Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013, Quartzsite, AZ.
Big Eye gold mine was our target for the day.
A bunch of Jeeps where to meet at the Shell station in Quartzsite this morning at nine am to jeep out to the Big Eye gold mine. We started out headed south on 95 out of town.
Two jeeps break down right away.
We didn’t get very far when two jeeps had to bail out because things weren’t working too good.
Time to air down.
We continued down the road and turned east onto what I think may be called Dome Rock Road. We drove down that road until it turned to gravel, where we all stopped to air down. Air down is letting enough air out of all your tires so they are soft and ride better over all the rough roads and rocks and also gives ones jeep better traction in sandy stuff.
Below you can see the older geezers airing down their rigs just as we are about to leave the pavement.
The road turned to gravel.
The road turned to gravel and was pretty good for a few miles as you can see below.
The further we went in, the better the road got for the jeeps as you can see below.
We stopped for a rest break at an old mine on the way.
We stopped at some mine on the way in for a break. There was this tunnel that went about a hundred feet though the hill that we all walked though.
The picture below is of us entering the tunnel. You can see the light at the other end if you look.
Old graves are always good to reflect on.
Looking around that area a bit I spotted these old graves Marty and I walked over to see. Just some old wooden crosses on them to mark them, as can see in the below picture.
We continued on to the Big Eye mine on the road you see below.
Big Eye Mine and lunch.
The road was fifteen miles in and when we got to the end we had lunch as you can see in the below picture. The Big Eye mine is up the trail in back of us,up in that pass.
A hike to the old mining cabin.
After lunch, most of us hiked up the trail to the main cabin some of the miners had lived in. It was in fairly good shape and fairly nice inside.
Below, you can see Sue almost to the cabin.
And continued on to the Big Eye mining area.
We continued on past the cabin and up the trail a bit farther to the mining area, which was fairly extensive.
Below, is a picture of the bottom area of the mine, which is where they loaded the ore to take somewhere else to process. This was a gold mine.
What,………….snow?
While we were up there it started to spit some snow, just real light at first.
We took the higher trail back down to the cabin while it lightly snowed on us which is hard to see in the picture below.
Along the way, we spotted this pin cushion cactus growing out sideways in some rocks. They are real small, only a few inches long and a couple inches wide. this one had already bloomed and the red things you see are the fruits.
And rained on too.
As we approached where the jeeps were parked, it started to snow more heavily and turned to mostly rain as we got to the jeeps, which we quickly got into and headed down the hill. It wasn’t long before all the rain stopped and we were back in the dust.
Below we are leaving the mining area and headed back.
Too pooped to jeep on.
We had planned to continue on for more jeeping,………….but, we were all pooped, so we cut it short and headed back to Quartzsite.
It was a nice jeep ride today. Lots of dessert scenery and lots of rocks and bumps for the jeeps to bounce on.
Great day.