Friday morning we drove about 15 miles south to Burro Creek Rec Area and Campground. We tried to walk down to the creek behind the picnic area, on a beautiful old stone staircase. We couldn't get through to the creek since there was a bit of water running in a channel, and heavy bushes.
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| Lava layer over sandstone |
We did see a heron on a ledge across the river looking for fish in the creek.
We could hear people across the creek, so we headed back to the road and across the bridge.
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| Burro Creek from bridge |
The cliffs on the other side of the river are too steep to walk along that side. We carried up the hill across the bridge for a bit to a side road heading south. Shortly down that road we came to a 'entering private property' sign. Shortly after we could see Shipp Ranch in the valley below us, with a few people working in the yard, and a herd of horses. We returned to the 'main' road, and then back down to the campground. We walked around the campground loop and found a couple of trail entrances off that loop. Since we had already done a couple of miles we decided we would come back another day to try one of them.
Saturday was a dreary, drizzly day. We walked down to the Trading Post, basically a better than average service station store, for some crackers. On the way back we stopped in at Dazzo's to pick up a Chicago style hot dog and veggie burger. They were pretty busy, but it was worth the wait.
Sunday was curling and Nascar.
Monday we did a 4 mile return hike down Kaiser Canyon to Warm Springs. We parked on a pullout next to the highway, and walked down a road to below the bridge. There we saw a parking area we could have driven to.
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| Kaiser Canyon from under the highway bridge |
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| Kaiser Canyon wash |
As we walked down the canyon, we could hear either songs of two different kinds of birds, or perhaps a male and female. We eventually got a distant view of one bird on top of a tall saguaro up on the side of the canyon.
About halfway down the canyon, we saw a tent and a couple of pickups. We had no idea how they got to that point, but we found out when we got to the warm springs pool. There were a couple of guys in it, who warned us they had no clothes on. They told us that they had driven their pickup on a very rough road, but that it would have been easier to do the hike. The pool is small pool, so we carried on a few hundred yards down the canyon to Burro Creek. The canyon there is quite beautiful.
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| Burro Creek flowing down from the campground |
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| Burro Creek heading down to the Big Sandy River |
When we got back to the pool, there was a different person in it, quite a contrast, as he had only taken his socks off, and was well protected from the sun.
We chatted with him for a while. He knows the area quite well. Then we returned back up the canyon. It is an easy trip, as the wash is quite wide for hiking, until we got back under the bridge. Then you clamber up a steep slope, and we missed the trail we came down, so it was a challenge. Joan was tired from going up the slope on hands and knees, using the rocks for grip, so John walked up the hill to the highway to get the truck. When we got back to the trailer, Joan realized she didn't have her sweater.
Tuesday morning, our first task was to see if we could find Joan's sweater. She figured that she must have left it where she was waiting the day before. Since this was only a few miles down the road, we headed back to the parking area under the bridge to go look for it. As we pulled up, we saw a couple of people walking down the trail. We noticed them stopping and picking up Joan's sweater, so we yelled to them that it was ours, and they brought it back a bit while we walked down to them. Our timing was incredible, because they were carrying it down the trail until we got their attention.
Then we headed to Signal Road. It is a maintained gravel road, that is about 14 miles to the mining area at Signal. The road had a few stretches of rough washboard, but was generally easy to maintain the 25mph limit. About halfway out, the road wades through the Big Sandy River.
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| Big Sandy Crossing |
When we got to the Signal area, we saw a sign that said Signal population 0, with an arrow pointing sideways. It was at a bit of an angle to the road, so it wasn't clear whether it was pointing along the road, or across it.
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| IE. Our yard is not Signal |
The Arizona topo map on the hiking GPS said that Signal was a bit further up the road, so we headed that way, but there was no road across. We guess that Signal was on the road that goes through the yard of the people who put up the sign. We carried on about 5 miles to Alamo Crossing Road. From this intersection, you can go 38 miles north to Yucca on I-40 east of Needles, or 18 miles south to the north side of Alamo Lake. We returned to the Signal sign, and drove across the road on a 'off-road' track. We found a spot to park to look around. We saw some mine remains on a hill to the east toward Big Sandy. We walked around the mine, which is close to a point on the Arizona topo map called Virginia City, on an outcrop above the river.
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| Mine footings |
While we were eating lunch on the concrete at the mine site, we saw a pickup drive down toward the river. When we finished lunch, we walked down to the river. You can tell the Big Sandy location from the strip of bright green trees. We could hear some burros in the valley, but couldn't see them. It made sense when we got close to the river, because the trees are pretty dense, with just a narrow trail through them.
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| Heavy brush |
Then we got into an open area where a wash comes down to the river, and saw the truck that had gone by. There were a couple from Yucca with a young doberman. We chatted with them for a while. The man had recently come to the USA from Italy. We continued over to the river.
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| Big Sandy River |
On the way back, a few miles from the highway, we looked for a place to get off the road so we could do some hiking through an area with different rock structures, including a quartz hillside.
On Wednesday morning, we drove back to the rock structures, found a side 'road' we could pull off to park. We followed this road for a while until we got into the rounded rock area,
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| Rounded boulders |
and could see the large quartz deposit. We headed off the road to it, and got some pictures.
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| Outcrop from a distance |
When we returned to the road, a little further down hill, we carried on for a while until we got to a the edge of a spine about a mile from the truck. We climbed up the spine for a bit to look across the next valley. Up the spine, there was another quartz vein.
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| Quartz Ridge |
Thursday morning we packed up to head to Riverside Casino RV Park in Laughlin, Nevada. There are good weekly rates at this park, which was recommended to us by Rupert and Helen. It was overcast when we got the trailer packed up in Wikieup, and started drizzling a bit when we were just about done. We drove north to Kingman through some rain. We picked up some cash and groceries in Kingman. We arrived in Laughlin about 12:20, so since check-in wasn't until 1:00, we parked in a little park with trailer parking to have lunch. Fortunately the rain had blown over by the time we were setting up in Riverside.
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