03-12-13

The Weather is finally warming up again.

On Sunday it got into the mid seventies.
We went to a barbeque/pot luck at Dik (yes that is the correct spelling) and Louise’s house on the east side of Quartzsite.
Dik is the one in the cowboy hat.

Louise is in the pink.

We all brought our own meat to grill and a dish to share.

There was plenty of food.

 
Below are some random pictures of the affair.

Don’t touch my steak!

Monday;

The weather was clear and warm.

We took a jeep ride with Jo Ann, Dave, Becky and Dennis to see if we could find a place where we camped last year and found some Desert Rose. I had entered a route into my GPS so I thought that we would be able to go right to the spot. Of course I have had little luck with routes in the GPS.
We left the park around 9:00 and headed east on I-10 until we got to the Vicksburg Road exit. We left the freeway there and stopped at the Zip station for Dennis to top off his fuel tank. From there we drove south on Vicksburg Road until we came to the Pipeline Road where we turned east and stopped to air down the tires.

While we were doing this, Becky wandered around in the desert and found several small pieces of Desert Rose.

After airing down, we headed east on the pipeline road following the route that I had put in the GPS.
After several miles we came to Harquahala Road where the route said to turn south. We did so and drove for about a mile when we came to a cattle pen and what appeared to be the end of the road.
We followed this road for a couple of miles and finally realized that we were not only off the route but heading in the wrong direction. We stopped on a flat spot where I got out the computer and tried to figure out where I screwed up.

I finally came to the decision that the only thing to do was to ignore the route in the GPS and turn around. We headed back to the Pipeline Road where we headed west until we got to Hovatter Road and turned south. We followed Hovatter Road south for several miles until at the end of the road we came to a mine that we remembered from our trip last year.

By this time I was pretty confused because the road we were looking for was not there. We left the mine area and on a small track that crossed a wash is where we stopped for lunch.

While we were there Becky turned over a rock and found a scorpion.

 

After lunch we started back north on Hovatter Road.

We drove slowly back north looking for a turnoff that may have been the trail to the spot we were looking for but didn’t find anything.

Even though we didn’t find the place we were looking for we did enjoy the ride and the beautiful scenery

and the rock formations.

In other places I have seen large oak trees, pine trees and redwood trees that a road splits around but this is the first time I have seen a cactus in the middle of the road.

Upon reflection I guess the Saguaro is the Red Wood of the desert.

 

A couple of times on this ride we saw military jets flying low over the desert but we couldn’t get any pictures of them but on the trip out Patti got a picture of these three Helicopters flying in formation.

I guess we will just have to go back and try again.