Week ending Jan 26, 2017 Casa Grande to Gila Bend

Friday, we went into Casa Grande to Norris RV to pick up a 15' extension cord for our solar panels.   This will give us more flexibility in what direction the trailer is parked when we are boondocking.  Then we drove over to Maricopa Walmart to pick up the last curtain we needed. 

Saturday, Rupert and Helen took us in to the Mesa Market Place Swap Meet.   It is a huge semi-indoor area, with 4 rows of vendors each 1/4 mile long.   There are shops with clothes, kitchen accessories, rugs, tools, 'as-seen-on-TV' and many other things.  Joan found a new change purse to replace one that is wearing out. 

Monday, we got the trailer ready to head out, then chatted with Helen and Rupert for while before we moved to Gila Bend, only a 60 mile trip.  This time we checked into the correct RV Park, much nicer than the one we stayed in 8 weeks ago.  As we were setting up our next door neighbour came out to chat.  He is from Tumbler Ridge.  They have stayed here quite often over the years.  We had a bit of chat before we finished setting up.   After we rested for a bit, we walked up the stairs in the back wall of the RV park.   We took a picture of 'snakes' looking into the back of our trailer. 

 

We followed a little trail across a wash, onto a paved road.  It went through desert until it connected with 'Old Highway 84', which used to go from here to Maricopa.  About half an hour out, we came to a gate across the road.  It said we would need a permit from the Land Commissioner to come onto State Trust land.    By the time we got back to the trailer, there were no spaces left in the park. 

Tuesday we drove north along 85 to check out a couple of boondocking sites near Buckeye.  Then we drove into the Red Robin in Goodyear, on the east side of Phoenix.  We were surprised to see a picture of the elevator in Bents, Saskatchewan on the ceiling above our table.

Bents Elevator

John had a Mr. Pineapple beer, which is a local brew by the Santan Brewing company in Chandler Arizona.

Holt's Shell has an impression collection of ornamental work.  On Wednesday we added a little coyote from the selection of ornaments at Holt's to our canine litter and paid for our spot until next Monday.

 

There are also a large number of metal-work sculptures, mostly dinosaurs, plus the group below.  We don't think the spears carried by the warriors had Clovis points, since there were no ride-able horses during the ice-age.

Thursday, we recorded the GPS co-ordinates for the various sites related to the Oatman Massacre and Fourr Ranch Cemetery and checked out the route, as we had planned on going there before, but couldn't find the route without going through private property.  On the route out toward the Painted Rock Petroglyphs, our truck had to take a bit of dip.  That put a bit of a different point of view on the road signs along the route.   Fortunately, we were able to drive around most of the puddles we encountered on the unpaved section of route further on.

 

 

Once we got to the private property, we found our road to the left along the fence line of the private property.   We found Fourr Cemetery pretty close to the GPS co-ordinates, although our truck GPS doesn't know this road exists. 

Fourr Cemetery

Further along the road, around the farm fields we had seen on the web-site google maps, the road turned into a BLM atv road heading south.  We knew this must be where the parking spot was indicated.  As we were getting ready to hike to the Massacre sites a group of 5 atv's came from the BLM road.   We followed the trail around the west edge of the farm fields, and roughly where expected, we found the Oatman memorial site. 

Oatman memorial

We carried on to the steps, but below the steps, into the bottom of the wash was slippery clay which John slid down.  He was able to get up the other side using a couple of  sticks to hoist himself up high enough to get traction.   Joan wasn't able to get up that slope, so after John checked out the other side of the valley, below the bluffs, without being able to see the other sites, we returned.  We found out that the Massacre site  was probably on the bluff above where John turned around.  

 

 The 'hobbitt' view also seen on the web-site

The web-site made a lot more sense once we reread it after being there.  Maybe next time there is that much information available on a web-site, and no directions or clear trails at the site we will download it to the tablet so we can review the info once we are there.   We had tried to take some pictures of the web-site using the phone, but they weren't readable on the phone. 

As we were posting the blog, a roadrunner scooted along the wall behind the trailer.   We had seen a few roadrunners cross the road on our way to Oatman as well.