There were two things we were excited about when planning to go to Lake Havasu City - London Bridge obviously, but also the mini lighthouses we'd read about.
It's pretty weird finding 12 or so lighthouses in the Mohave Desert...until you realise London Bridge is there too.
This is a one-third size replica of the Two Harbors lighthouse on Lake Superior in Minnesota.
OK, so they're not lighthouses like you'd see on the coast of America or the UK. Lake Havasu's lighthouses are mini ones, but they still do their job helping keep boats afloat on Lake Havasu.
The Lake Havasu lighthouses have been built and paid for by local residents and are replicas of bigger functioning lighthouses around the USA and Canada.
This is us by a replica of the Alpena lighthouse on Lake Huron in Michigan. It's not too difficult why people call this the Sputnik.
The Lake Havasu Lighthouse Club was first formed in 2000, when local sailors wanted to improve the navigational lights on Lake Havasu.
They've got a really fun website that shows you where all the lighthouses are and a bit of history about the original lighthouses the replicas are based on. You might want to turn your sound off looking at it, I find it relaxing but I've always been a great lover of the sea.
Each replica lighthouse has a rotating light and some are used to mark the channel around the island in Lake Havasu to guide the boats and small watercraft that use the Lake.
The plan is to fund and build at least 25 of these lighthouses to help safer use of Lake Havasu and be an added tourist attraction to complement the draw of London Bridge.
This one has only just been built and is a replica of the Windpoint Lighthouse in Wisconsin:
The original is 108 feet tall and one of the tallest lighthouses serving the Great Lakes.
I tell you, it's not too hard to imagine what all this desert would have looked like before 1938 when the Parker Dam created Lake Havasu (just imagine this without the blue bit in the middle):
And now because of the deepest dam in the world (yes, really...and yet I still get excited by nerdy facts like this) blocking the Colorado River you get this:
Beautiful turquoise waters, the sound of lapping waves (generating by the wind and speedboats) and an English family who haven't seen the sea in a year overdosing on water pleasures like skimming stones and paddling (hey, it took all my efforts to stop them playing poosticks off London Bridge).
Beautiful water...
Pretty lighthouses...
Wonderfully tacky, cheesy attempts to recreate a little part of England...
Yep, without a doubt we'll be returning to Lake Havasu City whenever we feel a bit homesick.
I can't for the life of me imagine why, but I've got an intense craving for fish and chips now....
I hope you've enjoyed looking around my blog. Why not subscribe so you never have to miss out on my mad ramblings? And why not +1/like/tweet/share some of the posts with your friends and followers? Thank you!
