We met the rest of the jeep group at Carl’s Jr. on the west end of town at 9:00.
There was; Louise and Dick, Becky and Dennis, Jo Ann and Dave, Cheryl and Dennis, Gene, Patti and me in the group.
We headed west on I-10 and drove to a gate on the north side of the highway between Mile post 10 and 11.
The morning was cloudy with occasional sprinkles of rain as we drove up the highway.
Just inside the gate we stopped to air down.
Our destination was the remains of an old stone cabin at the top of a ridge about a mile in.
Along the way we past a mining area and stopped to wander around checking the area out.
There was a tunnel going into the mountain but the rock looked unstable and it was blocked by debris and an old dead “Ocotillo cactus so we didn’t try going inside.
We continued our ride and climbed the trail to the top of ridge.
The old stone cabin had a great view and a breeze was blowing across the ridge. It was probably a good place to be in the summer heat.
Near the cabin was a shaft that went down into the earth at about 45 degrees. It looked pretty scary, with old timbers holding up the ceiling.
There was a foot path leading from this mine, skirting the side of the mountain.
Dennis, Dennis, Gene, Dick and I followed the trail and went past another shaft that was just as scary as the first.
It goes down into the earth almost verticaly.
We continued along the trail enjoying the view.
Eventually we turned around and returned to the jeeps. We all got into our jeeps and headed down off the ridge to look for some other jeep trails.
We followed a couple other trails
and eventually got to a spot where we could not pass.
There was some more mining evidence here and a tunnel that we didn’t go in as it didn’t go more than 15 feet.
There was also an old rock dam that blocked our passage with the jeeps.
I know that in the above picture it looks like we could have driven around the side of the dam but there is a rock out crop that blocked our way. A couple sticks of dynamite would have made all the difference but since we didn’t have any dynamite we turned around.
We back tracked and found another trail that also went nowhere so we decided to stop here for lunch.
After lunch we headed back toward the gate where we entered this area from the freeway. When we got close to the fence Jo Ann, Dave and we decided to head into Blyth. They wanted to do some shopping and I wanted to get the tires balanced on the jeep and check to see if there was any place to get the exhaust clamp ( the one that I tried to fix before we left home) welded. I found a shop that said they could fix it but I had to make an appointment for Friday morning at 8:30.
We stopped at the A&R Mexican bakery to pick up dessert for tonight.
A cherry crisp. Yummm!
Okay, that’s about it for today. It was nice to get out onto the desert again after six months away.
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