History in Granite

We went to this outdoor museum called History in Granite. It is a few miles into Calfornia from Yuma -- out in the middle of nowhere. It is an amazing place with rows of granite walls. Each wall has a different part of world history on it. The history starts at the beginning of time and eventually will go through all of the ages of man. History of different countries is in the original language with english on the bottom.

The detail etched in the granite is incredible. There is also a chapel you can see on the hill and a small pyramid (not shown). If you pay the extra $3 you can go in the pyramid and then get a certificate saying you have been to the center of the world. I also took a picture of the "Arm of God" that is used as a sundial and points at the time. They don't have many of the walls done yet but it will be impressive when its all done. There are better pictures of the place on line -- just type in history in granite

Spook Canyon

Our hike this past week took us to Spook Canyon. It is in the Gila Mountains and in order to get there you have to travel inside the Barry Goldwater military range -- by permit only-- which is nice becasue there are never many people out there.

The canyon gets it's name from the spooky lights you can see there on a moonless night. They think that the rocks give off something that causes the "lights". It's like seeing the aurora in the northern night sky.

It was a beautiful canyon with steep walls and you could see where big boulders have come down. There were also saguaro cactus growing right out of the rock in the steep walls.

We were thinking that the name of spook canyon is because the canyon is narrow and if there were an earthquake it would be dangerous (spooky) to be there. Of course on Sunday we did get to feel our first earthquake. -- just a slight sway to the trailer -- like a big gust of wind hit it.

American Girl Mine & Picacho Area

We were over on the California side of the Colorado for our latest adventures. We went jeeping with a friend from our park. We first went to an area where he had found a gold nugget stuck to some quartz. No such luck for us. We then went to see the American Girl mine area. They mined cyanite here which is tiny clear crystals that are needed in the processing of iron ore.

We hiked over in this same area in the Picacho Recreation area. We hiked up No Name Wash and saw these huge birds nests. They have to be for some kind of large hawk or something else equally large. We also took a detour after our hike and went to "Graffitti Hills" Out in the middle of the desert there are hundreds of names spelled out in rock. People have raked the area clean and then spelled out their names, etc with the raked up rocks. We drove at least a mile and there were names covering the desert on both sides of the road. It is amazing -- someone said they had seen one that was there since the 50's. I don't know when it really started.

Betty Lee Mine - and summer plans!

We went out on the Barry Goldwater range and got to see the Betty Lee mine and some smaller ones around it. Jim is coming out of one -- he just went in the entrance. It's dangerous and illegal to go in any abandoned mines. It is amazing to see the work they had to go through to mine out here in the middle of the desert.

The mine with the train track coming out had a huge vein of beautiful rock at the top of the entrance -- you can see some of the color. It took us over an hour just to get out to these mines by jeep. I can't imagine how hard it was to get equipment and everything you needed to live out here with no real roads just dry washes to try and navigate.

We also went on an hour and a half jeep ride out to an area on the California side of the Colorado river where we collected rock -- pastelite. It's pretty multicolored rock with quartz and jasper in it. This hill with the person on top was one giant peice of this stuff. It was great fun and everyone got bags and bucketfuls of the rock.

Our big news for the week is that we have accepted a job up in Washington for the summer. We will be working at the campground owned by the town of Coulee City, Washington. It is 30 miles south of the Grand Coulee Dam. We are very excited because the walleye fishing is excellent there. We start on April 7th -- we are leaving here by the first of April and making a beeline up there.