Day 6 - Palm Springs to Lake Havasu City

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We set off for Lake Havasu City at about 10.00am, but not long after setting off we had to turn back because I'd left our passports and traveller's cheques in the safety deposit box in the hotel. Doh!

The first part of the trip was on the freeway and big American trucks and big American motorhomes (RVs) heavily outnumbered the cars. This part of the route seemed to go on forever; there was desert on either side running off to mountains in the distance and the view didn't change very much as the road went on in a fairly straight line for over a hundred miles. We then crossed over the Colorado River and turned North to run alongside it all the way to Lake Havasu.

Lake Havasu City sits on the Arizona side of the border between California and Arizona and is about halfway between Palm Springs and the Grand Canyon, making it an ideal stopover on what would have been a 9-hour drive. Two businessmen from here bought the London Bridge in 1968 for 2.5 million dollars and spent another 4.5 million dollars moving it here and rebuilding it. It's now a popular tourist attraction and there is a mini English village built around it. The lake itself is a huge water-sports venue and when we arrived there were hundreds of boats and jetskis running around on it.

The hotel here is more of a collection of chalets built around the lake with a central restaurant and bar area, but we passed an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant on the way in so I think I know where we'll be eating tonight!

It's been another hot day today at 41 or 42 degrees and when we got here the weather was quite good. I went for a swim in the lake and Sam decided to enjoy the air-conditioning and watch some TV but in the space of an hour the wind got up and a huge thunderstorm appeared on the horizon. The receptionist said that late July and early August were the wettest periods of the year here and it had been raining at the Grand Canyon yesterday. Great!

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