Our New Diggings

 We left Yuma a few days before the end of March and headed up to Quartzsite, Arizona.  It is a short 90 mile drive just enough for a shakedown cruise.  Our rig was all clean and shiny from the RV wash service.  It is pretty reasonable to have a rig washed in Yuma and because the tap water is so full of minerals and salt if you wash it yourself you have to wipe it off as fast as you wash it.  Much easier to "pay the guy" who uses reverse osmosis water to do the washing and rinsing.   We also added some cleaner to the holding tanks with some water and let it slosh around on the drive to Quartzsite.  This way it helps loosen crud that may have built up in the tanks from sitting so long.  Our rig is now twelve years old so we need to give it more tender loving care.

When we got to Quartzsite we were excited to get out to the gold claims.  The gold mining club we belong to in Quartzsite added a large new claim so we were anxious to give it a try.   We thought we found a good place to dig in the photo with Jim and his shovel.  He came back out quickly when he realized it was full of  nasty cactus needles.  They were in his shoes and he had gotten some on his gloves.  When we checked closer there was a dead cactus and all of the arms were on the ground blowing around filling the gully up with needles.  So we moved to an area that has piles of dirt that we think are from the nearby gold mine.  It might be dirt they wanted out of the way to get down to the gold veins or it could be tailings that they had run through their equipment.  We have been running this dirt and finding a little bit of gold so we will probably keep at it.

More KOFA

 We tried going out to the valley of names on the California side of the river.  We started to park our trucks and trailers to off load our 4wheelers when the local Indian law enforcement stopped us and told us the reservation was closed and we would have to go another 5 miles to BLM land to park.  Well we started to follow the gravel road and had to turn around and give up because it was too washboardy for our truck.  Our friends kept going and did the ride.  When they got back they told us when they came back on that road lots of people had parked their stuff on the reservation.  We just hit it at the wrong time when someone was around to enforce the no parking thing.  What is strange is even though the reservation is closed their casinos are open which are on reservation land also.

So I'm posting a few more pictures of the KOFA wildlife refuge.  It is such a beautiful area. 

 We are getting ready to move to Quartzsite for the month of April.  We hope to do some more gold prospecting while we are there.  We will then be going up into the White Mountains northeast of Phoenix for the summer.  It should be cool up there and there is lots of 4wheeling trails.  Right now it is still snowing and below freezing at night up there so we aren't in any hurry to get there.

KOFA MINE area

 

When you follow the road back to the KOFA mine area and stop before you get to the road that has a sign indicating no motorized travel then you are close to the mine and the cemetery.  The pictures face toward the mine.  The opposite way is the way to the cemetery.  In order to find the cemetery we had to get on top of a hill and then could see it down below us.  It is an easy walk through a wash  and around the bottom of a hill and there the cemetery was. 

When we went back we headed north at the T in the road and headed north to the Polaris/ Anterres mine area.  We have explored it before but took some new people who enjoyed going into a small opening in the hillside where they stored core samples.  They are pretty colored rock and make a nice little souvenir.   

The weather now is pretty nice staying in the 70's and low 80's with some days only in the 60's but plenty of sunshine.  The only thing that hasn't been pleasant is the wind has been kicking up in the afternoon.  We got caught out in it when we went for a walk.  The sand really stings your legs when it is whipping down the street at 30 miles an hour.  The dust gets stirred up and the mountains disappear in the dust filled sky. All the dust in the air makes for pretty sunrises and sunsets if there are clouds to reflect it.   

 

Desert Pronghorn

 Our ride out toward the KOFA mine took us past the area in the refuge that is closed to any kind of activity.  It is where they reintroduced desert pronghorn back to the area.  There were over 200 animals before mining took off and small towns of people lived out here.  They were pretty much all gone and then the state decided to try reintroducing a small herd to the area.  When we volunteered at the refuge they brought in twelve pronghorn and put them out here inside a mile wide fenced area.  Once they were adjusted to their new surroundings the pronghorn did pretty well.  Now you might see some crossing the highway or even still close to their original starting point.  That is where we saw this small group.  They were just outside of the area that had been closed off for them.  

We stopped and watched them for awhile and they seemed more curious of us than anything.  It is amazing to see animals this size surviving out in this desert.  Horses and wild burros are also out here but the refuge tries to limit the number of horses and burros since they are not native.  The people we were riding with were really excited to see wildlife.  Their big complaint when they go in the wildlife refuge is they never see any wildlife.  

KOFA Cemetery

 We took another ride into the KOFA Wildlife Refuge.  This time we went on the ride toward the KOFA mine.  We went past a lot of RV's camping along the road.  They like to camp here because it is free to camp for up to 14 days.  The road is in pretty good shape.  You can drive a car out on it pretty far but there is some washboardy parts.  We followed the road almost all the way to the mine.  The last part of the road is closed to vehicles and is private property.  

We parked and walked about two tenths of a mile toward the east and found the cemetery.  There is a fence around the whole thing or at least where they identified most of the bodies are buried.  There are a few stones with writing on them mostly in Spanish.   They seem to be from the 1880's.  There were a few large wooden markers but mostly just rocks outlining graves or covering them.  It was a very peaceful setting for a cemetery.

The Thumbs

 We followed the trail that leads to the Big Eye mine.  I took pictures of Thumb Butte and Thumb peak when we got around to the backside of them.  Along the way we saw a few campers enjoying camping out in the desert --off grid.  If your going to camp out here you must bring everything including lots of water as there is nothing within 30 or 40 miles.  The Castle Dome museum is out this way but they have nothing for sale useful for camping.  

On our way to the mine we didn't see one other vehicle but about twenty minutes after we got to the end of the road by the mine here comes the motorbikes, 4wheelers and jeeps.  We had gotten pictures and weren't going to try walking to the mine itself so we got out of there.  Luckily, the rest of the riders stayed and never caught up to us on the way back out.   It is nerve racking when you have a lot of riders passing you on narrow, dusty trails.   It is so beautiful out there that even if you don't see any wildlife its still worth the trip.

On the Way to Big Eye

 Our neighbors wanted to go for a 4wheeler ride so we suggested going out to the Kofa Wildlife Refuge.  We had tried this ride by ourselves but never made it to the Big Eye mine because we ran out of time.  The road we wanted was the road to the Castle Dome museum which is about a 40 minute drive from where we live in the foothills of Yuma.  We started out twenty minutes ahead of our friends knowing we would need extra time to get to the parking area where we can unload our 4wheeler to start the ride.   The road to the refuge starts out paved through the Yuma Proving Grounds and then turns to very wash board gravel.   We had to crawl over the wash board road because our truck rides so rough we get rattled to death.  We just got parked an unloaded when our friends caught up with us and they had stopped for gas.

We started the ride from the parking area at the kiosk for the refuge.  These are the first pictures I took.  The first one is Castle Dome peak and the second one is Thumb peak.  Our ride was going to take us all the way to the back side of thumb peak and then some.  It was a beautiful day with temps in the low 70's and not much wind.  It had rained a week or so before so it wasn't even dusty!