr. in car # 8 and Dan and I were also rooting for Bobby Labonte in car # 18. We were cheering for Bobby for the sole reason that when Dan needed a folder for his Art History papers, the only folders I could find in our local Foothills grocery store either had Bob-the-Builder children’s graphics or a green one with Bobby Labonte’s car # 18 racing scenes. I chose the race car-scene folder and Dan decided to just “live with it.” So in honor of his Art History folder, we cheered for the ‘not-likely-to-win-this-race’ Bobby Labonte.

As the cars roared past us, the entire air was filled with the pungent odor of the exhaust from the 110-octane fuel used by the cars, which smells very different from ordinary car exhaust, and the acrid smell of their overheated rubber tires on the track pavement. Dry, desert dust swirled and mingled with these automotive odors every time the cars passed our stands. The cars created their own winds and we were blasted with micro-bursts of hot wind as they sped past our stands at over 100 miles per hour.

We did get to see one crash. The little yellow car on the far right side of this photo is sideways and you can see dust and debris flying around. Thank Heavens it wasn’t Bobby Labonte!! It was certainly nothing approaching the drama of the 25-car crash at Talladega on Oct. 8, 2012, but at least we got to see a crash. It would have been a shame to shell out most of $150.00 (mucho tax on those tickets over in Phoenix) and spend the entire day on this event and not see one crash!

And, ah! The noise, noise, noise, noise! Paul put earplugs in his ears, but Dan and I wanted to experience it all – totally. That is what we paid $45 each, drove 175 miles each way, and fought all those crowds to experience. Dan drank Bud Light and we all ate gnarly food, and cheered for our favorite drivers right along with the savvy, seasoned race fans around us. It was everything we had ever heard it would be and more. The collective favorite driver, Dale Earnhardt in car # 8, won the race by a mere .735 of a second.

You can only imagine the scene as the race finished. The crowds were overwhelming, but orderly, as we started making our way back to where our car was parked way out in one of the general parking lots. Our lot was about 2 miles west of the racetrack. We had ridden a little tram wagon from the parking lot to the track early in the morning when we arrived. However, you can imagine 100,000 people lining up to take these few little tram wagons back to their cars, a few people at a time.

Forget it!! We’d still be waiting for a tram if we hadn’t decided to just walk all the way back to the car. It was a very long trek at the end of an exciting and exhausting day. We collapsed in the car when we finally got to it, but then we quickly realized that it was going to take a LONG time to get all those cars, trucks, and motor homes out of the many, many lots on the only two roads leading out.

There was one other problem. There was only an occasional cluster of portable toilets scattered out in these parking lots and the lines for these were unbelievable. Dan stood in line for over 45 minutes to use one and reported back to us that the toilets needed some serious pumping out after so many people had been using them all day. He said the only reason he could use it at all is because he was a guy. For me to use one, having foolishly worn the bib overalls, I would have had to strip from the waist down and stand up on the seat. I decided this sounded like a risky maneuver for an old lady to try inside a small, portable toilet! I was almost considering offering someone in one of the motor homes $10.00 to use their bathroom. It made me miss our own little RV more than ever.

It was a full two hours AFTER we got back to our car before the traffic in our lot started moving. We hadn’t had any dinner and it was after 9 PM. We were facing a 3-hour drive back to Yuma. We snaked our way out of the lot and back to the main road leading toward Yuma. We stopped at a Taco Bell in Gila Bend just 5 minutes before they closed, and then made the long drive across the empty desert to home. We got back to Yuma at midnight.

We had experienced a very fun day together. Dan remarked that he’d never be able to see a NASCAR race on TV again without remembering all the sights and sounds and smells of actually being at a NASCAR race live. We don’t watch hardly any TV at all, so seeing a race on TV isn’t something that is likely to happen, anyway. It would never look quite the same or as ordinary as it looks on the television. We laughed and talked about it most of the way home.

I just wanted to share our fun, crazy experience with you all.

The Desert Bar in Arizona’s Buckskin Mountains

In 2001, Paul and I lived in our RV in Quartzsite, Arizona from Oct. 10, 2000 until May 1st of 2001. We had many adventures during our time there and visited many strange and different places in the south western desert region. You can’t begin to imagine what you find hidden away in the wilds of Arizona.

On a sunny day in February of 2001, we tagged along with a loosely organized bunch of off-roaders from our RV Park for a trip to a place called the Desert Bar. A few of the people on this trek knew where it was located and how to get there. There are NO directions for how to find this place, so you just have go along with someone else who knows. There are no advertisements for it anywhere – it is a strictly word-of-mouth kind of place. We heard some people talking about it in the laundry room of our RV Park and they invited us along.

We met up in the park and headed out at 10 AM sharp. We caravanned up Hwy. 95 from Quartzsite to Parker, Arizona. Parker is a small desert town located 117 miles north of Yuma, right on the Colorado River. It is a major crossroads linking California, across the river, with many other places that people have actually heard of. There is a bridge across the Colorado River at Parker, which makes it special. There aren’t too many routes across the Colorado in Arizona. In fact, there are only 3 crossings in a 300 mile stretch. This does not count some kind of rumored make-shift ferry run by Indians, down a hair-raising dirt road through deep sand a few miles south of Parker. It informally connects the 2 halves of the Colorado River Indian Reservation bisected by the river. Someday, we may drive down there and find out more about it.

After driving about 5 miles north of Parker, our lead vehicles made an abrupt right turn onto and oh-my-God-no gravel road that headed roller-coaster style up into the Buckskin Mountains. The road was unmarked but shortly down it was a warning sign “Primitive road – no maintenance, proceed at your own risk.” We later learned it is called the Cienega Springs Road, but there were no signs indicating this. You just had to know. It was just our kind of place!

We stopped momentarily while Paul got out of our 4×4 truck and locked the four-wheel drive hubs in place. I was driving as Paul was recovering from a broken arm. I shifted into four-wheel drive and we wound our way slowly up this unimproved road for 5 miles through rock and cactus-strewn desert wilderness until we came to our destination – the Desert Bar.

And what a stunning sight we were greeted with! It was a Fred Sanford-style remake of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin. It was a mish-mash of corrugated tin structures connected to the parking lot by a covered pedestrian bridge which spanned a desert wash. In the parking lot itself, was a 3-story tall steeple made of solid steel which served as an outdoor church. All religions are welcome to pray there but there are no formal services held there. It is just a steeple – no pews or seats or building. They wanted it to be separated from the bar by the wash, so it was located by the parking lot. Their literature said that you could have your wedding there by special arrangement, and by paying a fee.

The very tall structure you see in the main area on the post card is a cooling tower which is attached to the bar. It works something like a swamp (evaporative) cooler, except it doesn’t have a fan. They wet down pads in the top of it, and when the water evaporates, the cooler air falls to the bottom giving the bar a nice cool air flow.

The entire place is run completely off solar energy. There were solar panels mounted on absolutely everything. There were no electric lines into the area. There was a makeshift stage where a live, six-piece band was performing, complete with electric guitars, amps, keyboards, etc. Paul went around behind the stage to see what was powering the band’s equipment, thinking he would perhaps find a generator, but he found only a 2500-watt inverter running off of the solar panels! Amazing! This was 2001when solar was still in its infancy!

There was no potable running water. All the water in the place used to be hauled in by an old fire truck, but recently they drilled a well so they could put in flush toilets to replace the outhouses. The pump on the well operates on solar power like everything else. The restroom buildings were out back beyond the horseshoe pits, down a very steep hill, and were made out of the native desert stone with corrugated tin roofs and doors. Forget handicap access.

The bar itself was made of re-claimed plywood and all the windows in it were made of used refrigerator/freezer doors from old supermarkets. Funny, we never thought about that as a possibility when we remodeled houses in the past. The bar served Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Miller Light, Coke, Diet Coke, club soda, and Seven-Up. You could order a few common mixed drinks, but you needed to have your own drinking water with you. There was an octagon-shaped wood-fired heater in a corner in case it was chilly out. They sold T-shirts and post cards.

The eating area was down in front of the stage. Another area sold grilled hamburgers, veggie burgers, hot dogs, vegetarian chili, and small bags of potato chips. We opted for the chili and Paul chose a Coors Light and I had a club soda. We ate while listening to the band serenade us with a selection of Wayne Newton songs and some old country tunes. What they called “rock” was not identifiable. The place was packed by off-road bikers and the dune buggy set, and a whole lot of blue-hairs. What a hoot!

The Desert Bar was an energy conservationist’s wet dream. Solar energy is used to the max. The place was only open on weekends from Labor Day until Memorial Day, from noon to sunset. They weren’t open at night – the only light fixtures I saw there were oil lamps made out of Mason jars in ornate handmade ironwork frames. However, they are open on one night only; on New Year’s Eve.

By the way, they don’t allow drinking in their parking lot. I can’t imagine why you’d want to, but they felt a need to post a sign, just in case. It must have been a problem at some time in their past. Maybe because the church steeple is next to the lot?

It was well worth the trip as we had seen nothing so funky since our previous September’s visit to a place over by California’s Salton Sea called The Slabs (another story). I’d love to find out if the Desert bar is still in existence after all these years. Just imagine how much it may have changed! Maybe we could get a group of adventuresome Yuma people to go visit it? Anybody interested? Let me know and I’ll find out if they are still there, and we can plan a caravan up there some Saturday afternoon.