Enough with traveling — it’s time to RIDE! With all of our chores done, Wednesday was our first day out on the trails. The weather was a little chilly in the morning (upper 30’s), so we didn’t leave the park until 10:00. Our destination was part of the Gila River trail. Rick knows the area, so we followed him. We had to take Kawi out on the paved road for a few miles. Our boys keep saying we need to wear these “stock” tires out so that Kawi can get bigger ones. Because bigger is better, right? 😏
We found the river, and there was plenty of water in it! We certainly were not going to get to the other side of it here!
Rocky and I were both just enamored by all of the desert flowers! We were snapping pictures everywhere. We finally had to make it more challenging by looking for three colors together. Here was my first find.
Ooh, this was neat – some kind of old stone structure. There was no information about it…. it’s just some old ruins out in the desert.
Rick took us to see an old railroad tressel, and it goes through a tunnel on the other side of the river. We couldn’t get over there to investigate, but it was neat to see. We were going to eat our lunch here, however, the buzzards had alerted us, and then our noses confirmed that there was something very dead nearby. PHEW! 🤥. So we meandered on down the trail.
These pink flowers are always surprising to find, because they aren’t everywhere. They are a cactus, not just a wildflower, so we have to look harder for them.
We found some ocotillo that were really bloomed out with fire red and the flowers looked so fluffy! Of course, this is the desert, and NOTHING is fluffy. Everything is pokey, sticky, bitey.
These are hard to find out in the wild too. I think the flowers look like juicy little pineapples. The yellow part is actually very hard, like the skin of a squash.
We were gone over five hours, and covered about 57 miles today. It was a fun and easy ride – nothing technical. Meanwhile, back at camp, Henry and Nitro are just hangin out and enjoying their vacation.
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On Thursday, the weather forecast was for highs near 80 and the morning was a little warmer than yesterday, so we started out at 9:00 for our ride to Elvis, Jack’s Crack, and Box Canyon. We had to go on the BIG road to get to the town of Florence.
And to fill up with gas. It just struck me a little funny to be pulling into the gas station in our buggy, but it isn’t uncommon here.
Rick took us the route that they always go to get to the trail, and we had a little water hazard on the trail. 😳. Rick went first to see how deep it was. There were two good things here…. the water was not moving, and the bottom was hard packed, not mud. He made it through without drowning, so then we went through.
Yep – we had water come up through the drain holes in the floor! Yep – that’s water where my feet belong. 🙀. But that’s as much as we got then we were out. Whew! First time Kawi has been swimming.
These little buttercuppy flowers were so bright and pretty. They would show up here and there in small patches.
These lupine type would be in big areas – they apparently spread well because they are the ones that are all along the roadways, just like in Texas.
This is why we love this trail. There are all kinds of obstacles and challenges and is more technical for the driver and buggy. Kenny and Rick got out to find a line (route) through the rocks. Rick does not have a skid plate under his buggy belly, and his springs are sagging, so he doesn’t have quite the clearance that we have. (Kenny put new upper ‘tender’ springs on Kawi before this trip.) The guys chose different routes.
Kenny and Kawi had fun, and Kawi even kicked his feet up in the air with joy a little bit. Braap!! That driver front is in the air. One spot was a little more challenging, and he had to take a second run at it. Sometimes your tire falls into a hole that it doesn’t want to climb out of, so you back up, move over a bit, and go again.
There is a loop trail called Jack’s Handle, and this little spot is called Jack’s Crack. We barely fit between the rocks!
Here’s Rick and Rocky coming through another skinny spot.
OOOOOH! Check it out! Three colors! 🥳
The desert is just alive with color. I am still not a desert person, but this is extraordinarily beautiful. I do admire anything that can survive and be beautiful in this climate. My skin is not. I have a sea-level tropical moisture kind of skin. Here, this dry 10% humidity weather turns me into a flaky snake with a very, very dry nose!
Oh geeze! This made us cringe!! There is sunlight under both passenger tires on R&R’s buggy!! YIKES!! There is a big rock in the trail with a big drop on the left there, and we think Rick was trying to avoid the drop. Nope. Kenny took us over the drop. Much better choice than a two tire doh-see-doh!
There were a couple of large vertical tanks where we stopped for lunch, which must have been water storage for the free range cows. As soon as we got out of our buggies, this Mr. Bovine came trotting over. He has horns! I wasn’t prepared to play “torro, torro”, and was just about to get back into Kawi. But he stopped and just hung out and watched us. There were several more bovine in the bushes.
He was a good looking Bovine. (He isn’t black and white, so according to our grandson, he is a bovine, not a cow 🐄.). Rocky said that the cattle look much healthier this year compared to last year, and there are a lot more of them. Probably because the desert is so lush with plant life for grazing.
These orange flowers are my favorite out here. They are so bright!
This was a major obstacle on the Jack’s Handle Loop. Kenny checked it out and decided that today was not a good day to break Kawi. It is a lot rougher than it looks here. Well, you can kind of see that the drop by Kenny is about three feet based on the fact that you can’t see his legs. So we took the drive around, which is a very steep up-a-the-hill, and down-a-the-hill.
Then off to climb more hills. Look at all the yellow!!!
These daisy-likes are the desert’s coat of color everywhere, particularly on the southern facing slopes.
These were rare to find. They’re pretty low to the ground, but so pretty.
And then in an area where it looked like there had been some mining at one time, was this almost-tunnel. We did see a couple of big holes in the ground surrounded by fencing to keep critters from falling into the hole.
Box Canyon was at the end of our ride, and we drove down a constant stream of water all the way through it. It takes about 10 minutes to drive through this whole section, and it’s so neat.
We took a different route back to town, and lo & behold, it ended up at the River Bottom Bar & Grill! What’s a girl to do?! I was too thirsty to order my usual sweet fruity rummy kind of drink, and they don’t have dark beer, soooooo 🤷♀️ The picture shows how deliriously thirsty I was. I ORDERED A CORONA FOR MY OWN SELF! WHAT?! I sent the picture to our son Brian, and he said something like – I asssuuuume you’re pouring that for dad? *Nope, it’s mine.* Then he said – you’re growing up right before my eyes, ma!
HA! And then….. I drank the whole thing all by myself. What is the world coming to? The lime helped 🍈 but the flavor was light enough that it wasn’t terrible. I feel like such an adult now.
I wish I could have gotten a picture of Kenny’s face when he asked me what I wanted to drink. I thought his eyes were going to pop out and land on the table. It made us laugh a lot.
One fabulous thing about staying here in this RV park is that there is a big swimming pool and hot tub waiting for us after a long day of riding. And that is where we went! It feels so good! There are not a lot of people here now, because it seems that everyone leaves at the end of March to go back to their wet, cold, snowy northern homes. I don’t understand the timing, but what do I know? They’re missing the desert beauty. Well sure…. it’s going to get up to 97 degrees early next week, but they sat here in the wind and cold all winter. Now is their chance to use those air conditioning units!
Desert sunsets are always pretty. I wonder if it’s because there is always sand in the air? We’ll do another ride tomorrow evening and come back in the dark. THAT will be different for us!
