Kofa National Wildlife Refuge

Monday, January 6, 2020 — Today we headed out to explore Kofa!

Kofa National Wildlife Refuge is a huge area – over 665,000 acres! But it doesn’t start until about 7 miles from the main road, so we had quite a drive, on not so good roads! We were only able to drive about 10-12 MPH!

But we saw some awesome scenery on the way! Wide open desert!

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This was our first time seeing a Jumping Cholla Cactus!

These little guys are amazing! If you get too close to it, it “jumps” out and attacks you! See the little pieces on the ground that it has released?

I got too close to one of those little pieces on the ground, and it stuck to my shoe! And what a time I had getting it off of there!

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This was also our first time seeing the Candlewood Ocotillo Plant. This just reminds me of those water plants that you put in the bottom of fish tanks! LOL. 

When I stood in front of this plant, we realized it was about 18-20 feet tall! And the branches are all covered with these tiny leaf groups, which gives it the green color when looking at it from a distance.

When we finally got to Kofa property, there was an informational kiosk with more information.

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The park is huge, and as you can see on this map, there are several entrances into the park. We chose the first entrance, since our target for today was the Crystal Hill area. The Crystal Hill area is marked by a square in the upper left corner of this map. Yes, that’s how big this place is!

After the entrance to the park, and the kiosk, we had about 2.5 more miles to drive before we reached Crystal Hill. 

We finally made it! They had some designated camping sites there, and we parked in one of those and got out to walk around. Crystal Hill was actually still a bit of a walk away. Looking at the brochure we got from the kiosk, you actually need to walk up the hill in order to find the best rocks. And they have a take limit of 10 rocks or 10 pounds (whichever comes first). Well, since we came in relatively unprepared for a bunch of hiking (no water), we decided that we would put this on our list to try again some other time. And we also needed to do some research on what rocks we would be looking for. 

So, not a terribly successful trip, but we got to see some pretty awesome scenery, and gained a little more knowledge!

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