The Path Less Traveled
Well, it’s a little easier to travel after a road grader has smoothed it out a little.
Originally posted 4/12/2013
Today was working on writing, and then touring just a bit, and winding up doing laundry in town. Wickenburg is big enough to have numerous modern strip malls up and down Wickenburg Way. The laundry is a bit pricier than Quartzsite’s, but at the one I went to, all the machines were new front-loaders. It was a bit much to ask that my filthy grease-stained jeans would come clean, but they made a rousing try of it. This is actually my last pair of jeans, as the other three promptly disintegrated long ago, one right after the next. I’m still trying to figure that out. I still gots me some work pants, if it comes to that. The heat is such (90 today) that I’m actually starting to wear shorts.
The trail I’m on winds up a very high hill once you pass my campsite. I’d first planned to move the trailer to a primo spot a couple hundred feet away. With all the other campers gone (except for somebody in a TT like mine that parked a half-mile away this morning), I have my pick of the litter up here. Thing is, when I walked over to an even nicer spot, the drone of bees once again caught my attention. There was a constant whirl of them over by a cactus and they looked pretty preoccupied by swarming around, so I figured it was not meant to be. I can live with that, as it melds nicely into my lazy nature anyway.
From the top of the hill, you can barely see the Enterprise, a tiny cube next to a tree, just to the right of center.
So I climbed into the Furd and went on up the trail to see what I could see. The answer: plenty. It was a fairly steep climb in one section, and the rear tires were slipping a bit on the dirt and rocks, despite the bed still being fully loaded. At the top, I was sorely tempted to hang a left up an even steeper, rockier side-trail, a definite 4WD wheel-spinning test, but chickened out. Not today. I didn’t feel like backing down the thing if there was no place to turn around a 158″-wheelbase truck. The view from the top of the “hill” was impressive. On the way back from town, I took a couple shots of some more upscale homes along the access road. Nice!
This is the approach to the hill from the opposite side, which is much easier but is the only one with a sign.
Some places are closer to being tin shacks, while others are swanky.
All of the working ranches along Rincon Road are of very modest acreage. This guy has hardware galore to haul and maintain critters, be they horse or cattle.
Here’s the reason that much of this area is fenced off with barbed wire. An old gold mine. Cyanide was used in more recent years in a leaching process, and the remaining rocks are still covered with traces of it. Breathe deep, and drink up!
Strolling Amok 