The West Coast Road Trip that grew - Day 5 Bearizona, London Bridge, Half way to Anaheim

[Libby]

You can find Day 4 Here

Tuesday September 26th 2023

Oh, what an amazing day we'd had yesterday! We were sorely tempted to change our plans and spend the morning back at the Grand Canyon. But if one thing visiting WDW has taught me it's you only have a finite number of days on holiday and don't stress about what you didn't do. As long as you fill your days with good experiences and happy memories that's all that matters.

So we stuck to our original plan of breakfast at the hotel and then a morning at Bearizona before driving to Parker via London Bridge. There is going to be a lot of driving today.

After packing most of our things we headed to the restaurant for a buffet breakfast.

It was really lovely in the restaurant and such a shame that owing to staffing/management difficulties it wasn't open for dinner.

After breakfast we checked out and drove the 45 minutes or so to Bearizona.

I didn't have high hopes for this place but wanted to see some bears and had been encouraged by good comments here on the Dibb.

The place was delightful. Part drive through and part regular wildlife park. We were told we could drive through the enclosures more than once if we wished.

I'm glad we weren't the first car and had someone to follow as, even with the map, it wasn't obvious where to follow a side loop and where to drive straight on. (Afterwards we realised we'd missed out one loop altogether.)

We managed to get very close to the bears that were playing in a pond and to many other native animals.

After about 45 minutes driving around we parked up and went into the rest of the park.

There were a few families and groups of adults, but being a school day not very busy at all.

We noticed some signs that were still up from the height of the Covid pandemic

but no restriction sstill in place.

Despite being quiet they were still running talks and displays on the lawn. We sat in the blazing sun and watched birds of prey, a raccoon and later a porcupine.

The park was dressed for Halloween.

We saw lots of animals with not too many hiding at the back of their enclosures. We were very happy to take advice from small children who were eager to help us spot the animals.

We spent about 2 and a half hours here and felt we'd seen enough. We could probably have kept ourselves amused for another hour especially if we stayed for lunch but the road was calling.

There was a nice looking cafe but we were still quite full from breakfast so decided to drive back to Kingman where we had seen a Cracker Barrel that looked interesting to us.

We retraced our steps from Sunday and drove to Kingman. On arriving at the Cracker Barrel and looking at the menu we decided we'd prefer the offerings at the IHOP next door.

It was getting on for 3pm and we were the only customers.
I'm not sure what we ate, but I know it involved pancakes.

We were now about an hour behind our loose schedule. Not a problem but we'd prefer to get to our hotel in daylight. We are certainly noticing the difference in daylight hours with a late September trip rather than our usual mid August ones.

Next stop is London Bridge. It took about an hour to drive through the very unfamiliar landscape of mountains and desert.

We reached Lake Havasu and it still was light. We parked in the McDonald's car park. (we used McDonald's a lot on this trip for a free loo stop. We didn't often buy anything and no one seemed to bat an eyelid.)

On walking down to the waterside I got real feeling of being at the riverside in Staines (apart from the blazing sun!)

We only stayed a few minutes, but that was all we needed. The resort area looked nice with lots of boats and other water activities; obviously a popular place.

We could feel the daylight running away from us as we drove to our hotel at Parker.

We passed more water, marshes and RV sites. As well as a few RV storage sites.

It ws totally dark by the time we reached Parker. This was the only really scary part of the drive for the whole holiday. It was a very fast road with lots of lorries and we needed to turn left, in the dark, not at a traffic light. DH and I had words and were both quite shaken once safely across the opposite carriageway.

The hotel was a Best Western and was just as fine as any Best Western we've been to. There was a small car park next to the hotel and a big lorry park on the opposite side of the road.

They obviously catered for truck drivers as breakfast was served from 4am!

The middle aged receptionist obviously didn't have many foreign guests and was absolutly smitten by my husband's English accent. When he used the Nato alphabet to give our post code we could see her go weak at the knees. DD and I were in stitches.

Our plan for the evening was to drive out to a restaurant and then hit the Walmart down the road, but after our harrowing left turn to get here we decided to cut our losses and eat at the next door burger king. Once again being some of the very few people that don't get a take away. (I'd rather leave the smell and the mess at the restaurant than in my room or car.)

It was quite late now so we just watched TV until bed time.

Day 6 Here