Friday morning was the official start of our Alpine SoCal group’s “Winter Blast”!  It’s at the SARA (Special Activities and Recreation Area) Park in Lake Havasu City.  We’re here enjoying the 26th Annual Western Winter Blast Pyrotechnics Show.  (Click on the links for more info.)

Here’s our official gathering spot, between the Host and Co-Hosts’ Coaches.

Our agenda for the weekend:

Although on Friday morning we didn’t “officially” have breakfast scheduled – most folks gathered in the morning to enjoy coffee and each other’s company.  Here’s a group of our fellow Alpiners out walking their kids in the morning.

Here’s another shot of a row of elegant Alpines.  17 Coaches are in attendance.

We ended up at the end of a row with no one beside us on either side.  A row or two away from our “gathering spot”.

Since we had time to kill until Happy Hour and Pizza this evening, we jumped into the Silverado and headed into town.  The park is only on the southern outskirts of town, so we didn’t have far to go.

We stopped at a Polaris dealership that had a lot of cool looking off-road vehicles, ATV’s and such… it doesn’t hurt to look, right?

If you have about $30k burning a hole in your pocket – here’s a pretty wild looking new Polaris with a Ford engine you can spend it on.  I thought I’d share a couple pics of this unique vehicle.  Wonder how many they’re selling?

Looks like a fun “toy”… too bad we can’t afford any more “toys” now that we’re retired 🙂

Although difficult to read – the banner says; “Welcome to Lake Havasu City” under the blazing Arizona sun.

We crossed over the London Bridge onto the man-made island to see if anything changed from the last time we were here in January of last year for the Balloon Fest.  Click on the London Bridge link for more info if you don’t already know about it.

We drove down onto the beach and hung out with little dog “Coach” for awhile.  He was here last year too – wonder if he remembers?

The Lake Havasu water isn’t as clear today as I remember it from other times we’ve been here.  Lots of green algae-like stuff floating along the shoreline.  Still pretty though.

The town seems to get bigger each time we see it.

We also stopped at a couple of the lighthouse replicas that dot the landscape in and around Lake Havasu.  I believe there are around 24 of these.  Click here for more info on those if interested.

We watched folks out on their boats, either fishing or just cruising around.  For a brief moment we thought about breaking out the inflatable sea-eagle raft with trolling motor that I carry in the back seat of the Silverado.  Stilla squashed that idea… it was getting late.

Stilla is always on the lookout for German bakeries or such.  So she googled locations in Havasu and came up with this place.  It was more of a fast-food deli and didn’t have what she was looking for.  We walked in and right back out.

After another quick detour at Ross Store, we headed back to the rally site.

We made it back on plenty of time for happy hour and before you knew it – our Pizza had arrived!

David is on the left, Nick on the right.  Nick and Romana Escamilla are our fine hosts for this event.  David and Nicole Guhse are our co-hosts.  And what a fine job they have done so far!  Although it is still early… we can’t give them a rating just yet, right? 🙂

The pizza and salad was fabulous… no one could complain, there were even leftovers for breakfast on Saturday.

And here are some pics of our fellow Alpiners enjoying dinner and each other’s company:

As it got dark, we moved the groups’ ez-up tent out of the way to clear the view for the evening fireworks show.

Another nice Arizona sunset.

Everyone moved their chairs to good positions for the evening’s fireworks show.  I didn’t take any pics of the fireworks… you’ll just have to take my word for it – they were pretty awesome!  The iPhone camera doesn’t do good night-time photos.  Maybe I’ll break out the Canon for some pics later.  We still have a couple more evenings of fireworks… wonder if we’ll be tired of them by then?

Little “Coach” did real well during the fireworks.  He appears to have gotten used to the loud noises… especially if he’s carried 🙂

We did have a couple moments of excitement during the fireworks show on Friday evening.  A couple of them shot way up in the air trailing flames, made slow arcs and came down in our parking area with big thuds.  Fortunately, no big explosions and as far as we all could tell. no rigs were damaged.  Whew… felt like Iraq again for a couple moments…

There were a few long intermissions between firework displays.  At one point, I went back to the Coach and brought back my night-vision device to share with others and look at the stars.   Here’s a pic I took with the iPhone through the night-vision at some of our Alpine friends sitting in their chairs.

And here’s another with Stilla and Nicole looking over the wall, waiting for the next fireworks volley.  Pretty cool, huh?

We’ve been told that the Saturday and Sunday fireworks show are even more impressive… can’t wait to see… it’s been great fun so far.

Stay tuned for day 2 of our Alpine SoCal “Winter Blast” Rally… coming soon.