02-15-12

On Monday morning I went to Blythe to talk to a mechanic to find out about getting the engine in the Jeep ether fixed or rebuilt. He told me that it needed to be rebuilt but he didn’t do rebuilds. He called another shop and that guy said that he wouldn’t do it ether. He called Napa to see if they could get a rebuilt engine and found that they could get one but no one wants to install them. I have decided to wait until I get home and rebuild the engine my self. It still runs good but has a lot of blow bye so it throws oil out the top of then valve cover.

Monday afternoon our friend Bob showed up for a visit. He will be here for a week.

Yesterday Bob and I took a ride with Junior, Dave, Shirley, Bill, Mary Ann and Randy.

Patti went to the Blue Water Casino with Jo Ann.

We went to the north Plamosa mountains and went over Quin Pass which is a fairly steep trail. On the other side of the pas we followed the trail

to an outcrop of red rocks

where we enjoyed the view.

We left there and dropped into a wash that ran north. The wash is a lot of fun because it has some rock shelves to negotiate.

We made it through the wash and hit a trail that took us to the big hole.

from there we continued north.

About noon it started to sprinkle so we decided to try and get to a large man made cave that we had visited last year. Along the way we stopped at some large round rocks with several caves in them.

While we were there Junior tried to convince Rand to drive his Rubicon up the side of one of the larger rocks but Randy wasn’t confident that his jeep could make it. After some discussion randy let Junior have the keys and Junior drove the jeep top the top of the rock,

turned it around and drove back down.

Randy is learning a lot about the capabilities of his jeep. He is brand new to Jeeping but is getting more confident all the time.

It turned out to be a lot farther than we thought to the cave. After a while the clouds and rain moved on so we stopped for lunch in a wash out of the wind for lunch.

After lunch we headed south again and stopped to visit a large mine tunnel along the way.

From there we went back to the cave rocks and drove through them on a steep trail.

 

After we went through the rocks we headed for Plomosa road and Quartzsite.

Today Patti went back to Blue Water because she signed up for a slot tournament.  She has the jeep so I’m not sure what Bob and I will do. We are thinking of going to the Colorado river to do some kayaking.

02-11-12

Okay I have some catching up to do.

We didn’t go on the Wednesday ride because I had some dental work done on Wednesday.

I went to the meeting with the BLM on Tuesday. Of course they want to further restrict access to trails in the desert around Quartzsite. There are several plans but it is very confusing. We are dealing with the feds so what else is new. One plan is to leave things the way they are. On the other end of the scale is what they call the “GREEN” plan which would close all access to the desert. I am beginning to hate the word “green”. It always means something ether stupid or restrictive or destructive to our way of life. There is a thirty day comment period but the way they have things set up controls the way you can comment. You can only comment on specific routes not the plan in general. I signed up for some material to be sent to me so maybe it will clear things up a bit.

Okay now for the good stuff;

Yesterday we took a ride lead by Junior to the;

We had to drive about sixty miles to get to the trail but it was worth it. We went about thirty- four miles to the town of Salome on Highway 60 and turned south on another paved road and drove another twenty some miles to the turn off to the Eagle Eye Mine  and a another six miles of pavement took us to the start of the trail.

We stopped on the highway so Junior could get his bearings.

When we got ready to take off again I somehow flooded the jeep and it took a few minutes and much kibitzing to get it started again.

 

We stopped at the staging area to off load Suzanne and Roy’s Rhino and air down the tires on the Jeeps.

As it turned out the trail is a service road for some Kind of repeater station on top of the tallest mountain in southwestern Arizona

The red line is the trail but am not sure what the light blue line is (possibly a county line). The dark blue one (lower right) is the paved road.

Eventually we got on the trail.

We stopped a couple of times for pictures

and continued up the trail.

Eventually we got to the summit where we had lunch.

And took more pictures.

 

After lunch we started back down the mountain.

On the way down,

Patti got a picture of this unusual Saguaro cactus.

and some other nice views.

At the foot of the mountain we stopped to check out a mine with an old ruin.

It was another great ride.

On the way home we stopped at Silly Al’s for pizza.

Clifford is blowing a lot of oil out of the top of the valve cover. I checked it out and there is lots of blow bye. Today we went to Blythe to talk to a mechanic to see if we need to have the engine in Clifford rebuilt and to get an estimate. The shop was closed so we will have to go back on Monday.

02-07-12

The ride yesterday was routine. Here are a couple of pictures that Patti took.

Dave’s sister Ann

 

His brother-in-law Bob, Dave and I at the shovel. Bob is on the left

Wild flowers.

Here are some more old car pictures.

I was sitting by the Pond this morning reading and got these bird pictures.

I think the following two pictures are of some kind of Sparrows but I couldn’t find corresponding pictures on the net so if I am wrong, let me know what they are.

This one is a little different as it has a yellow bill and slightly different markings. perhaps a female?

Ok, that is your birding test for today.

This afternoon there is a presentation by the BLM. It might concern restrictions on our rights to play in the desert so we are going to find out what kind of crap the feds are going to dump on us this time.