Week ending Mar 6, 2019 American Girl Mine Road Boondocking

It was nice to find that the Verizon wifi  boondocking here on American Girl Mine Road is much faster than it was in the RV park in Yuma. 

Friday morning, we got the controller working by disconnecting it from the batteries, and then reconnecting it.  It's a mystery why it thought the battery voltage was dangerously low, but good that a simple 'reboot' cleared the message.  Doesn't look like we will get a lot of solar power on a cloudy day, but the generator needs to pay for the maintenance we did on it.

We went for a hike from our trailer to Cargo Mine, tucked into a little pocket in the hills a few miles south of American Girl Mine.   Our topo gps map showed it was about 3.6 miles, so we decided that was within our range.  We aren't parked as close to the hills as we could be, since the Verizon signal starts to drop off closer.  The first half of the trip is through the boondockers. Then it heads into the hills, where we didn't see anyone for quite a while.  Then we saw 2 jeeps that were heading back from a side road toward the road climbing into the mine.  They just drove up a side road nearer the mine, because there is a gate across the road into the mine.   We don't think they even got out of there jeeps.  We had a short chat with the lead driver.  The Cargo Mine isn't on the scale of American Girl, but still has a decent tailings pile.  The color of these tailings was more pinkish orange than most.  An interesting feature was a couple of  small water reservoirs. 

Cargo Mine Tailings

Water Cistern

On the way here, we had taken a shortcut off the marked road routes (still on roads though), but they went through some fairly sharp washes.  On our return we kept on the main road, which went a bit further, but only crossed small washes until it hit the powerline road.   The powerline road has better grades crossing the deep washes.   When we got back to the trailer, we found we had both sunburned our shoulders, so were a bit uncomfortable.
  
We managed to get enough solar that we didn't need to run the generator.  We were only able to stay awake for the first half of the Brier wild card match, but we watched the end of it on the early Saturday morning rerun.

Then we went for a shorter walk.  It was pretty overcast early in the morning, but we were still surprised to see a faint rainbow.  We did get a few sprinkles.  We walked over to the first hill we had climbed here a few weeks ago.   Later when we went out to the American Girl Mine, we had noticed a structure on the side of the hill opposite to where we had climbed, so we checked out that area this trip.  Only a 2.5 mile trip, but still some exercise.   On the way back, we were chatting with a fellow walking his dog.   He has been to all of the mines around here over the years.   We mentioned our experience at KOFA mine last year, and that the new owner was planning on turning it over to the wildlife refuge after getting it cleaned up.   That got this fellow going about how some refuges keep people out.   According to the constitution, public lands are for the use of the people, so they can't stop him from using them.

Old structure

It started clearing off late morning, so our solar could get to work.  Watched the opening game of the MLS season, with Toronto beating Philadelphia, before watching the opening round of the Brier, more MLS with Vancouver and then the second round of the Brier. 

Sunday, after a bit of curling, we did about 3 miles in the general direction of a mine we could see a bit north of American Girl Mine.  We marked a spot along the power line that looked like it would be a good place to park and explore further tomorrow.   Then Nascar and curling.   Good solar.

Monday morning, we drove the truck along the power line road a bit further north than we had marked to the beginning of a BLM road that clearly headed toward our target mine. The walk was pretty level, with only a couple of shallow washes. 

BLM road into south side of Tumco Mine

The mine is tucked behind a small slot in the hills, but it turns out it is open on the side facing Tumco.  Before we came out here when we were planning at camping at Tumco, John had plotted out a 5.2 mile hike on a loop that started at Tumco, followed a road into the hills, then continued back out of the hills toward the powerline road, then returned to Tumco along the powerline.   It turned out that we had followed the second leg, coming out of the hills, to get to this mine site, so in theory we should have been able to go down the other side into Tumco.   The road on the topo map would have had to go over the top of the big tailings pile on which we stood to look down over the Tumco camping area.  We didn't think there was a decent route down in that direction.  However, we plan to drive into Tumco tomorrow, as we can get into the pit of the mine from that side.   Maybe from there we will see where the 'road' goes over this mine.  Unfortunately, there is no indication whether this is the actual Tumco mine but based on its location and size, it must be.  It isn't as large as AMG Mine, but a sizeable fraction.

Entrance to mine tunnel welded shut

tunnel

open pit area of the mine

natural patterns on rock walls

The mine is in the gap between 1080 foot hill and a 1680 foot hill.   The plain around is about 520 feet above sea level.

On the way back down from the mine, John was checking whether a bypass around a steep section of the road was feasible when he jumped suddenly back onto the road. He had caught the movement of a reptile out of the corner of his eye. It turned out to be on of the largest lizards we have seen in the desert here. Most of the geckos are only about 2 to 3 inches long.  This one was at least 5 times as large.

largish lizard

butterfly

Joan found a fun fact today.  If the current population of the world all lived at the same density as the population of New York City, they would fit in a space the size of Texas.


On Tuesday, we drove 4 miles north on the highway to the Tumco townsite.   This time, we walked past the interpretive trail, along the side of the hill, seeing a few graves on a rise,

crosses

and a few more buildings, and a well covered shaft.   From there we crossed a wash to the lip of the Tumco pit, on the opposite side we had been yesterday.   We found a route down into the pit with only a few short spots with iffy footing.    Despite the fact that they had excavated huge quantities of rock from the pit, there was still a small shaft, maybe 3 feet high, running into one of the walls, where they must have found a good vein of minerals.

Tumco pit from north rim

3 foot high shaft into wall of pit

Wednesday, after watching the first Brier draw, and having lunch, we drove back to the Tumco area, but this time we headed west on the plain to the Gold Rock Ranch RV Resort.  A fellow we encountered had told us we should check it out.  In addition to the RV park, they have a small museum of mining information and artifacts from Tumco, an collection of antiques and a variety of rocks for sale.  We were pleased to see they had some ice cream, as well as water and popcorn.   We had long chats with two of the people operating the park.

fountain

Gold Rock Ranch

Thursday we headed north on County Road S34 north Highway 78, and on to Blythe, CA where I-10 crosses back into Arizona.   After picking up some groceries, we headed to Quartzite to spend a couple of weeks in the BLM long-term visitor area (LTVA).   No hook-ups here, but a step above boondocking since there is water and sewer dumps available for $40 ($180 for the whole winter if you want to stay that long).