This group of horses was just yards from the roadway.
My bike ride today netted me a lot of shots of some of the horses that are often found along Wild Horse Canyon Road in Green River, Wyoming. Since I don’t know when I’ll be posting next, I thought I’d simply throw up some of the snaps for those of you who especially like horses. None are great, but they do show Read more…
The long climb up from Green River, Wyoming tends to get one’s heart and spirit a’thumping.
I had partially forgotten the sensation of driving up Wild Horse Canyon Road’s 1,300′ climb above Green River, Wyoming’s 6,100′ elevation. That’s enough to drop temperatures several degrees, and enough to make life very comfortable for heat-generating persons such as myself. The main climb is gravel over dirt, and four thoughts kept churning in my mind during the ascent. The first was that Wild Horse Canyon Road is almost exhilarating to drive up, since the views presented during the unrelenting climb are impressive. The second thought was of course wondering if I’d once again see any wild horses. Were the two I saw last year a fluke? Third, the road itself prompts a mental note to take the descent seriously when I leave. The Ford’s brake module failure has decreased the amount of braking that the trailer alone can contribute. That alone is unlikely to pose a problem, but a wet descent could. Fourth, the slow climb, rough in many places, was such a crawl as to prevent locking up the torque converter. “I hope it’s okay with this long a period of stress”, I thought to myself. The trans temp itself stayed unmoved from normal. You don’t need to know anything about torque converters to appreciate this concern, because all you need to know is that they are expensive to be replaced. Near the top, it occurred to me to put ‘er in 4WD Low, to ease the strain, and that worked out great. Fortunately, the first two thoughts dominated the others, and near the top of the initial climb, I was rewarded with the distant sight of a small herd of horses grazing upon a hilltop.
I guess they don’t call it Wild Horse Canyon Road for nothin’!
Once again, I’m caught with my telephoto down! Each horse had a different level of concern about my approach, but I was so far away that all stayed put.
Thus rewarded, I pressed on. One campsite commentator promised, “Numerous boondock pullouts along the entire 30-mile stretch”, so I decided to go past Read more…
The Defiant, in her secret lair.
Another double-length drive through Nebraska got me to the Medicine Bow National Forest in Wyoming, at sunset. To boondock there, you go past the entrance for the Vedauwoo Recreational Area, which is a very nice paved campground and picnic area, with walking paths right up to some of the finest climbing cliffs I’ve ever seen. The day use area costs $5/day, and camping (without any hookups) is $10/night. I’m not dead sure any of the spaces will fit the Defiant, but there is some accommodation for larger rigs.
After a tour down several miles of the worst washboard gravel road I’ve seen to date, I managed to find a spot to turn around, and wound up pulling into the same area I stayed at last year, but in a position that would limit exposure to mud if the weather turned bad, as had been forecast. It was dark by that time, and quite late, so the evening celebrations were curtailed a bit.
This is hardpack, and with a stiffly-suspended vehicle, it’s time to rock and roll. A normal car/truck can skate over this at 30 MPH or so, but the result of doing that with the F-250 and trailer is not so good, at least at tire pressures that will handle the weight. A few miles of this at 1/2 MPH makes the paved fee campsite pretty appealing.
Breaking out the solar panels the next morning on a whim, I hoped to stay 3 nights before moving on – a choice that requires solar power unless I want to live Spartan. I popped the Evelo Aurora off its rack after Read more…
Yesterday evening I pulled into Stromsburg, Nebraska after 7-1/2 hours of driving, twice my self-alotted amount. That’s because after a hot, moist evening at the Iowa I-80 “World’s Largest” Truck Stop, I knew it’d be the same deal at a highway rest stop near Casey, Iowa the next night. On the face of it, I-80 Truck Stop is fab. They’ve got roomy pull-throughs to get automotive diesel, a decent sit-down restaurant and a fast food place, all the truck-related geegaws you could ever hope to see, convenience store, clothing counter, electronics counter…heck, they’ve even got a selection of raccoon hats just like Disney’s Dan’l Boone wore in the 1950s TV series! And the separate pull-through RV area away from the trucks is fairly rare to find at a truck stop.
But as an RV overnight spot, it’s still an all-night-noise truck stop. The RV slots are so narrow that 8-1/2 foot wide rigs like mine just skin through, an especially difficult task because the curved approach is often choked with overflow vehicles. Many RV drivers can’t cope with it, and wind up cutting down the limited number of spaces. At best, it’s a bad idea to leave folding doorsteps down or incautiously open doors.
I knew it would again be a hot day, and began early in the next day’s drive to think about Read more…
How they managed to get their filthy mitts on the airplanes they have, I’ll never know.
As luck would have it, last Saturday offered up free admittance to Air Classics Museum in nearby North Aurora, Illinois. Their annual open house just happened to fall on June 14th, the day I was going anyway. I’d previously passed it on the way to somewhere else, and seeing a cluster of WWII through ‘Nam-era fighter aircraft parked outside behind a fence piqued my interest, you betcha.
One of the two rows of aircraft on display.
I think it’s important to approach this museum with an awareness of what it’s about. We, or at least I, associate museums with Read more…
A dawn, just like any other dawn, but one now beckoning the quest…
Just think of this as relating to the brick and mortar Retailing Mantra “Location, Location, Location!” Just what is it I’m parked beside? An early major US highway, and yet seeming to waffle between one lane and two, and between pavement and dirt with some gravel thrown on top. Following terrain, but with some filling in and some cutting away – with some of the lesser cutting into grades unnecessary for motorcar travel. It’s hard to tell just what this section of 89 was originally like. Its present inconsistencies make it a confusing mish-mash of contradictions, like building a series of top-quality, engineered concrete overpasses, only to link them with a dirt path made out of landfill debris. Was this a highway, or a piece of local trail pressed into service as a stopgap?
I had gone for a walk, picked up some indicators, and then picked up more during a drive on errands. Between that and running into a Read more…
I was in shock for about five full seconds and then careened over to the shoulder to snap this.
Remember the recent post about team roping? I wondered about whether this event was now a hobby/sport unrelated to today’s realities about cattle farming. You know, mechanization, efficiency, feedlots. On my way back from a grocery run to Chino Valley, I unexpectedly found the definitive answer to my quandary. A good-sized herd of cattle was moving toward an underpass running below the roadway on 89. Lo and behold, what was moving them was a group of four mounted riders! Groping blind, I could not locate the camera behind the passenger seat. Damn! With traffic tailgating me at 65 MPH, I yanked it over onto the road’s paved shoulder near a roadside historical marker, and hit the 4-wheel discs bigtime.
I realized an issue as I reached for the camera again. Wrong lens. They’d be little specks at this distance. So I’d have to switch it on and use the menu system to ramp up resolution, and take my shots. Then I’d have to crop the heck out of the shot later, but at least I could. The road’s shoulder was tilted pretty good, and the Ford’s heavy door was a challenge to get open, but desperate men do desperate things. I expected the Pentax’s LCD display to wash out in the strong light, making the resolution adjustment tough. But no, it was readable, and fortunately Pentax had not buried the adjustment deep in the menu system. Done in a few seconds. Aim and fire.
I only caught the very end, but hey, it’s proof that here and there, the Old West is still the Real West.
I think I know a couple people who’d pay to be allowed to do this!
By the way, the historical marker reads: “Del Rio Springs
Site of original Camp Whipple, established December 1863. From January 22 to May 18, 1864 the offices of the territorial government of Arizona were operated from tents and log cabins here, before being moved to Prescott, the first permanent capital.”
Caution: The post below contains a large heap of photographs. If your data plan is extremely limited and you usually use it all up each month, you may want to NOT click on the “More” icon to keep reading (or view the brief video) because all of the photos will begin to download with the rest of the article. There are some very nice snaps in it, if I do say so myself. The photos illustrate how things work and what often happens. Reduced to blog size, each photo is tiny space-wise, but there are about 100 of them, so they add up if you have no space at all to spare. If you already squander your monthly plan on occasional photo galleries, YouTube or Facebook, make a vow to watch one less video of a monkey picking its nose, and keep reading this instead.
Once a steer is too large for one man to handle, team roping comes into play.
Wickenburg, Arizona still wears its Old West heritage on its sleeve, and for good reason. It’s still a ranching and equestrian town. As a result, each winter from November to April, there are numerous team roping events in any of several arenas in town, public and private. Team roping is a rodeo event that contains one steer, two mounted riders, and a couple of ropes.
The historical goal is to quickly capture and immobilize a full-grown steer too large for one man to handle alone. To do this, the first rider tries to rope the steer’s horns, head or neck, while the second rider must rope both of the animal’s rear legs. Once the two pull far enough apart that the steer is judged as immobilized, the elapsed time is called. Team roping is about the only rodeo event where gender means nothing. It’s a straight-up race against time and other teams.
Notice that the rider on the left has thrown his rope while the steer’s rear feet are on the ground, and also the very small size of the loop! No way, right?
There’s a five-second penalty for roping only one rear leg, and same for either rider leaving the train station early. The equipment is not particularly specialized except for the two ropes. Once you see the photos below, you’ll know why. Each rope does a different job and must behave just so in order to succeed. You’ll notice that the steers are wearing protective horn wraps, which prevent rope burns and reduce stress on the horns. I’m very glad I took plenty of sequential photos, because that made it possible for me to see just how absurdly difficult team roping is to do well. It also helped me appreciate just how much training and experience the working horses must have in order to pull this thing off.
Same riders a couple seconds later, and the impossible has occurred. Both ropes are firmly in place, and completion is about to be called.
See, each rider’s hands are full of rope and reins, and maneuvering it with split-second timing is a pretty absorbing task. Naturally, there’s no time for the usual action/response delays once that gate opens, so the horse needs to be able to make a string of executive decisions on Read more…
The departure out of Wickenburg.
Each year since 1947, an event called the Desert Caballeros Ride takes place. An invitation-only event, it provides a couple hundred riders the opportunity to ride and camp in the surrounding mountains for five days, and then it’s over too soon until next year. This year’s 180 riders will split into groups of forty and move between three camps over about 100 miles before returning. This now-historic ride has inspired several others in the area, including one exclusively for horsewomen (who showed their more civilized natures by chipping in for a portable shower).
A few local horses were individually trailered in, and this one of them. What a beauty.
So, what I’m presenting here is not a parade through town, per se. It’s simply the orderly departure of some 180 riders heading off for the desert. As Wickenburg is at the juncture of two state highways and lacks a suburban-style network of roads, these boys clog up this town quite effectively for fifteen minutes or so as they head right down the main drags. You’d think the town’s police would view it as an annual nuisance, but not so, not from what I saw and heard. The ride is a part of Wickenburg’s proud heritage, and the town now depends substantially on tourist and vacationer dollars. Although there are other equine events, any loss of interest in this ride would directly impact the town’s ability to promote itself. If anything, it’s in Wickenburg’s best interests to protect and promote it, and that attitude is apparent in the officers having to reroute through-traffic with minimal delay to everyone involved. I was impressed. Calm, confident and friendly, without a hint of grumpiness.
This shows most of the trailers, but let’s just say there was a heap o’ horsies.
More than a few of these riders have been heading out for a couple of decades. Many are local, many are not. The age span runs wide. It’s apparently a good time, and once you’re hooked, there’s no way you’re not going next year. I was able to tour the Community Center’s parking lot among a half-dozen long, long horse trailers, and here is a little of what I saw.
This critter may not win the running or barrel races they hold out there, but he’s still impressive.
The west end of Ferguson Lake.
The BLM’s road to Ferguson Lake heads northward from the Imperial Dam LTVA near Yuma, Arizona. This BLM800 gravel road carries the Ferguson name and heads discreetly into the hills. An impulsive desire to see what Ferguson Lake is like quickly leads to wonderment, because the road soon goes up hill and down dale, coming close to needing 4WD in the nose-heavy Ford pickup at times.
The east end of Ferguson Lake, from the same high vantage point.
I was going to write that, “aside from washboard and rocky bumps here and there, this road is not unduly rugged since high clearance and 4WD are not required”. I was going to write that until some motorhome campers I know here tore the Read more…
Strolling Amok 