Suggested by my good friend Wendolyn, who, with her husband Tim, previously camped in the Kofa. That in mind, I decided to explore this vast area after leaving the greater Yuma, Arizona area and Mittry Lake. Traveling north on Highway 95, several irregularly maintained dirt roads enter Kofa eastward off 95 towards Quartsite.
If, as I do, you like to camp in quiet, remote areas, this enormous, very publicly accessible land will satisfy. Campsites are abundant, and access is straightforward. Almost all campsites are easily accessible from the refuge’s main roads. If you go during the winter months, you will initially see quite a few campers within the first mile or so, many of whom likely wanted a break from the scenery of thousands of snowbirds and their rigs in the immediate miles surrounding Quartsite, Arizona.
As a lover of mountains, my first reaction to seeing the jagged, forbidding-looking spires rising from the desert floor was, well, WOW, let’s have a look.
First off, I turned off onto Castle Dome Mine Road, a seriously washboarded gravel road that, at particularly tense moments, I thought to turn around and find another, less rig-jarring way into Kofa. That didn’t happen.
Six or a few more miles in, I came to an intersection where one RV had made camp. To the left, a half mile or so farther, was the Castle Dome Mine Museum, a volunteer-run history tourist destination offering guided tours of the defunct silver mine. While I was tempted to take the mine tour based on museum curator Dave’s interesting intro talk, the old buildings and ramshackle museum provided enough visuals for the time being, so I opted to finish setting up camp and explore on foot near camp. Here’s some of what I saw there.
After saturating myself with the Castle Dome Mine area experience, I rumbled back out to Highway 96 to head north to the next road, King Valley. On the way out, I passed the airport for a ground-tethered dirigible used for border surveillance. Cool!
