Golden Valley RZR  trip:

I have been looking for new places to ride in the South West and have been hearing good things about the Arizona desert around Laughlin and Bullhead City. I always feel more comfortable going to a new place with someone that knows the area, so I posted a thread on the Polaris RZR Forum – RZR Forums.net looking for people that knew the area. Low and behold there was this guy named Phil (Sandjunkie on the forum) that has lived in the area for a long time and was willing to show me some riding areas!!!!!!

After sharing thoughts about a trip on the forum, a few other people got involved and wanted to ride also. Great, the more riders the better.  So Phil picked the last weekend of January and people started signing up. The great thing about many chat forums is that you get a bunch of people that enjoy doing the same types of things that you do. In this case we all had RZR’s and like to ride and camp.

After a couple months of planning and Phil pre-running some routes to make sure they would be good for a big group we had a plan. It was decided that we would camp at Trade winds RV Park in Golden Valley Arizona, an UTV friendly campground with full hook-ups that allowed us to ride straight to the trailhead from the park.

A few of us were able to come out on Friday and we wanted to do a ride before the big group showed up. Once again Phil went and checked out Sleeping Princess OHV Trail a ride that was a little more technical. We had eight people sign up for this ride!! Come Friday morning we started lining up and much to our surprise there was 21 RZR’s ready to go. We had a quick drivers meeting explaining how we had to pass a couple of houses so make sure you show respect to these people and keep the dust and speed down and we were on our way. The scenery was breathtaking; from the tops of some of the hills you could see Lake Mohave and Laughlin. I also learned a little history about the area from Phil’s wife Michelle while we were eating lunch on the trail. The ride was a fun 40 mile loop with temperatures in the high 60’s low 70’s and no wind. Lots of rocks and the dust was bad in sections but that is to be expected. Everyone waited for the person behind them at every turn and nobody got a flat or broke down. We left with 21 RZR’s and came back with the same all running, a perfect ride in my book.

Saturday morning went just as smooth except now we had 31 side x sides lined up and ready to go on this adventure. There were riders from at least seven different states and as far away as Wyoming, Arkansas and Texas. 31 UTV’s and all of them had their own personality with no two looking the same. It was fun just walking up and down the line and looking at everyone’s modifications. We also had a new Ranger RZR XP that a few of us got to drive. Wow is all I can say!!!

Once again we had a quick drivers meeting telling us about the land and to respect properties. This ride was more about site seeing and checking out the scenery type ride because with this many drivers it is hard to do technical stuff. Although we did navigate a couple of sections that were a little tricky no one seemed to have any problems. Even finding a place to stop with this many toys can be a challenge but Phil had picked great trails and everything worked out fine. The group did three stops on this 47 mile loop, with one stop being for lunch. We saw lots of picturesque places and tons of wild life including big horn sheep, a couple deer, lots of donkeys and cows.

The only downside to the Saturday ride is that someone forgot to wait for the person behind them at one of the turns and the group got separated. The # 1 rule on any ride is making sure you know who is behind you and wait for them at every turn. The people in second group had GPS’s so they were able to make it back without any problems.

Saturday after the ride, Frank (handle = FJK) the Polaris RZR Forum – RZR Forums.net Super Moderator, made arrangements for all of us to eat at the restaurant in front of the camp ground. The Off Road Diner (1-928-565-FOOD), a restaurant that loves the off road community was very nice with cool off road drawings all over the walls. Even had a toy hauler drawn on the wall!!!!!! My kind of place.

It was a great trip, plus it is always fun putting faces to all the screen names and making new friends. I would like to thank Phil and Frank for all the hard work they put into this experience and to everyone else that showed up to make it another memory that I will have forever. From something that started out as one person asking a question about an area on a forum to an event that might become an annual occurrence. The Internet can be your friend.

To see many videos of this ride check out YouTube – fjk‘s Channel