KOFA National Wildlife Refuge
On Saturday, January 6th, I leave Tucson bound for Kofa NWR. The distance is more than I like to travel in one day, so I stop for the night at Harrah’s AK-Chin Casino near Maricopa, which is just over 100 miles away. Many of the casinos in the west permit RVs to park overnight.
Link to larger photos in this post
Sunday morning I continue west on I-8. In Yuma, I make a quick stop for groceries and fuel at Fry’s. From there it is about 50 miles to the campsite. Last January, I attended an RVForum.net mini-rally at Kofa. We all had a great time and loved the camping there. I was glad when a rally was planned for this January.
An awesome campsite!
There were a few people back from last year as well as several new attendees. It is very informal, but everyone usually gathered around late afternoon. Then after dinner for a campfire. The weather was nice – a little cool at night but not bad.
The mountains behind us would turn red in the setting sun.
What a backyard view!
And some evenings the sky would be pink and blue.
My rig
Desert Hike
One morning, I hiked from camp across the desert, heading north along the west side of the mountains.
Brittlebush was blooming everywhere
When sunlight hits a barrel cactus its red spines seem to glow. I love seeing them.
Pretty barrel cactus
With all the rain there are some plants in bloom.
Blue phacelia
People seem to have a penchant for building cairns. I came across this one is at the top of one of the hills.
Cairn in the desert
And an old car
From a cave above the rusted out car
An old snag
Each day we would see C-17s flying around the area at low altitude. Sometimes parachutists would drop from them.
C-17 transport
North Star Mine
Another day I drove east thru the refuge to North Star Mine. It’s a nice drive across a basin surrounded by jagged mountains. The North Star Mine is located about 2 miles north of the King of Arizona Mine, from which the area gets its name.
Mountains near North Star Mine
A lot of ocotillo in bloom. And many had their green leaves from the recent moisture.
It is so much greener than last year.
The mine is up on a hillside at the end of Road 65. I parked and walked the last half mile. It operated from 1907 to 1911, producing primarily gold, as well as some silver.
North Star Mine
I saw three different tunnel entrances
Old foundations
More ruins
Antares Mine cabin, the only remaining structure
It was late afternoon as I was leaving the mine
It was great to be back at Kofa again. This is one of my favorite places to camp. The dark skies are superb for stargazing. Most nights were clear and the Milky Way was visible. It was nice to see the people who returned from last year as well as meet some new folks.
One night there was a spectacular sunset, but I was lazy and didn’t get my camera out. So I just have these photos of the last night’s sunset. 🙂
Oh my gosh!
Sunset on the evening before I leave Kofa
Deb's RV Travels 
Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.
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Your welcome KJ. Thanks for the comment and for visiting my blog 😀
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Saved the wonderful barrel cactus shot for my desktop slideshow – thanks !! Great shots as usual.
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Thanks Bob! I love the barrel cacti!
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I have uploaded larger size photos that are included in this post to Flickr. There is a link at the beginning of the post to the photo album. If interested, take a look. And please let me know if there is any problem with viewing the photos. I tested it myself, but sometimes the results are different for others. Thanks for any feedback!
Debra
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Well done and works fine in all respects. The added plus is now you have full/larger rez backups in the cloud and can make links to any photo in all future intartube endeavors ;>)
I heard something about Flickr changing policy//going away someplace or another so you might want to look at alternatives. People I know who commercialize their photography on-line seem to like smugmug.com which has lots of features & is not especially spendy to start with.
Would possibly be a bear to transfer everything from past local copies but would keep you out of trouble for a while, LOL. Could just post a curated-for-sale selection there instead of at Flickr or something.
Have fun !
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Hi Bob, thanks for the feedback. Glad to know it works. I believe smugmug actually owns Flickr now. One nice change is now you can create an account with a non-yahoo email. Flickr is changing the free accounts to be limited to 10gb of storage and up to 1000 photos. After that they have a pro level which has unlimited storage and photos. The pro level is $50/yr so pretty reasonable. It will be awhile until I get to 1000 photos 😀
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Yah, looked it up when I got curious after posting – they bought Flickr in April and that probably what I was reading about months ago. Checked their pricing at smugmug too and there are comparable pricing plans there to that one at Flickr. Still, there are other decent choices like Instagram that many bloggers use as well. Have not checked their deal yet. Too many choices… and I am not interested in blogging at all – too lazy. You just can not keep up with what the web offers.
I have online email accounts at many places that I use for specific things – yahoo for stuff I know will get lots of spam, gmail for sparseness, hotmail so I can play masochist, with more duplicates for throwaways, etc. heh Its no big deal and I use KeePass to store all the passwords – works great and keeps them in house so I only need to remember one. Getting old sux
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Gorgeous photos! I’m actually about to check out Kofa as well – so interesting to see your documentation of the same landscape!
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Thanks! I absolutely love Kofa! It’s so quiet and peaceful. And the night sky is beautiful. Hope you enjoy your time there.
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