Week ending Feb 8, 2018 KOFA Wildlife Refuge - King Road BLM

Friday morning, we walked up King Road to a cross road heading toward the Horse Tanks.   Nice scenery back through the row of hills up from us.  We found out that you can camp for 14 days in the KOFA Wildlife Refuge, and that it is possible to get to some sites there.  However, we didn't see any campers along our way. Later in the week, we did see some RV's in a few spots beside the road, sadly no phone access in that area.

KOFA Mountains

Flowering Ocotillo

In the evening while talking to Dad, we saw a coyote walk through the brush behind the trailer. 

Saturday morning, we planned on heading into Quartzite to pick up a controller for our second solar panel so we would know what it was doing for us, and wouldn't have to worry about it overcharging the batteries.  When we checked the solar dealer hours in Quartzite, it didn't look like any of them were open on the weekend, so instead we decided to drive up King Road toward the King of Arizona Mine (KOFA is the abbreviation of the mine name).  However, when we started the truck, it told us that we had low pressure in a tire, and Joan found a screw in the tire.  So we went to Quartzite to get the tire fixed at American Custom Tire.  They got us in and out promptly.  We had seen that Solar Bill's was open despite the info on the internet, so we went there and picked up a controller.   Once we got back to the trailer, we looked, unsuccessfully for a good place to mount it in the battery cabinet.  Then John decided to make a mini cabinet out of spare materials, a section of spare eaves trough that has never been used for sewer hose support and a small piece of 2x4.   He spent the afternoon making a holder for the solar controller and getting the wiring connected to it.  He noticed that the panel had been connected backwards to the battery.    Consequently, the controller didn't  display any information when it was hooked up.

Sunday, we walked east along King Road about 3 miles into King Valley, stopping at a wash for some shade and a rest.  On the way back we encountered a lady with a daschund.  It was timid, and didn't want to continue towards us.  However once we got up to them, it let Joan pet it.  While the lady was walking the dog, her husband was scrambling up one of the hills beside the road.  Later, we watched Jones win a record 7th Scotties, and Brady failing to win a record 7th Superbowl.

Monday, we drove about 22 miles into the Kofa Refuge to North Star Mine on Polaris Mountain.  The main road is wide, but has large stretches of washboard for the 12 miles heading east.  Then it turns north, with long stretches of narrow loose gravel along wash areas.  A few miles north is  a closed area for Sonoran pronghorn antelope.  The signage there gives the modern history of these antelope.   This antelope is a smaller than the other pronghorns found across the west.  In the mid 1800's there were herds over 200 animals.  By 1907, civilization had reduced their range and habitat, so a rare herd of about 30 animals was observed.  It was declared an endangered species in 1967.  Work on increasing the species has been in progress since 1982.  We didn't see any animals in the preserve.

Once we got to the north end of the road, we wandered through North Star Mine.  It is quite extensive.   At one time, there were 2000 people in the community here.    See http://docs.azgs.az.gov/OnlineAccessMineFiles/M-R/NorthstarmineYuma98-1.pdf

North Star Mine

Antares Cabin at North Star

 

 

 

We headed back south, looking for King of Arizona (KofA) mine.  It is located in an area of private property in the middle of the refuge.   In the private area, you can drive on 'designated' roads.  On each road at junctions is a 'designated road' or 'not a designated road' sign.  We set our Etrex to the location of the mine and headed east on a designated road heading toward the mine.   We could see a lot of trailers and other equipment down not designated roads.    We saw what looked like part of the mine from an internet site about the mine.  However, there were no  accessible roads heading toward it.   A short distance down the road, the Etrex said we were getting further from the mine, so we decided to park the truck, and walk from there.   We carried on down the road on foot, but it kept heading further from the mine.  It turned out that we had to make  a loop around the hill on the south side of the road.  It looked like it would be about 2 miles to get to the mine, and decided it wasn't too far, so we kept walking.  Once we got to the 'keep out' signs at the entrance to the mine property, we saw a fellow walking toward the entrance.   It turned out that he was the current (and new) owner of the King of Arizona Mine, Steven Bagley, from Colorado.   We were lucky he was there at the time, and gave us permission to  look through the property.   We don't trespass on posted properties. 

Tailings on approach to KOFA mine

Steven had recently inherited the property from the previous owner, his first cousin once removed,  'Doc' Phil Birdick , an optometrist from Yuma, who bought the mine property in 1961. 'Doc'  died at 96 years old on April 25, 2016.    See article from the Yuma Sun. Doc had a 'cabin' built on top of the hill looking over the mine, where people could live who he would have keep on eye on the property.  Eventually the cabin burnt down, leaving only the chimney.

Chimney left after cabin burnt down

'Doc' was a hoarder, who would buy things from Goodwill that they couldn't sell in their stores, and from garage sales, because you  never knew when you might find a use for them.   He stored a lot of stuff on the mine property.  One of the interesting things Steven showed us was about 30 bottles of concentrated perfume.  Steven remembered asking him what he planned on doing with them about 30 years ago, so they have been here for a while. If anyone wants some perfume concentrate I'm sure he can give you a deal on some.

Parfum bottles

Steven had several offers from people to take the property off his hands, but he plans on deeding it the KOFA Wildlife Refuge.  However, he needs to do a lot of cleanup before they can take it.   We figure that will take a lot of work.  But like he says,  'how do you eat an elephant? one bite at a time.' 

The KOFA mine was operated from the late 1880's to 1910, then sporadically until 1937.
In the 1986, Barons Gold Inc of Lethbridge, Alberta tried to leach gold from the fine tailings, but couldn't get enough water to make it feasible.  However, they left their yellow mining equipment behind.   

Baron's leaching plant

Mine shafts

The orebody was said to average 12 feet wide.  A shaft ran down to the 750 foot level.

On the way out, we set our GPS to take us back to the trailer (just to get distances to our turns).  Her choice of routes was to turn left at the Wellton-KOFA road, instead of right onto King Road, about 120 miles, and over 3 hours.  Even when we turned onto King Road, for some unknown reason she had us going all of the way to highway 95, then south on the highway, making a u-turn, and returning to our spot on King Road.  We just can't figure out what logic is used for some of these routes, but we have always know Greta (our GPS) is a bit crazy.

Later in the afternoon, we saw a quail in a strange spot.  Usually they are hiding in the brush. 

Quail

Tuesday morning we drove toward the Horse Tanks as far as we had walked on Friday, about 1.5 mi from the Tanks.   Just before a couple in a jeep caught up to us, Joan saw a hare race away.   A while later another vehicle went by us.  They all spent enough time in the tanks area, so we got to chat with the first couple.   They were Ed and Jan from Colorado.  Ed is a geologist, and it was good to have him give us information on the geological formations.  Very interesting patterns here, caused by volcanic activity.   

Hill near Horse Tanks

Horse Tanks

Horse Tanks

After we were done at the Horse Tanks, we checked the location of the next nearest tanks using our Etrex .   Arch Tank was up a different canyon branching off from the same area, about .85 miles away, plus working around the hills between the canyons.  Since we had the location of tank, Ed said they would come with us to look for it.  We worked through a wash to get up on some more solid ground.  We got to a point where two canyons split off, and followed the Etrex directions for a short distance where we found another natural tank.   We also saw an arch on the ridge beside the tank. The tank was smack up against a high wall with no obvious route past it, so even though the Etrex showed the tank further up the canyon,  we decided this must be the tank we were looking for.

 

Arch Tank maybe

Ed has a lot of experience  in the field, so he was very good at spotting the best trail to follow.  The most significant  find was a route back over a saddle to their Jeep.  Even though it had a couple of short steep sections, it was better than going through the thorny plants in the wash.  

They stopped and had lunch while we walked back to the truck.     

Wednesday morning, we went into Quartzite to get our new solar panel checked out.  The 30 amp fuse had burnt out and some diodes on the panel probably needed replacing.  We left the panel with them to get the diodes repaired.   Later in the afternoon, they phoned us back to let us know that the panel was ready to pick up and the repair had cost $54, mostly labor.     
  
In the evening, we watched the first draw of the mixed curling at the Olympics.

Thursday morning, we were on the road about 8 AM.  Our destination for the day was Cibola National Wildlife Refuge.  It is about 32 miles west of our campsite on the Colorado River.  Despite our GPS recommending that we take a route 28 mi north to Quartzite, 25 miles west to through Blythe on the California border, then  21 miles south to the Refuge, all on paved roads.   Of course, our choice was to take the shortcut across the Army's Yuma Proving Ground on a 'primitive' gravel road (it is handy to have a backroads atlas).  The road was rougher in places than we expected, but we managed to get there in a bit less time than it would have taken to go around.  We apologized to the truck a lot.   We were happy when we got back on pavement near the Colorado.

Colorado River north of Cibola

We got a good overview of the birding opportunities from the lady at the visitor center.  Quite a while ago, a canal was built to provide a wider, more consistent flow of water from the Colorado. This disturbed the migratory bird habitat in the area, so the farmers in the area joined with Arizona Wildlife to plant some fields with alfalfa and corn to attract birds back to the area.

Planted fields in Cibola NWR

We wasted a bit of time doing the short trail by the center which described various desert plants.  Not much new information for us there.   Then we did the 2 mile auto tour route.  Just as we were starting on the tour, as promised, a flock of Canada geese took off from a field and headed north.  

Geese heading north

Then we saw a red-tailed hawk. 

Red-tailed hawk

Next, we saw a bunch of scoups on a pond, with a few mallards, and other ducks too far away to identify.    Shortly past there, a nature trail had been made in an area planted with various mesquite trees, and some cottonwoods.  There were a few songbirds along this mile long walk.   After this, we headed south between fields on one side planted with alfalfa and the other with a cornfield.  Near the end of the cornfield, we saw a roadrunner.

Roadrunner

Past the cornfield, we saw some sandhill cranes.    Across the road, in the alfalfa fields, we saw hundreds more cranes.

Sandhill cranes

Past them, there was habitat created for burrowing owls.  None of the owls were out.
We saw another hawk. 

Hawk

There is a little marsh area beside the road that hold many yellow-throated blackbirds.  They were all on the power line when we came up, but they headed into the marsh when we got closer.

Yellow throated blackbirds

Returning back toward the visitor center, we got some pictures of cranes flying and some doing their mating dance.

Cranes landing

Cranes doing the mating dance

Once we were done the auto tour, we drove a few miles further south to a reclamation project called Hart Mine Marsh.  In the marsh we managed to see some pelicans and a heron.  

Pelican

Heron

On our way out of the marsh, we saw a roadrunner trying to hide from us.  However, maybe it was from the coyote that ran across the road a few hundred yards further down.  

We took the smooth roads back, since we had to go back to Quartzite to pick up the solar panel.  We also had enough of rough gravel for one day.  On the way back we stopped at Albertson's in Blythe to pick up some groceries.