03-01-12

On Tuesday Suzanne and Roy held their second Annual “Eh!” day party.

It was a lot of fun and good food. One dish was brought by Junior and Missy. It was a traditional French Canadian dish called “Poutine” pronounced “Poo-teen”. The dish contained cheddar cheese curd and French fries in a savory gravy.

Very good! There was a bit of excitement when the barbeque caught fire.

The national colors of Canada are red and white so some of the partiers were dressed accordingly.

On Wednesday Dennis and I went on the Wednesday jeep ride. Patti and Becky went with Shirley, Debby and Bill to the Blue Water Casino.

The Jeep ride started about 10 miles east of Parker. The trail is called the back way to the Desert Bar (http://thedesertbar.com/). The bar is closed during the week and the trail we were on bypasses it.

There are several rough spots along the trail.

A couple miles up the trail is an optional obstacle where we played a game.

The object was to drive up the incline until the rear tires of your jeep are even with a white pillow that the leader had set on the ground.

You stop there and then try to go over the top as slow as possible without spinning the tires. I spun out going through the big hole at the top and had to try it again. Almost everyone spun out except the leader. His jeep is set up for rock crawling and has front and rear lockers.

Most of us got a little air at the top.

From there we wandered through the desert,

stopping occasionally to take in the scenery.

Eventually we came to a mine with a vertical shaft

where the group held a memorial for a deceased group member. They held a short service

 

and dropped his ashes into the shaft

along with some flowers.

From there we continued along the trail

to the Golden Eagle mine where we stopped for lunch. After lunch we we explored the mine.

It was very cool with several side tunnels and galleries.

This mine had an old ore car tracks in it.

We followed it down

and came to a ladder that went to an upper tunnel.

The walls of the mine sparkled with Pyrite and Mika and were very colorful with streaks of Quartz, Crisocola, Cinnabar and Sulfur.

 

We left the mine and drove over some very rocky trails where we came across the first cactus blooms of the season.

We stopped at the Eagles Nest Mine where there were several vertical shafts and holes.

There was a great view from the eagles nest.

Eventually we got to the main road to the Desert Bar where we followed it to AZ 95 and headed for home.

We got home around 4:30. Patti got home around 6:00 she lost at the casino but took me out to supper anyway. 

I’d like to thank Dennis for sharing his pictures of the ride.