04-09-12

Since most of our friends have gone home for the summer, things have been kind of slow here in Quartzsite.

Becky, Dennis, Patti and I went to the cinema at the Blue Water Casino on Tuesday to see The Hunger Games. I was impressed by how well the movie followed the book.

Saturday we went for an overnight camping trip with Becky and Dennis. We drove out Sunkist Road to the trail that goes over Preacher Pass.

At the top of the pass is a sign

and a bench

 

On the east side of the pass

we followed the wash where we saw several Big Horn Sheep on the ridges.

 

We stopped for lunch under a Palo Verde tree along side the trail.

After lunch we continued east until we got out of the mountains, then we turned north. I took a couple of wrong turns but eventually we got to the trail that goes west into the box canyon where I had planned to camp. Where the trail ended in the canyon, there were no good camp spots so we turned around and drove back about a mile where we found a great spot just off the trail. It was flat  with some small trees for shade and plenty of room for our two large tents.

In the evening we supped on hot dogs and chilli.

After supper we sat around the fire and watched the moon rise. The moon was one day passed full and by the time we went to bed you could almost read by its light.

The next morning after breakfast we drove east out of the canyon and then turned north on Stagecoach Road. We stopped to check out some remnants from WWII where they had rocks laid out on the desert floor to guide pilots into secret landing strips. This one pointed the way to Vicksburg twelve miles away and had an arrow pointing north.

We followed Stagecoach Road for a few miles and eventually found the trail going west. As we drove along we found a trail going north that we had not been on before so we turned on it and followed it north for a while. After taking a few left turns we came to Plomosa Road (the paved road that goes between Quartzsite and Bouse) we turned north on Plomosa Road and after a short distance we turned west into the Plomosa Mountains. We worked our way through the the mountains and along a wash

to the “Big Hole”.

I have mentioned the big hole before, it is a very deep vertical shaft just to the east of the Four Peaks.

We had lunch at the big hole under the sparse shade of a small Palo Verde tree.

By noon the temperature was already into the nineties. We had planned to camp somewhere in the north Plomosa’s but after lunch we decided that since there is virtually no shade in this area and the temperature was so high that we would cancel the second camping day and head back to Quartzsite.