First stop: dinner at the Black Pearl restaurant located in the Pirate's Nest RV park. It is located right on the Colorado River, has good food and great views.
Second stop was the Swansea Mine Ghost Town. Mark and I were both riding our Suzuki DR650 bikes. As a point of perspective: I'm a beginner off-road rider, who has crashed the bike three times in less than a year of riding. Crashing hurts. End result is that I'm a little (lot) more cautious than most others out on the trails. This was still a relatively easy ride out to the mine area. Mark did have to get my bike up a steep curve with a lot of loose dirt and rock.
After the Swansea mine in the morning, we had lunch at the Desert Bar (Nellie E. Bly Saloon). It was packed. Apparently going to the Desert bar on NYE is a thing. Who knew. I would have preferred to visit on a less-crowded day. The dirt road to/from the Desert Bar was jam-packed, mostly with four-wheel drive trucks and ATV's. Only saw a few other dirt bikes. It was easily passable on the DR650.
After the Desert Bar, we rode across the Parker Dam to the California side of the Colorado River. Found some local donkeys rambling by the road. The next few pictures were taken from my phone on the new quad lock system that Mark got me for Christmas.
More snaps of Parker Dam.
Next stop: Quartszite Arizona and the Hi Jolly tomb. It's a short trip from Parker to Quartszite. Hi Jolly was the nickname of the guy who herded camels when the army explored a camel regiment. I'm not joking. Google it.
We had planned to stop for lunch in Quartszite, but it rained on us during the ride, so we rode around on the Sun Corridor Trail for a few miles, before heading back to warm up in Parker.
