A Sunday Ride.

Background.

On Saturday we took a ride over to see Denis and Sue. We sat around their place and visited for a couple of hours. By the time we left we had made arraignments to go for a ride on Sunday.
Denis had a place in mind in California called the Red Cloud Mine Road and he wanted to check it out

Getting Going.

Since we were going west into CA, we met Sue and Denis at the Carl’s Jr. at the west end of town around 9:00.
Once they were there we headed west on 1-10.

We drove west for about an hour and passed Desert Center.

 
At exit 182, Red Cloud Road…

 
we left the interstate and drove under it on Red Cloud Rd.

On the south side of the freeway we stopped to air down the tires.

Desert Tortoise.

A little farther down the road we came to a kiosk so we stopped to check it out.

We were glad to know that there were Tortoise’s in the area and hoped we would see one.

Powder Magazines.

A little further down the road we came to these graffitied old Powder Magazines.

They were massively built using railroad ties and track, then covered with dirt to keep them cool.
There are tracks running from the doors but the doors have been welded shut.

Ruins.

We continue down the road.
The rain we had on Friday has settled the dust nicely.

We drove past this concrete structure but didn’t check it out.

A little farther along we came to some more ruins. It looks like there are a couple of ruined Cabins along the road.

Another ruin along the road.

The trail gets a little rough in spots.

Cyanide.

We came to another mining area. This one had the tanks where the miners separated the gold from pay dirt using Cyanide to absorb the gold salts.

Tortoise Shell.

While we were checking the place out I found a partial tortoise shell.

We left it there.

End of the Road and Lunch.

We followed the trail until it just petered out near a large mining operation.

Here is Denis checking the area out.

We turned around and headed back down the road until we found a spot where the road crosses a wash out of the breeze. Even though it was a nice sunny day there was a cold breeze blowing.
Patti and I forgot our chairs but fortunately there was a flat rock that worked fine.

After lunch we continued along the trail.

Concrete Building.

We stopped to check out the concrete building that we saw on the way in.

We aren’t sure what this building was used for. There are a lot of places to mount equipment above the building. Denis climbed to the top but said that there wasn’t any mine up there.

That is one of the cool things about riding around in the desert, you come across a lot of stuff to ponder what they were doing here.

Heading Home.

It wasn’t too long after leaving this spot that we were back to an entrance to I-10. Here we stopped to air up the tires. Once the tires were aired up we got on then Interstate an headed for home.

Orchard of Palm trees.

We passed what looks like an orchard of date palms. Or maybe it is a tree farm with baby Palms.

Okay that was our ride on Sunday. It was fun.