March/April 1999:  Picacho Desert, Gold Basin, Lake Mead

March 8 to 11, 1999: Gregg's Hideout
March 18 to 22, 1999: Near the Picacho Mountains
Sunday, March 28, 1999: Gold Mine Hill (Gold Basin)
March 31, 1999: My first injury!
April 1, 1999: A slow day and great ribs
April 2, 1999: At the GPAA Claim in Gold Basin

March 8 to 11, 1999: Gregg's Hideout

I enjoyed studying for the HAM test at Lake Mead. It was very quiet there, just a few guys fishing during the day. Not too many people take the 15 mile dirt road through Gold Basin to Gregg's Hideout.

Leaving Gregg's Hideout:

I just LOVE driving through the desert!

 March 18 to 22, 1999: Near the Picacho Mountains

I didn't see another person or vehicle in those 5 days. It was around 80 degrees during the day, a very slight breeze in the evening, and I had a fairly stable Voice Stream net connection.
 

Ain't life great?

Sunday, March 28, 1999: Gold Mine Hill (Gold Basin)

After spending the night way out towards Temple Bar, I made it back to Gold Mine Hill.  I was surprised to see a station wagon parked next to the road. The guy looked harmless and I stopped to talk to him. Spence had been nugget and meteorite hunting for the weekend. He enjoyed getting away from the crowds in Vegas and had several high end detectors.

I offered a beer and then Spence suggested we go up to the mine.  He'd been up there before, but didn't want to go inside by himself.  

Of course I was up for a little walk and it was quite interesting

We decided not to pull on the wires, and tried to keep Patch away from the cyanide drums.
 .

Somebody had just filed a new claim, but we didn't see any gold.

Afterwards Spence loaned me one of his detectors and we looked around for a couple of hours, but didn't find a thing. It was another perfect day though, I even put sun screen on and we talked about how it would soon be too hot up there.

Spence had a ton of info about what people found where.  One of his local friends supposedly has over 10 pounds of meteorites.

Since Spence was used to getting up at 4 or 5 AM, I went to park further up by the mine for the night.  "Early" in the morning around 10:30 Spence was knocking on the door, he woke me up to bring Patch back.  Apparently Patch likes to go nugget shooting, he'd been following Spence around for hours and had found him when he wasn't even in sight of the camper.

Spence was heading home, and I had to get some more diesel.

Wednesday, March 31, 1999: My first injury!

Can you believe I fell out of the camper!???

Was totally straight too. But it's been a long day and a short night.  Yesterday I drove to Kingman to get diesel, and of course I got food and water while in town.  It was dark by the time I got back, and I parked close to Gregg's Hideout Rd. on White Elephant Wash.

It was so windy, I couldn't sleep till after 4:30 AM and it seemed like I woke up every few minutes. Around 8 AM I gave up.  I've never felt the camper shake so much!

Salt Spring

It was semi cloudy and I decided to check out Salt Spring, now that I had plenty of diesel. I was hoping the road would go all the way to Lake Mead, but no luck.  It's a nice place though, lots of vegetation and flowers, and nobody else was there.

When I got out of the truck I noticed that one of the camper's front tie downs had come out of the hook. I was shocked, what the hell happened? The nut was as tight as could be and all I had for tools was some cheap pliers. I applied some oil but didn't get anywhere. Getting quite frustrated, I finally realized I could step on one set of pliers to hold it and then use two hands on the nut.  That worked! I still don't know how both tie downs could have stretched, or why I had to tighten them over half an inch. Got to remember to check into that.

Relieved, I was about to leave, but then I saw the sign "DANGER - mine shaft - no trespassing."

That got my attention and I started up the hill. Since I haven't found any gold or meteorites, I picked up pretty pieces of quartz. It didn't take long till I found pieces with what looked like silver. Occasionally the sun came out and there was glitter (211 kb) everywhere!

Lots of fool's gold, pyrite, and shiny quartz. Several times the wind gusts nearly blew me over, but I made it all the way to the top.

I tried to limit myself to rocks in the front pockets (now I know why I bought those jeans 2 sizes too large.) I figured I had an 80% chance of falling on my ass on the way down. But I just couldn't leave those pretty silver laced quartz pieces behind.  Miraculously, I didn't fall (yet) and brought about 10 pounds of rocks back to the camper.  (Found out later that it's illegal to pick up anything inside the Lake Mead Natl. Rec Area.)

On the way out I stopped at another mine shaft with huge pieces of quartz. It was raining a little occasionally, and with nothing better to do, I decided to head up White Elephant Wash as far as I could.

A few miles up the wash was a camp with a motorhome, a trailer and several SUVs. One guy was prospecting with a metal detector, I kept on going.  Oh, I had bought a metal detector at Radio Shack just before I left Cottonwood and it totally sucked!

By the time I got lost, the batteries for the GPS were charged just enough to get me a fix and back to White Elephant Wash.. That PGS goes through batteries like there's no tomorrow. I didn't even see Owens Mine as I passed it and tried to get to Cyclopic. Even with occasional rain and clouds it was a fun drive.

At times there were so many Joshua trees, I'd nearly call it a forest. Unfortunately they were on both sides of the road too and I was having a tough time avoiding their branches. There was no place to turn around either.

Then I noticed these cocoons in all the bushes left and right. I stopped to have a closer look, something black was inside.

 

 

Caterpillars! Tons of them, thousands!!!! I'd like to be around when (or if) they turn into butterflies.
What are they? (166 kb)

Soon the road became nearly impassable, I just don't fit under those trees! As soon as I found a level spot I stopped and decided to camp for the night.  I was in the middle of a small valley and it wasn't too windy. It was cold though, 45 degrees at 5 PM and I thought I'd better turn on the water heater.

As I opened the camper door, I noticed a bit of blue sky. It pleasantly surprised me, and that's when I went flying. I was lucky I just fell on my ass (as I had expected earlier) but I braced myself with my right hand and that wasn't good.

It hurt like hell.

First I thought it might just go away, but then my palm started to swell.

So I got out the bandages which I had just recently repacked and I had wondered why I was driving them around. I guess I know now.

When I finally went to light the water heater, I saw that I lost the panel again. And this time I also broke one of the two pins that holds it in place. It so happened I had a new panel in the truck.  I had lost the panel in the Picacho desert a couple of weeks ago. I had faxed an order (via net) to Lance for a new one Friday afternoon. Then I found the panel on my way out on Monday. Right away I cancelled the order, but they had shipped it already. Good thing I didn't send it back!

Now I got hot water, but no use for it.  Yesterday I  bought a huge slab of ribs, was going to bbq on a camp fire. It barely fit in the fridge. I had even picked up fire wood (store bought, abandoned at the side of the road.)

But then I was just going to try and get some sleep, cooking seemed like a pain in the hand! I took one of my 3 codeines, and I didn't feel too bad. Not much pain unless I tried to do something. I didn't see myself opening cans (nearly couldn't open the codeine bottle), and of course I didn't want to get the bandage wet. How was I going to cut onions and tomatoes?

Good thing it takes only a light touch to compute, 8 finger typing worked pretty well. I'm surprised I got all that writing done and didn't pass out. Just before it got dark it snowed, or was it small hail? On the Vegas station I heard about 60 mph winds and power outages in Vegas. And more cold windy weather tomorrow, yuk!

 

This was a quiet place to camp.
No wind all night, finally got to sleep.

 

April 1,1999 A slow day and great ribs

I slept nearly 11 hours! No wind all night. I woke up to blue skies, but I was surprised how cold it was outside, below 50 degrees by noon. And my hand didn't hurt at all unless I used it.

It was too cold and I thought I'd look for a warmer place.

 

But first I installed my new water heater panel and frame
while charging the camcorder batteries.

I didn't go far, just a mile or two, and it was 15 degrees warmer. How strange. I found a level space and thought I'd better stop and bbq those ribs, clouds were moving in again.

 

Patch is patiently waiting and relaxing,
100% sure that he'll get his share.

It's really great that he doesn't steal food
(until he's alone at home)

That was pretty good, especially with the Thai bbq sauce. Even the potatoes were edible (usually they disintegrate in the fire.) A lot of work though, for just me.

It got cloudy again, and cold. I walked up a side gulch with the detector, but I've yet got to find as much as a nail with that thing. And it was COLD. Yesterday was the first time in weeks that I fired up the heater, and I had it running till I went to bed a little while ago. Had to have it warm in here for my ice cream cake! If it doesn't warm up soon, I'll head back down to the Picacho Mountains.

April 2, 1999: At the GPAA Claim in Gold Basin

On Friday I took a wrong turn and ended up on a dead end. I was surrounded by tailings.

Nicely sorted too: big rocks, gravel, dirt.

 

 

So I stayed for the night, looked for gold a little, but didn't find anything, and it was getting windy and cloudy again.
 

When I got back to the truck, bees or wasps had invaded it. The dog water had spilled on the door mat in the camper while driving, and I had left the camper door open. Apparently they were VERY thirsty, they didn't bother me at all when I carefully picked up the mat and water bowl and carried them away from the camper.  It took at least an hour till the camper was "all clear."

 

My hand was doing much better too.  Strange enough, my wrist turned black although it never hurt.
 

Saturday morning I woke up to the sound of a generator. It was overcast and cold again, I made some coffee and headed over the piles of tailings to where the noise came from.

Wow, a whole camp was set up. Two trucks, two tents, and a whole bunch of stuff! A guy and woman and her grandpa were busy running the operations. Very nice people too. They'd been up here gold prospecting on weekends for 9 years now.

While they used to dry wash, they now bring two 55 gallon drums with water, the 2000 watt generator, a couple of garbage cans to set the sluice on, another one for the water pump, a bunch of 5 gallon buckets, screens, some shovels and a big tub for clean up. Nice setup!

After processing a couple of buckets of material they didn't really find much, a pinhead sized piece and probably a few flakes. But it sure was easy. The bad part was that it was so cold, it would have been better to work hard and warm up again! The water was cold, the beer was cold, I felt so bad for them. I was so cold myself I forgot the dog chain and camper door mat on the way out.

Patch gets a treat!

I asked him to sit so I could take a picture. He wondered what that was all about. Then I remembered the ribs.

Sunday, April 4, 1999:

Got back to Cottonwood last night. It was too COLD and windy again in Gold Basin. Really too bad.

In Kingman I was shocked to see that fuel prices had gone up again! And just as I was ready to head South, I saw that I LOST the front camper tie down. Checked at K-Mart, but they had nothing and finally I used one of my fabric tie downs. The other side and the back was totally lose again, I don't know what's up with that stuff. So I had to go to Cottonwood. Going to see Dave, my mechanic, tomorrow, would hate to lose my house!

Fortunately, the weather has sucked so bad in Cottonwood too, people had left in the Thousand Trails park in droves and I got my favorite camp site.

Fell asleep to the weather forecast on the scanner last night. I-40 required snow chains on the 60 mile stretch around Flagstaff by 3 AM. I had taken 89 to Prescott and it was snowing most of the time even before dark.  Sedona was on winter storm watch all night and day. This morning I woke up to rain, and I thought it stopped after a while. Then I looked outside and it snowed! It didn't stick very long, but that's definitely strange weather, NOT normal at all.

Once I get the truck fixed and picked up my mail, I'll head South as fast as I can. Laundry is done, the GPAA stuff should be here, I'll do my taxes where it's warmer!

Wednesday, April 7, 1999:

Yesterday I got my all new set of spring loaded tie downs. It so happened that Gene, the mechanic at Camelot, was a HAM and he gave me the phone number for his tech Dan. Unfortunately, Dan doesn't have time until Friday, so I'm stuck in Cottonwood till then. Looks like I'll head for Las Cruzes or Santa Fe right after our meeting.

So I've been velcroing and hot glueing and rearranging stuff. And tonite I watched TV!  Star Trek, news, and a bunch of very weird shows. Even worked on my taxes for a bit. Can't wait to get to Gitti and Thom's near Santa Fe, I'm ready to PARTY!

 

March/April 1999:  Picacho Desert, Gold Basin, Lake Mead -- Arizona
December 1999: Oro Grande, New  Mexico -- GPAA Gold Claim
Summer 2000: Arizona to Calgary
October 2000: Grand Canyon West

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