Finding Earth People near Blythe, California

 

The next day we crossed the Colorado to Bullhead City, right across from Laughlin, to drive to Blythe, California, where we had booked us in for the night. The idea that this road -Hwy 95 - would be the more scenic, quieter one of the ones leading south from Laughlin was soon to be dispersed, however: Bullhead City with its restaurants, commercial and professional buildings seemed to stretch forever, and traffic was heavy. Jet boat sales and rentals seemed to be a major business here. Only when we reached Needles, where much of the traffic continued on on the I-40 while we continued on Hwy 95, we could enjoy the more relaxed pace.

Looking for something to do around Blythe I found several hikes on AllTrails in the morning. Closer research once we reached our Motel 6 in Blythe showed, however, that most of the hikes I saw were in Joshua Tree NP, about an hour and a half or so away, and thus not what we wanted. The only thing left were the 'Blythe Intaglios' – but they, too, were not right around the corner: had I checked this out a bit more carefully I would have seen that we had to go back north on Hwy. 95 for about 20km, so it would have made more sense to do this on the way. There was nothing for it, we had to bite the bullet if we wanted to do anything but walk the streets of – from our end of town anyway – rather unappealing Blythe.

Google Maps and our Garmin GPS had slightly different ideas where to find the trailhead (in the end Google turned out to be right), so we drove past the turnoff and decided to go for a walk right where we were. There was no guarantee that we'd find the right one. This walk took us through the desert on a trail that seemed to be mostly used by ATVs, though we didn't meet anybody just then. Had we continued for a couple of hours longer we likely would have reached the foot of the mountains to the west of us, but we decided to turn around at a little knoll which – a nice surprise after the almost barren trail we had walked on – was studded with cacti, some of them quite close to bloom.

Lo and behold, on the way back keeping our eyes open even more than on the way north, we found the turnoff to the Intaglios and visited them, too. These geoglyphic 'Earth People' are giant figures made on the desert floor by ancient peoples. There are different ways they could have done that, but nobody knows for sure. They are just as mysterious as the petroglyphs we have seen elsewhere.