Re-Charging near Cibola National Wildlife Refuge

Oh goodness, it’s amazing how quickly two weeks can pass us by like the blink of an eye.

At our last travelogue, we were wrapping up our first ever visit to Quartzsite. Instead of waiting in line at one of the dump stations in town after our boondocking stay off Plomosa Road and paying nearly $20 to dump and fill the water tanks, we instead opted to head to a park in Blythe, CA.

Hidden Beaches RV Park (our review) was just what we needed – access to a full hook-up site for the night so we could thoroughly rinse the waste tanks, take indulgent hot showers, give the bus a thorough interior cleaning, get laundry done and stock up on groceries.

At $16 for the night (with our 50% Passport America discount), it was well worth breaking our boondocking streak for a night.

After a restful reset, we headed 20 miles south towards Cibola National Wildlife Refuge along the CA/AZ state line and Colorado River – where we had a rendezvous planned with Nina & Paul. It had been two whole weeks since we last saw them in Borrego Springs.

Our mutual friends Rick & JoAnne are volunteering this season at the refuge, and had tipped us off that the area is surrounded by BLM (Bureau of Land Management) public lands with ample and relatively unoccupied boondocking.  And, top it off with reports of great cellular signal – it sounded like the perfect re-charge after weeks of social overload.

Our arrival was a bit challenging involving a near sinking into a soft spot – but we managed just fine to avert a crisis and plopped ourselves down in our own slice of boondocking bliss.

Our friends arriving.. taking the road up nice and slow.

Oops…. hit a soft spot. No worries, a couple boards and some oomph on the throttle got us out to safe ground.

Reflections on Cibola National Wildlife Refuge

We arrived a couple days ahead of Nina & Paul, and soaked in some much needed solitude.

It had been so long since we were completely on our own, that it was almost surreal. We love our social RVing life, but it’s so nice to get a few days here and there.. alone.

Once they arrived (Nina’s rather poetic account of their visit), we each had ample space to ourselves while still being nearby neighbors to share in meals, happy hours, Super Bowl Sunday and the wonderful deep conversations we just love with these guys.

We also joined up with Rick & JoAnne and their friends Joe & Murlene (also volunteering at the refuge) for a happy hour, and they gave us a private tour of the refuge as well.

Aside from some light and manageable socializing, we both got hit with a wave of cold-like symptoms that took us down for a couple days.

Once recuperated, we did copious amounts of hiking and got lots of work done (exciting, huh?).

We’re off to a great start on the re-fresh of The Mobile Internet Handbook for 2015, a map update to our app Coverage? (which shows where you’re likely to find cellular signal across the nation for the four major carriers – we created it for selfish reasons, obviously) and did a nice round of tweaks around the blog (there’s a new travel plans/route map over there on the sidebar).

We also started a new little project for the new year – monthly travel video logs. Here’s our first installment for January:

(Direct Video Link)

A fun way to wrap-up our month on the road inside of a few minutes, ideal for those who prefer keeping track of us that way instead of blog posts.  Initial reaction tells us it’s a hit – so we’ll keep it up.  We also started issuing a monthly wrap-up newsletter as an option to our blog e-mail subscriptions (we welcome you to subscribe if you’d like to start receiving it.)

So, that’s about it. It was an absolutely delightful and perfect stay near Cibola National Wildlife Refuge – exactly what we needed. We stayed our entire 14-day BLM limit, and just loved the surroundings, the solitude and the wildlife.

Our idea of a luxurious RV ‘resort’ – wide open space around us!

Our only sounds were flocks of wild geese and sandhill cranes over the refuge, the braying of wild burros who inhabit these lands and bombing at the nearby Yuma Proving grounds over the mountain range.

Our sights, were amazing – endless magnificent sunsets and amazing moonlight nights. We had ample solar power the entire time, and even with a couple rain showers and cloudy days, we never needed to run the generator to keep up with our long working days/nights.

What’s Next?

Our buddies have headed a bit north for further explorations, while we’ve relocated to the Yuma, AZ area – where we’ll stay put for a bit and hope to knock out the book refresh with some super intense work days. From here, we’ll spend the next month meandering our way towards Tucson for the Escapee’s Escapade.

We have a lot to get done in the coming weeks.. and we’re excited about it all!