Tuesday, November 25/2014

The sun is shining this morning and it looks like it is going to be an awesome day in the neighbourhood. We are surrounded by trees and scrub brush. Yesterday, I even saw a holly bush. I just may have to take some back to Wickenburg for the Christmas season. I have not seen real holly for a long time. The only thing missing were the red berries.
We are headed out on the quads today to explore some of the many trails around this area. Today, it will be Moss Wash Road and follow a loop trail which will eventually spit us back out onto the main road we drove in on yesterday.
Apparently there is some old "mansion" along this trail that John is interested in seeing.
We started out and soon found that the "road" part of Moss Wash was a huge exaggeration.There is no way one could even come near to classing it as a road!! It was a trail, one that was bumpy and rock strewn.
We travelled this "road" for several miles and eventually made it to the Gold King Mansion. It must have been something to see in its hay day as the structure itself was quite impressive. It was built in 1929 to house wealthy investors to the mining industry. Of course the stock market crashed that year and the mansion was abandoned and left to ruin.
We continued along the trail stopping periodically to enjoy the scenery and even chatted with some other riders along the way.
It was soon time to start heading for home and we accessed a few more trails always heading east and back to the main road.
We travelled a varied terrain today with way too much of it being shelf trail (my favourite!!).We travelled through a few riparian areas and one could see the many animal tracks around. Lots of Javalina tracks today.
We also travelled through some tall evergreen forest, through lots of desert like conditions and over lots of big rocks.  The trail travelled up into the higher elevations of the surrounding mountains and down into the various washes. There was a little bit of everything on today's trail.
I certainly could have used much less shelf trail but all in all, it was a good day's ride.
Back at the camper, John got a campfire going and I quickly did up some potatoes, onions and carrots in tinfoil so that John could get started on cooking our supper. I had taken ribs out of the freezer earlier in the day and they too were ready for the grill.
We sat around the campfire until supper was ready then headed in to eat and called it a day. Hogan kept the few cattle in the area at bay while we sat around the fire tonight. I am sure they will be glad to see the last of him!!

Another awesome day!