Week ending Feb 6, 2020 Imperial Dam

Friday we went into Yuma to pick up a few things.

Saturday we did a shorter walk, about 3 miles, going along one of the RV rows beside us, heading toward the reservoir.  We didn't find the road down into the wash on that row, but there was a trail heading down into the wash.  We got down a bit, but then the trail only lead back up to the mesa.  We came out on Herman's Horse Path, but not too much farther, there was an ATV trail back down into the wash.  We got all the way down into the wash, and travelled along the loose gravel in the wash beside a steep wall on the north side.  Then we came to the road going across the bottom of the wash that we took when we did the loop around to the North Shore area.  We headed toward the LTVA office from there, but before we got to the climb up to the mesa again, we got to a road that went back west toward the trailer.  We came out not too far from where we had followed the ATV trail down.  We stayed on this road until we got back to the road heading north toward the trailer.  Near the end, we chatted briefly with a couple from Iowa.  She paints pictures on little rocks, and leaves some of them in the desert to find.   We also saw a pine cone pile beside an RV from Oregon.

 

In the afternoon, John cleaned the Eternabond tape off the sewer tote. The problem with the Eternabond is that the leak in the tote is on an area close to a corner, which was where it scraped when the wheel came off.  Since the Eternabond couldn't lay quite flat, as the bottom of the tote is curved in both directions rather than square, it left ridges where the water could seep through.
He then sprayed on a coat of Flexseal.  Hopefully this method works better than the Eternabond. 

Sunday, we packed up the trailer to dump our tanks and fill the fresh water.  In the afternoon we did a short walk west along the rim of the wash.  Along the way we saw one of the little painted rocks left by the lady from Iowa.  On the back of the rocks, she puts a little message, "RockForYou", as she expects people to take them as souvenirs.

 

The wind picked up in the evening, with gusts up to 50mph, so we put away anything light and loose, laid the solar panels down and weighted them.  

It was still windy on Monday morning but gusts only to 25mph. Lots of dust in the air.  Too nasty to go for a walk.

Tuesday morning was our coldest morning since we have been boondocking, and still gusty.  We decided to go into Yuma for our u-pick grapefruit and a few groceries.  When we got back to the trailer, it had cooled off, so we turned on the heater.  We ran out of propane on that tank, so switched to use the tank connected to the BBQ.  Then checked the tank running the fridge and range.  It is nearly empty.  Should have checked them before going into Yuma! Duh!

Wednesday we went into Yuma to fill the two propane tanks.  The heater tank only needed 4.4 of the 7.1 lb.  We don't know why the heater turned off.  The fridge tank only had .5 lb left, so it was worth the trip anyway.  While there we stopped at Napa and picked up a couple of replacement tailgate cables to replace the one Trev broke last summer.  We had to get two so they were both the same length.   It was becoming an issue because we store the generator under the tonnneau cover when it isn't being used, and set it on the tailgate when taking it out.  The one cable would hold it, but if it is on the side without a cable, it sags a bit. 

Thursday we decided we were overdue for hiking.  North of us in the hills across Senator Wash, we can see an interesting anomaly.  We figured there might by some mining there.

Target for Thursday's hike

Using Google satellite view, we looked for roads heading to the location.  The purple line on the Garmin Basecamp map below is the route we planned.  The blue dashes are wide deep washes. 

 

Our trailer is at the blue flag at the bottom of the map.  The route heads north across Senator Wash, which is quite deep here,

 

so there is a long switchback through the wash.  Once it gets up on the mesa on the "North Shore", it heads east until it crosses another fairly deep wash.  Back on the mesa again, a road splits off the north shore road heading northwest.  This is a fairly level road until it gets close to the our target.   Then it zigzagged across a couple of shallow washes until it came out above a little canyon between two hills.

 

This was what we could see from our trailer. Just above the canyon was a man-made cut in the hill.  There was no tailings pile, so we aren't sure why the cut was made. 

 

The road we were following ended here, about 2 1/2 miles walking.  The direct distance was 0.9 miles.   On the way back, we avoided the zigzags by following a burro trail along the side of the hill above the little washes.