Monday March 3, 2014 King Valley Road, Kofa, AZ.
This morning I was at my camp near Horse tank in the Kofa. The sun was out and my van was warning up nicely so it was time to get up and get going for the day.
I wasn’t in a hurry to get going so I had a couple cups of coffee and tidied my van up for traveling. Around ten AM, I headed out the Horse Tank Road to King Valley Road and turned right, headed for the mines and to look for the cemetery reported to be out that way. I had looked the cemetery up a week or so ago, but forgot where it was, which was ok as that’s a lot of what exploring is all about.
King Valley Road had a lot of wash boarding which kept my speed down.
After much driving, I turned left at junction 00 onto the road to the mining area.
It was very scenic and a typical desert road with a little bit of everything as far as road conditions. Some was soft and some was bumpy.
I’m getting up into the hills in this photo, so I’m almost to the mining area.
Most of the mines are private so I drove past them, keeping an eye out for the cemetery and heading East on the Engesser Road. I’d decided earlier not to go any further than Junction 21 on that road and it soon came up, so I turned on up it and followed it. It wondered up the hill through some rocks and washes. I was soon thinking it wasn’t a place for a guy with a sprained ankle to be in, if something was to go wrong. It would be hard to walk very far for help, so I started to look for a place to turn around. I went almost to the end of the road before I got turned around and headed back out.
Then I drove back to where the North Star mine was and went down that road until I got to the end and turned around.
I stopped here for a break before continuing on, just below the North Star Mine.
No cemetery out this way, so I turned around and headed back down the road and turned onto the road at junction 63 and followed it out to almost it’s end.
My view as I drove out Junction 63 road.
The desert was fairly lush around here and I was thinking I was sorry I told the people back in Quartzsite I would see them this afternoon. It was real temping to camp here.
Again, I was thinking I was out past were a guy with a sprained ankle should be and finally turned around and headed back down the main road headed to the King Valley Road.
As I was cruising down the road, I was thinking I’m tired and hungry and need to pull over somewhere. I kept looking for a spot to pull over that was somewhat nice and finally after quite a long while I saw a little spot that turned off the main road and under a tree, so I zipped right in there like I owned the place.
As soon as I was parked I unrolled my bed and took advantage of it, thinking I should camp here, this is great.
This is the spot, trees with shade too.
After a nap, I cooked up some flour tortillas from the dough I’d made a couple days ago. They were tasty, but not round. :O)
Since I had made plans to be in Quartzsite this afternoon, I had to eventually leave and headed on back to Quartzsite on the wash board road until I hit highway 95.
In Quartzsite, I went to the Library to post all my blogs and check email and some weather reports further up north where I’m thinking of going soon.
I then went over to a place to get drinking water and refilled some of my water bottles and then headed on over to where Marty and Patti where staying and we did some visiting and shooting of the bull and some planning too. We did find the cemetery on the internet. It’s easy to miss without a good map.
Tomorrow’s plan
I’ll be taking it easy tomorrow helping Marty with his computer and another neighbor getting some videos off her cam and onto her computer, so it should be an easy day and a good rest for my still sore ankle. There are some more jeeping plans in the works for Wednesday too.
That’s it for a day of four wheeling in the Kofa.