Cattail Cove State Park

Lake Havasu did not exist until Parker Dam was completed on the Colorado River in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The dam was built to store water and feed the Colorado River Aqueduct, which carries water hundreds of miles across the desert to Southern California, and later the Central Arizona Project that serves Phoenix and Tucson. Backing up the river drowned a stretch of canyon and floodplain and created the reservoir you see today.

This lower Colorado country has been home to Native peoples for a very long time, among them the Mohave and Chemehuevi, whose homelands lie along and near the river. The mountains that rise across the water from Cattail Cove carry the Chemehuevi name, and the river corridor remains central to the tribes of the lower Colorado. When you look across the lake, you are looking at a landscape shaped by both ancient river life and modern water engineering.

The heart of Cattail Cove is its lakeside campground, where sites sit close enough to the water that you can wade in from your tent or trailer. There are boat ramps, a small marina nearby, and a swimming beach where the water stays warm and calm through much of the year, which makes it a favorite with families.

The park is best known, though, for its boat-in campsites. Scattered along the shoreline in coves with no road access, these sites can only be reached by boat or paddlecraft, so they trade convenience for near-solitude. You load your gear into a boat, cross the water, and camp on a little beach of your own, with the lake for a front yard and the desert stars overhead.

The lake and its shoreline draw a surprising amount of life to this dry country. Great blue herons and egrets stalk the shallows, coots and ducks raft up in the coves, and ospreys and other raptors work the water for fish. In spring and fall the lake is a stop for migrating birds moving along the Colorado River flyway.

The desert around the park is classic lower Sonoran and Mohave country, with creosote, ocotillo, and cactus on the rocky slopes. Desert bighorn sheep range in the mountains across the lake, coyotes and jackrabbits move at dawn and dusk, and rattlesnakes and lizards are part of the landscape, so it pays to watch where you step and keep to the trails.

Winter is mild and pleasant here, cool enough for comfortable hiking and quiet enough that the crowds thin out, though the water is cold for swimming, and it is a favorite time for snowbirds escaping colder places. Spring warms quickly and brings desert wildflowers to the slopes and migrating birds to the shoreline, a fine season for both hiking and getting on the water.

Summer is hot, often intensely so, and the lake becomes the whole point, with early mornings and evenings on the water best and the heat of midday spent in the shade or in the lake. Fall cools things back down, the water stays warm from the long summer, and the crowds ease, making it one of the most comfortable stretches of the year to camp and paddle.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.