Turkey Creek Tail, Black Canyon City, AZ.

Giant Pancake.

Around 8:00 we walked across the street to The 4 B’s Café.
When we walked in we saw that most of the others in the group were already there.

I first noticed Dennis M. He had two Pancakes in front of him that were the size of a medium pizza and about 3/4” thick.
I looked around the table and saw that at least three others had giant Pancake in front of them; and they were all struggling to eat them.
I wish I had, had a camera. Some day I will learn to always have a camera.

On Our Way.

After breakfast, we drove north on I-17 to The Senator Highway.

Here we turn west, toward the old mining town of Crown King.
This road starts out paved…

but after a couple miles it becomes a wide graded road.  At the end of the pavement we stop to air down.

After that short break we continue down the road.

Cleator, AZ

After several miles we come to the small community of Cleator.

It is an old mining town and still has a general store and a bar. The bar is only open on the weekends

As we went through town we noticed these giant Mushrooms growing on the hillside among the cactus to our right.

Of course, as we were all distracted by the mushrooms we missed the trail we wanted and drove right through town and out the other side.

A mile or so down the road we stopped to figure out where we went wrong.

A Shortcut.

Eventually we figured out where the trail is but instead of going back to Cleator and turning where the mushrooms were to pick the trail up, we took a small trail that on the map that looked like a short cut.

Of course the trail wound around for a while and was very rough in spots so it took a while to get back on track.

Turkey Creek Trail.

We finally got to Turkey Creek Trail and turned south.

Nice view of to the right.

These rocks are impressive.

So are these and they are in the road.

More Crested Saguaro’s.

We came around a tight turn and found these two Crested Saguaro.

That makes three that we have seen so far on this trip.

These two are remarkable.

Turkey Creek.

The trail eventually drops into the bed of Turkey Creek.

We stop to checkout this old ruin.

We continue along. Some times crossing the wash.

some times driving down it.

We came to a nice spot to have lunch.

After lunch we continued our ride.

There are occasionally small obstacles to overcome.

Eventually we come to the main obstacle on this trail. This is a narrow ledge with some large steps to negotiate.

Bill is the leader so he gets to try it first.

With Eve spotting for him he made it just fine.

Now it is up to the rest of us.

Here is Dennis K.

Here goes Rick.

Here’s Tom. He doesn’t really like this kind of stuff but did just fine.

Okay now it is our turn.

Cheryl took this picture of us going up the obstacle.

No one got a picture of Dennis M going up.

An Interesting Mine.

We stopped to check out this mine adit.

What I found interesting was the rock that the tunnel was dug through. It was very thin layers all stuck together kind of like filo dough.

Here is looking from the inside out.

From the mine we continued along the trail. Driving down one hill, up another.

Crossing the creek again and again.

Eventually we get back to the Senator Highway. We drive to the entrance to I-17 south and there we air up at a large turnout and head for the motel.

When we got back to the Motel we walked across the road to The Javelina Crossing Saloon for a beer.

Around 5:00 we went to supper at Beni’s Pizza also walking distance from the motel.

Okay that’s it for today.