London Bridge

We had a beautiful day of weather yesterday for our visit to see London Bridge. It was sunny and warm with a nice breeze that kept us comfortable. Mike had a prescription waiting for pick-up at the closest Walgreen's, which happened to be in Lake Havasu City, home of London Bridge. Yes...THAT London Bridge. It's worth clicking right here to read the Wikipedia page with its story. It's interesting. If you don't feel like reading, there's a good slide show included with pictures of the bridge, both old and new.

But let's just back up a moment for the morning's activities. First and foremost, the kitties are happy we're facing in the right direction here so they can soak up the morning rays. Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

We got off to a late start. We were having trouble with our DirecTV satellite dish staying homed in on the proper satellite, and Mike spent some time on the phone with a customer service representative troubleshooting the problem. We finally got the satellite dish hooked-up with the satellite, and then we took off to meet the day.

Starting out, we crossed over the Bill Williams River. From Mike's side, it looked like this:

The water is beautifully blue in color. From my side, it looked like this. At this point on the road, we'd crossed the boundary into the Bill Williams River National Wildlife Refuge.

We were on our way to Walgreen's to pick up Mike's prescription. When we reached Lake Havasu City, we saw the sign for the bridge.

As it turns out Walgreen's was mobbed. While Mike waited in line, I ran around the store and did some of our grocery shopping. We spent about $80 there all-tolled, and so we didn't feel a bit guilty leaving our car in their parking lot for the short walk to the bridge.

This seemed like an incredible stroke of luck since parking our big dually truck almost always turns into a fiasco in busy places. As we set out down the main drag, we could see the bridge just over the first rise.

At the top was a little monument and plaque.

Although they weren't identified, I'm assuming these bronze guys are the two "city founders."

Overhead...that's the Arizona state flag on the right.

We could just barely see it from this vantage point.

We walked down some stairs to get to the river level. On both sides of the street and, one assumes, both sides of the river were love locks padlocked to the bridge railing. We've seen this in Spokane too. You can read the story associated with this custom right here.

Down on the river level, we walked under the bridge and came out on the sunny side, where we had a good view.

There's a very nice park and walkway here. Mike was planning to fly his drone, and so we carefully read all the signs, looking for anything that indicated drones were prohibited.

So far, so good.

Nothing here...

Hey you over there...no jumping!

Apparently, nobody thought to prohibit drone flying yet, and so we walked on our way, looking for a place with as few people as possible.

We took up residence on one of the benches. Looking left, it looked like this:

Looking straight ahead...

Mike attracted a bit of a crowd...mostly people with little boys in tow...and then he flew his drone out over the bridge and back again. Here's his video. If you can't see it, then click right here.

That pretty much sums up our visit. When you've seen it, you've seen it. Everything here was free, and so it was a fun little outing, and a nice walk. On the way back, we passed by this pretty bougainvillea.

We walked back up these stairs to get back to our car.

After that, we visited a quilt shop. It was a good one...I'll tell you about it in a separate post.

Driving back, we stopped off at a scenic viewpoint at the wildlife refuge.

Back at the RV park, we walked out to the river. There were a lot of birds there, including dozens of coots. They were onshore as we approached, but ran for the water before we could get a look at their feet. You might recall my mention of their feet when we visited the Merced National Wildlife refuge.

Also, Canada geese. Show me a body of water, and I'll show you some Canada geese.

Also, a mallard pair, although I only took a picture of the male.

And these two. What do you suppose is going on with the color on the one in front? Is it a youngster changing colors?

Looking left, there is a bridge...

Looking right...more river.

Straight ahead, the mountains. There's a "chimney rock" formation out there.

Mike took some more drone footage here, but it wasn't particularly share-worthy. He was just having fun. And you know it's a good day when I come home with both a refrigerator magnet and a shot glass.

We didn't do all of our grocery shopping, and so we'll do that today. Also, we want to pay a visit to Parker Dam, just up the road. We aren't particularly interested in dams, but we've seen two so far this trip. We figure, why not? Also near the dam is the visitor center for the national wildlife refuge. There is an auto tour and some short trails, and so that seems like a worthwhile thing to do as well. This is our last day here in Parker. Tomorrow we'll be heading back to California and toward home. There's still lots to see before we get there.