Dinner with Connie and Bruce.
Tuesday afternoon we went over to visit with Connie and Bruce and company. We got there around 2:30 and sat around visiting for a couple of hours.
Connie, Anita and Dog’s.
Bruce put a tri-tip on the grill and and the women did their thing with the rest of the food.
By around 4:30 we sat down to a wonderful meal of perfectly cooked Tri-tip, a couple kinds of salad, fresh baked cheese bread and freshly made pie for dessert.
After dinner we visited some more until the sun went down and it got too cold to sit outside.
We left then and went home to get warm.
I think Winter has finally arrived in AZ. Up until a couple of weeks ago we were having almost spring like conditions with temps in the mid 70 to mid 80. Since then the temperature has dropped a good 20°. Fortunately it shouldn’t stay this way for much longer.
Wednesday.
Connie and Bruce have a jeep so we invited them to go for a ride.
Connie and Anita wanted to stay in town to shop so Bruce and Marvin went with us.
The Ride.
For about the last four weeks, Tom has been going to lead the group to The Cinnabar Mine southwest of Quartzsite. Each week something has come up so that Tom wasn’t able to be there.
This week there was no excuse.
We all met at the Carl’s Jr parking lot at the west end of town.
Once everyone was there we headed west on I-10.
Bruce’s jeep is the one directly in front of us. Then there’s Gene, Dennis, Dennis, and Tom.
We drove about 6 miles and took the Tom Wells Road turnoff.
We left the freeway and crossed over. We stopped at the end of the pavement to air down.
Hit The Dusty Trail.
Once we were all done with that, we headed out the dusty dirt road.
Every where the trails are quite dusty as we have had almost no rain this Winter.
You have to hang back a ways so that you can see the trail in this area.
That is Tom’s dust trail on the left side of the picture.
The only good thing is that it is easy to see where the jeeps in front of you are.
After a while we got on a trail that had a lot of rock in it so it wasn’t as dusty.
We meandered across the desert for a while working our way south.
Eventually we dropped into a wash. At first the wash was pretty dust free.
But that didn’t last.
A Little Breather.
We stopped for a dust break. Here is Bruce and Marvin.
After allowing our lungs to breath some not dusty air for a few minutes, we continued on our way.
This Way to Yuma.
We passed this rock with an arrow and Yuma painted on it.
It would be a long hard drive to get to Yuma this way.
Another Wash.
After a long dusty meander…
we eventually got into another less dusty wash.
The Old Store.
Eventually we came to this abandoned ruin. Apparently this was the remains of an old store.
When the mine was in operation there was a fairly large settlement here. The only thing remaining is this stone store.
Whoever built this did a pretty good job of putting the rocks together without mortar.
The Cinnabar Mine.
Shortly after leaving the store we could see the condenser tower for the mine.
We pulled into a wide spot near the tower and stood around for a while looking at stuff.
Lunch.
After a bit we got out our chairs and lunch boxes and started eating our lunch.
We were kind of blocking the road so of course as soon as we started eating our lunch, we could hear a bunch of ATV coming along the trail.
Fortunately there was a way around us on the uphill side of the tower.
Here you can see the ATV’s on the other side of us.
By the time we were done with lunch we had a group of ATV’s in front of us and another group behind us. The only way we could get out of here was to climb the steep hill to the upper trail.
You can see the hill to the left of Gene’s jeep.
The ATV’ers were surprised that we all made it up with no problem. They think that only ATV’s can do that kind of stuff.
A Look at the Mine Shafts.
A little ways down the trail we took a left that goes up to the mine shafts.
These shafts look pretty dangerous.
Not to long after we got to the mine shafts one of the ATV groups showed up.
That was when we found out that they were surprised about how easily we climbed that hill.
After checking out the shaft area we headed back along the trail and at an intersection we turned east.
Tyson Wash.
Eventually we came to Tyson Wash, the largest wash in Arizona.
We turned north and followed the wash for a few miles.
Eventually we came to a trail that went out of the wash we turned to the right and followed the trail to Highway 95 where we turned north and headed for home.
Rib Dinner.
It was Connie and Bruce’s 42nd Anniversary so we went to Heaven’s Kitchen, Santa Maria style barbeque, where we had a wonderful rib dinner.
Okay that’s it for now. Another fun ride.
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