Slab City, CA

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Slab City is a community area out from the town of Niland. An alternative lifestyle, quirky and good for taking a photo, but please, would you really want to live there?

Slab City
We didn’t get to the mud pots as we couldn’t find them and didn’t try very hard as the person at the information centre said they weren’t working very much any more as the geothermal power station had reduced the pressure underground which in turn had stopped the pots from spurting everywhere.

too salty for the trees to survive
The wildlife refuge at the end of Sinclair road was closed probably due to the fact the wetlands had dried up, so therefore there was no birdlife.

The road to the Colorado River isn’t that far the Mexican border and we ended up going through a border check but because we didn’t think we would be going over any borders we didn’t have our passports. Apart from being told we should carry them all the time, the guy didn’t seem too worried about us.

Colorado River near Parker

We picked up a 12v personal fan for our van in Parker as it’s still in the high 30’s that feels like 40 as the heat is very dry - my nails are breaking off! We found a lovely campsite in the Parker Dam area called Crossroads which only had three other vehicles and the camp host. We have shade and water frontage and plenty of room. The water was freezing but we were so hot we just had to keep going in. Mid afternoon a burro (donkey) came out of the bushes so I grabbed my camera and he just kept coming towards me. It turns out he is a regular and the lady near us passed on some carrots, given to her by the previous people at her campsite, for us to feed the burro. The jet skiers and power boats go up and down the river late into the night. We don’t see any water skiers until the next day. One more day of oppressive heat and we moved on.

We decided we would go to the Grand Canyon via Oatman which is a wild west town but unfortunately we missed the gun shoot out. Oatman is on the old route 66 road which has some lovely scenery.

Some spectacular scenery along this route
Location: Slab City, CA 92233, USA

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