A Drive Through The Little Harquahala Mountains

(Clicking on the pictures will make them larger.)

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

(After three days of trying the pictures finally uploaded. Not sure if it was the WiFi here at the park or blog-spot.)

Looking at the map we decided to take Harquahala Rd. through the Harquahala Mountains to I-10. We needed to go and pick up a prescription and groceries in Buckeye and we thought this would be a nice drive instead of taking Salome Rd. both ways. The road was unpaved but except for a few spots in great shape. In fact, towards the end of our ride we could see some places where people had been boon docking. Coming from I-10 the spot would be easily accessed with the Stinger B. The spot is in our book as a future place to spend some time.

Just in case anyone is looking for some property.

Tom spotted the sign so we turned off the road to check it out. As we were
walking up it looked like several abandoned mines we have seen in the past.
Then when we looked down (bottom picture) all we could see was junk.
Tom  even spotted a washer. It is a shame to see this sort of thing. A
few miles back we had seen a sign that said "no dumping" with a couple
of piles of garbage behind it. It is sad to see piles of garbage
both here in the desert and back home out in wooded areas. 

Teddy Bear Cholla
They look soft but from what I have read there is nothing
soft about this cactus. What looks soft and fuzzy are actually
tiny hooked spines.

Harquahala Mine

The Harquahala mine was noted as one of the richest mines in Arizona. Just to give you an idea of the quantity and quality of the gold found there -- it was first found above ground in slabs often as big and as thick as the palm of your hand in cracks in the big boulders. The gold found here was often in big deposits like this and at other times it was spread out through rich areas of rock, not always being found in quartz veins. The new Harquahala Gold Mine was still working in the early to mid 2000's.

There is a small cemetery on the side of the road.  The graves are marked only with wooden crosses and are from a mining disaster that happened at the mine sometime in the late 1800's. These graves have been restored by an organization in Salome over the years because of vandals 

 (Information found at In the Desert.com)

Harquahala Cemetery

Turning onto I-10 and heading east towards Buckeye.

So after finishing our errands in Buckeye we pulled back onto I-10 and this is what we saw. On its way down the sun had lit up the clouds and turned them a beautiful golden color. As we continued west the clouds started to turn a fiery red before fading in the twilight.
(These pictures were all taken out the front window of the Jeep as we headed west so they are some what blurry.)

The last bit of light on the horizon.and a ribbon of lights heading towards us.

Turning onto Salome Rd.

One of the first things you see when you
turn onto Salome Rd. is a sign warning you
to watch for cattle. (this was not the first
one we saw) Anyway, we did not see any
cattle but did catch two burros in our
headlights, just as they finished crossing
the road and heading off to our left.

As I was looking through my collection of quotes, for one to add to this blog, I read this one and my first thought was thank you I needed this reminder. (So many times I am reading something and I think, is that you God are you trying to tell me something.) Anyway, I had a frustrating experiences trying to get something resolved this past week and felt like I was being "handled". In the end it was resolved and I was proved right but it was still frustrating to deal with people who are totally lacking in customer service skills. In the end I am thankful for the two people, I talked to, who helped resolve the problem and the reminder to let the frustration I felt about it go.