Kofa National Wildlife Refuge
The Kofa National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona is 677,400 acres of Federal preserve, of which 547,700 acres are designated as wilderness. The designation protects them from further development or mining activity. The name “Kofa” derives from the King of Arizona mine which is located within the boundaries of the preserve. It consisted of four separate claims for underground mines which produced gold and silver from 1896 sporadically until 1939 when the last commercial operations ceased. The local mountains are also called the Kofa Mountains.
This is pure Arizona desert with significant mountains in the area. The La Pas plain extends down the valley towards Yuma and on into Mexico and this sits on the eastern side. Camping is allowed, but restricted to no more than 14 days per year in the preserve. We passed through a region of BLM (Bureau of Land Management) territory between US 95 south of Quatzsite on the way here. We were only about 18 miles south of Quartzsite along the Palm Canyon road.
Camping is restricted to previously used campsites along the marked roads. It is interesting in that the roads were graded last fall to open up ditches and build significant berms between the road and the sites. It would be challenging to get a high clearance vehicle through that let along a motorhome. Other than being very dusty, there was no problem driving in, but there were some of the sites that we couldn’t get into. We had a chance to talk to one park host couple who said they had tried to open up some of the sites, but it was tough going with only a shovel and a rake.
We parked the rig and used the Jeep to scout out possible sites. There really are only a few, but some of them could accomodate more than one rig, but we found three or four that we could get into and looked promising. We ended up with one far enough away from the large chunk of rock that forms Palm Canyon where we it was right in front of us, and far enough away to get a full view through the windshield.
Front Window View
Not a bad view to wake up and open the drapes for a view over your morning coffee, is it?
If you’re not familiar with the desert, this seems a forsaken place, but living in El Paso for several years and we grew to like it. While there are big horn sheep within the preserve, all we’ve seen so far are a few lizards and a couple of jack rabbits. Fortunately, no snakes and we haven’t even heard a coyote.
Vegetation here has to be hardy, and is mostly cresotoe bush with various cacti and other desert plants thrown in. The most interesting is the “jumping cholla” cactus. It doesn’t really jump, but one of my dogs thinks it does. He picked up a major piece of branch which has about a zillion spines on it on his back leg. I am sure it was painful because of the way he yelped, and I yelped when I was working on getting it out, he jumped, and hit me with it so I had to pick spines out of my knee as well. These are the kind of needles (they are actually considered leaves) with microbarbs that are like a miniature fish hook and hurt when you pull then out. Ironically, when he jumped, the thing got caught in his tail fur and that pulled it our of his leg all at once. I would have been picking out stickers for a long time if I did it one at a time. Then all I had to do was wrap it in more tail fur and cut the fur to remove it. These are the “furry” things in the picture below. Beautiful, but deadly painful if you get into them. The sections fall off easily (hence the name jumping cholla) and then blow around in the desert wind. I think that’s how they propagate as those little sections seem to then take root.
Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, Arizona
February 6, 2017
