Friday, we walked the garbage up, and did a 3 mile loop around the LTVA on the west side of the highway, walking ESE along a row near the garbage, then south, and then back WNW along the row we are on, so we could see where the people that drive out past are camped. One site had a croquet course laid out. Looks like someone has to hold the post for the person taking their final shot.
Then lots of curling.
Saturday we headed out to climb the little hill past the row of digs we went to last week. We are seeing more quail, hare and geckos in the wash areas, and birds sitting on trees or cacti.
When we got past the digs we climbed the little hill along an ATV trail that went to the shoulder below the flag. When we got to the shoulder, we found that the flag was on the next hill. There was even a man at the top.
From the valley it had looked like one hill. We descended down to the shoulder between the hills, then climbed the path up the hill to the flag. When we got to the top, we realized that the village just south of it was Rainbow Acres, not La Paz Valley as we had assumed last week. On the rocks at the base of the flag, instead of the usual graffitti you see in such places, people had placed little painted rocks marking their ascent. One was for a boy who was 6 1/2 when he was here, and another couple were for a girl when she was 2 the first time, and again when 3.
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| rock momentos |
We returned around the 'false' hill instead of going back over it. Subsequently we came across a few areas with quartz bits spread across them.
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| hedgehog cactus |
Sunday we did a little loop up the next road north of us between the Brier and the Nascar race.
Monday, we went for a walk up the steep slope to the right of the ridge we did early in our stay on this side.
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| quail in a tree |
Views from the top, but nothing inspiring. Then we drove into Parker for groceries, and to stock up on wine to take home. We had lunch at Crossroads Cafe, a good spot in Parker. We were surprised at how busy it was at 10:30. We had to wait for a few minutes to get a table. A lot of the people must be like us, changing to daylight savings time to match our TV programs, even though Arizona doesn't do DST. After a good lunch, we headed to Walmart. The one in Parker is a bit of zoo, as the parking lot is small for a Walmart, and there were quite a few trailers in the lot. The store itself is similar, with narrower than usual aisles, and boxes of stuff parked in aisles as well. The checkouts were busy, and we made a bad call, winding up behind a couple with tons of stuff. We were wondering if we had missed some kind of special sale day. It turned out that they were stocking up on things because of the coronavirus panic. You would think that the economy was going to come to a halt, so people are buying up lots of canned food, just in case. Sounds like Y2K again. The concerns about what might happen are likely way worse than what will happen, and as they escalate, it causes a lot of other issues.
Tuesday morning was very overcast with rain on and off. After breakfast, there was a break in the rain, so we walked our garbage to the bins, and then walked up the ATV trail up one of the middle ridges on Granite. Along the way, we got a picture of a Loggerhead Shrike on an occotillo bush.
We even had a butterfly pause long enough for a picture.
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| butterfly |
Once up the ridge, instead of taking the ATV trail down the side of the ridge, we carried on a few more hundred feet and followed another ridge going north down into the valley. We had a good view of the area where we are camped. It shows an advantage of this kind of area.
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| our closest neighbors with our trailer in the bottom center |
We got a few sprinkles along the way, but nothing serious. When we got back to the trailer, we got a few minutes of rain, then set up the generator under the front overhang of the trailer.
Wednesday we had a bit more rain overnight. Cloudy in the morning.
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| cloudy morning |
We hiked out to a hill to the southwest near our the hill with the flag. We could see a cairn, or two, on the top of the hill, and thought there might be some mining there.
We took the route around to the south of the hill, to where we had seen the road to the top of the hill. It was another steep climb, 24%.
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| hill with cairn |
There was no mine at the top. the other cairn was on another hill to the north. The route down the north side was easier than the south. It went down a shorter distance to the shoulder between the two hills. The cairn on the north hill marked the location of a hole about 8-12 ft deep 6ft wide and 12 feet long carved out of the rock. The road from the shoulder headed west, away from the trailer, but looked like the easiest route out, so we headed that way, then back around the north side of second hill. There were a few more small digs on that side. Further east along the valley, we got to a junction, from which the 2 choices both headed up over hills. We headed up the north route across a wash. In the wash we saw a plant we haven't seen around here.
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| desert holly |
This route kept climbing up over another hill to the north. About half-way up, we opted to go off-road on a trace of a trail that angled down into another wash. We followed it down until we got back down to the main wash, crossed it to the trailer.
Thursday there were 'flash flood' warnings starting at 11:00 AM until 5:00 PM Friday. We went into Quartzsite to do laundry. When we got back the washes on the road in the LTVA were a little deeper than when we went in.
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| Wash running across road |
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| Stream running from road |
We decided we should do a walk to a 'waterfall' we had seen on one of our previous walks, hoping there might be some water flowing. Although we saw a few little areas with some flowing water this side of Tyson Wash, there were only a few puddles on the west side. We got some better pictures of the rocks in the wash which would create a waterfall, but decided we would need to be there in the rain to see any flow over them.
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| dry waterfall |
On our way back, we could see rain clouds on the east side of the valley. By the time we got back to the trailer, the rain had arrived. It wasn't very heavy and didn't last long.
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