In the Shadow of Picket Post Mountain

 Earlier this week I had to go to Superior to do some maintenance on a geocache I placed, so we combined that needed trip with finding some geocaches. Some of the geocaches Hubby found when he and Don,  another resort geocacher, went on an adventure in the jeep in February 2013. I have whined about not getting to those caches for several years because of the historical significance of the area. We had the jeep and the time on Monday.

These wagon tracks were made by heavily loaded wagons transporting ore from the Silver King Mine to the mill in Pinal City a short distance south west of this location. 

The wagon wheels were constructed of wood with iron tread which ground groves into the solid rock. Also noteable is the round depressions between the wheel tracks are said to be from the mules pulling the wagons stepping in the same place each time they passed.

Hubby's foot in a rut to show the depth of the tracks.

We had been to the wagon wheel tracks years before we were geocaching and when the road to the tracks was accessible from Hwy. 60  

This photo from our visit on February 20, 2007 shows the indentions that may have come from the mules' hoof prints.

Carol is standing in an area much deeper than where Hubby was standing. (photo from 02/20/2007)

I had forgotten there was a sign showing curious folks where to walk to find the wagon tracks. I'm thinking the sign is gone as the tracks can not be located directly from Hwy. 60.

The other historical site I wanted to visit was Pinal City. While doing research for the geocaches I placed in Superior, I read about this early mining community and was interested in seeing it first hand.

An imprinted brick or stone from days gone by. I can not read it.

Several red, clay bricks were laying around. 

One of two wall foundations I saw at Pinal City.

Pinal City's post office was established on April 10th, 1878 and was discontinued November 28th, 1891. Pinal City was the milling site for the nearby Silver King mine, about five miles to the northeast. Originally called Pickett Post after Pickett Post Butte, Pinal City grew to a size of over 2000 residents. The town had it's own newspaper called the Pinal Drill. The community had everything anyone would want. When silver was de-valued in the late 1800's the town quickly dwindled and in 1890, only ten people were left. Unbelievably absolutely nothing is left today. The remains of the mill site are still visable. 

The berries crowning a pin cushion cactus I happened to see while checking out Pinal City.

Erosion wash outs and Queen Creek (an actual creek) make for interesting driving. We did watch vehicles come through two areas we did not drive. This road was just below the hill and location of Pinal City.

The view looking east, southeast of Pinal City. We geocached in the area of the dark 'hole.'

We found two other geocaches connected with Pinal City ghost town. Hubby and Don had found these also, but I was happy we trekked to them because they were certainly worth the view.

Hubby told me to go up on top to find the cache. This is what I saw. No geocache.

He didn't remember it was at the base of the hill, in the hole. 

No geocache? That's okay. I'll take photos! These deciduous trees will loose their leaves sometime in January or early February and will begin to grow new leaves beginning in March. This is looking north and over Queen Creek.

We crossed Queen Creek to get to the first geocache and continued up the mountainside, through a barbed wire fence, over dormant grass to the side of this cliff for another geocache, hidden near a cave of sorts.

Again looking north, Queen Creek is along the line of trees. Someone was brave enough to drive the roads/dirt tracks as in an earlier photo. The jeep is parked on the other side of the grouping of yellow trees on the right.

Interesting overhang near the 'cave.'

We took the road to get back to the jeep. We did not have to crawl through the fence or cross the creek, stepping on wet rocks. Another successful adventure. No more whining on my part. Geocaches and photos...I'm good!

When I was walking around at Pinal City, this rock caught my eye. A fossil! Now that I have it home and cleaned, I'm not sure if it is a worm fossil, or just a great squiggle from another mineral. Since I carried it down the hill, I'm going with fossil! It will go in my AZ rock display, joining many other AZ rocks I have collected while hiking and geocaching.

Picket Post Mountain

(view from Wagon Tracks or Pinal City)

Gopher Football

 It has been a few years since I have attended a Gopher Football game, but the opportunity came along this month when the University of Minnesota Gophers football team was selected to play in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl in Phoenix.

If you are like me you are thinking Guaranteed Rate Bowl???? What happened to Sugar Bowl and Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl or Rose Bowl? Those bowl games may still exist but with sponsors spending BIG BUCKS for naming rights, a college football team at the end of regular season might be chosen to play in a game you have never heard before.

We enjoyed dinner and a beverage at The Kettle Black Kitchen and Pub before the 8:15 PM game. There were many football fans in the downtown area enjoying food and drink before the game.

The Guaranteed Rate Bowl game took place on December 28th at Chase Field in downtown Phoenix where Hubby's beloved U of M Gophers took on the Mountaineers of West Virginia. Chase Field is home to the AZ Diamondbacks baseball team. The stadium has a retractable roof.

The roof was closed when we entered the stadium.

MN brought over 300 band members, the flag corp, full team of cheerleaders, and Goldie the Gopher mascot.

My cousin and her husband joined us for the game.

The roof opened and 4 parachutists from Luke Air Force Base came onto the field bringing the football, a flag for each of the two football teams and finally, the American flag.

Fireworks exploded at the "rockets red glare" line in the national anthem...

and boom fireworks for "bombs bursting in air" ~ I have to admit it was a goose-bumpy. teary-eyed moment while singing with the other fans. (I realize it was raining at this point in the opening ceremony.)

And a final burst of fireworks at the end of the song. 

And the rain began to fall. It rained enough to make the field wet and the grass slippery before the roof was once again closed. We were on the lower deck under the overhang, so we did not feel a drop of rain.

One of the things I really admire (and there are several things) about the coach of the Gopher team is he leads the players onto the field before each game. He is in the white circle in front of the players.

It was a good game; tense in the final quarter because the lead was never out of reach, and both teams had chances to score. The final score was Minnesota 18, West Virginia 6.

It was after 11:39 PM when we left the stadium. We got home about 12:45 AM. This was the fourth time Hubby has watched the MN Gophers play in a bowl game in AZ (my second) and their first win at this location. He was very pleased!

Now for a bit of Wikipedia history about the Guaranteed Rate Bowl:

The Guaranteed Rate Bowl is an annual college football bowl game that has been played in the state of Arizona since 1989.

Played as the Copper Bowl from inception through 1996, it was known as the Insight.com Bowl from 1997 through 2001, then the Insight Bowl from 2002 through 2011, the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl for 2012 and 2013, and the Cactus Bowl for the 2014 through 2017 seasons. In 2018 and 2019, the game was known as the Cheez-It Bowl. In 2020, Guaranteed Rate signed on as the title sponsor of the game, renaming it as the Guaranteed Rate Bowl.

When the bowl was initially founded, it was played at Arizona Stadium in Tucson, on the campus of the University of Arizona. In 2000, the organizers moved the game from Tucson to Phoenix. There, it was played at what is now known as Chase Field, the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks of Major League Baseball. For the 2006 season, the bowl moved a second time. After the annual Fiesta Bowl left Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe in favor of playing in University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, the bowl (then still known as the Insight Bowl) was relocated there as a permanent replacement. The bowl returned to its previous home of Chase Field in Phoenix for the January 2016 playing, due to renovation work at Sun Devil Stadium that was expected to last at least three off-seasons. The bowl has remained at Chase Field through the December 2021 season, making it one of four active bowl games staged in baseball-specific stadiums, the other three being the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium, the Fenway Bowl at Fenway Park, and the Holiday Bowl at Petco Park.

The 2020 edition of the bowl was cancelled on December 20, 2020, due to an insufficient number of teams being available to fill all 2020–21 bowl games, following a season impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas From Our Family to Yours.

We  have all survived year two of Covid-19. Curt and I were the only ones who traveled and that was usually with the travel trailer for geocaching and sight-seeing adventures. We had out-of-the-country travel plans for the seven of us, but put it on hold again for another year. We did gather in the Black Hills for several days in July and called it our Family Vacation.

We are back in AZ for the winter, enjoying sunshine, warm temperatures, stunning sunsets and time with our winter friends.

Kari's hospital job was moved home in June. She has decided she likes working from home. She goes to Tapestry, a women's residence center where she provides counseling services, each morning until 3:00PM. Her two kitty roommates enjoy having her home! She has also started an online Masters program in Counseling. Needless to say, she keeps busy but misses traveling.

Karl and his family stay busy. He is back to several days each week in the office. Crystal works several days a week downtown and has her graphic design clients as well. Willa is a 6th grader at Edison Middle School and Marek a 4th grader at Sonia Sotomayor Elementary. They both played soccer this fall and we saw most of their games. Willa was selected for the third year to sing in the SD Elementary Honors Choir, held in Rapid City the end of October. She is also in band and chorus at Edison. Marek enjoys all things computer and games. 

Curt and I took a ten day camping and caching trip to Mingo KS in May. We flew to Nasville and drove to GA, SC and NC in June; the last three states we had not visited. In July we camped in the Black Hills. We took a month-long camping and caching trip to Glacier and to WA in August. In September we spent a long weekend in northeast ND visiting relatives and friends and geocaching. 

Wishing You and Yours a Happy and Healthy New Year!

 

Like many others, I am sending fewer cards this year. 

Wishing you all the brightest and healthiest new year.

Li'l Red

 Li'l Red is our name for the 1992 jeep Hubby bought in South Dakota January 2013 and drove to AZ while I flew. (No reason to waste a RT ticket!) She, Li'l Red, has needed some TLC over the years, and has handled our desert geocaching adventures very well. She got two new seats shortly after she arrived in AZ. This season she got 4 brand new tires when we learned the AZ summer heat is very wearing on tires. Tires might have a lot of tread left on them, but the rubber itself begins to deteriorate leading to leaks that cannot be fixed. After 10 years, we felt it was a good investment. And it certainly was a wise decision when we drove on Saddle Road on this last desert adventure.

In her former life, Li'l Red was driven by a rural mail carrier in SD. When we bought her, we knew there was a rust hole in the floor board on the passenger side. OK. Hubby knew the size of the hole...I did not realize it was 3 inches wide and 6 inches long. The carpet and the rubber floor mat covered it and I never looked at it. Fifteen years of being driven on gravel roads and probably some salted sand in the winter must have created the rusty, weakened floor board. 

It wasn't until this desert trip when the dust came rolling up through the floor covered carpet and rubber mat that we realized we should probably take a look at that hole and try to fix it. As we were driving back to Phoenix I kept thinking we should be wearing gators or neck scarves like many of the ATVers wear when out in the desert. The dust inside the jeep was that bad.

If there was that much dust inside the jeep, I realized we had been breathing large amounts of it, too. Not good.

The cubby hole is an open cubby. It was so dusty and dirty we could not keep our phones in there for fear of them not working!

passenger side window and door frame

Neighbors stopped to chat and welcome us home and in the discussion of the dirt rolling up from the floor, the neighbor suggested gorilla tape. Hubby had been thinking about ways of trying to eliminate some of the road dirt, but in each possibility, there would be 'air holes' which would eliminate some but not all of the road dirt.

He bought a roll of gorilla tape and taped over a piece of cardboard covering the rusty hole.

He crawled under the jeep and taped the underside. You can sort of visualize the size of the hole from the photo. Let's just say, I am so glad I did not place my foot in that area when climbing into the jeep!

But all our climbing in and out had split the cover on the passenger seat. Hubby had ordered seat covers couple of years ago for the two front seats, but they did not fit as snug as they should have, so there was always a bunch of excess material 'bunched' on the passenger seat. He removed the seat covers and gorilla taped the passenger seat at the split seam. So far it is working and staying in place.

As for the floor board fix, we have not been on desert roads to test whether or not the gorilla tape and piece of cardboard are eliminating the road dirt from rolling up through the carpet and rubber mat. It certainly can't be any worse than it was before the fix! I will throw some N95 masks in the jeep, just in case!

Day 4, Heading Home from the Desert Adventure

 So most of my concerns as written at the end of Part 1 of the Four Days in the Desert were non-issues. The roads were good. The jeep with its new tires had no issues. The caches were easy to find because the second half of the trip we followed other geocachers (husband and wife) who were replacing all the shotgun shells with cleaned, duct taped shells with new logs. 

We looked very carefully at the satellite map and felt we had a good plan for the trip back to Phoenix.

We left Gila Bend driving west to the far end of the shotgun shell series of geocaches, the ones we found earlier this spring. This adobe remains was our first geocache of the day. It was just off the interstate and has seen more destruction than the one far from random travelers. No Hubby is not peeing in the corner; he is signing the log of the geocache.

I mentioned not seeing any wildlife on this trip. I did see animals tracks in the fine sand from several species. I do not know what would have made the straight short lines. Maybe geckos or lizards? I recognize bird tracks.

And some sort of small animal like maybe a mouse. I just found the different types of tracks very intriguing. These two photos were taken during the 40+ cache finds on Day 4.

We headed north on the paved Agua Caliente Road to Hyder Road where we headed east on the wide packed dirt road to get 40 some geocaches. That stretch would complete the farthest west section of geocaches in the power trail. It would also take us to the Painted Rock Dam Road which we were sure would be a decent road because equipment and people would need to travel those roads. It is also at this point where the road becomes Saddle Road.

It is probably called Saddle Road because it crosses mountain saddles. I was quite sure the road would deteriorate, but I had no idea how much until we were on it. Let's just say if this was the road on Day 1, I would have quit and walked back to Phoenix. 

The jeep has a working 4WD and we used it through several of the sandy washes on Saddle Road. I'm always a wee bit concerned about getting stuck in one of those loose sand washes, but the jeep and the driver have not failed me yet. 

Early into the driving and no geocaching (we wanted to get back to Phoenix before dark) on Saddle Road we came to a deep drop of maybe a 100º angle (remember, a right angle is 90ºs) and immediately, the road went up at another 100º angle. The drop had to be 20-30 feet. My stomach also dropped 20-30 feet. There was no choice but to continue like all the other 100+ geocachers before us had done. I truly felt ill the rest of the afternoon. Thankfully, there wasn't another surprise because I don't think I could have handled it. 

Saddle Road joins the road/track next to the railroad and becomes the Southern Pacific Road. Road being a very loose term. We traveled under the railroad bridge and to my surprise saw graffiti art. I was thrilled to be able to get out of the jeep (after that steep drop into and out of) and walk around a bit and take some photos.

I can not imagine driving on the road (remember loose term) to paint the pillars on the RR bridge, but then we and a hundred other folks drove on it to look for containers in piles of rocks!

It was a nice distraction after the unexpected road challenge.

I had looked at the map so much I knew when we saw these foundations near the abandoned railroad we had reached Gillespie, another AZ ghost town.

Gillespie is a populated place situated in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. It is named after Frank Gillespie, a local rancher who built the nearby Gillespie Dam, as well as expanding the Enterprise Ranch. It has an estimated elevation of 1,033 feet (315 m) above sea level.

Started in 1919, Gillespie was to be built on a 72,000 acre parcel of land approximately 40 miles northwest of Gila Bend. The town was in include a hotel, sidewalks, water, lighting and other modern conveniences at a cost of $1,000,000. ~ Wikipedia

No population that we could see.

Gillespie is next to the Southern Pacific Railroad which was abandoned in the 90s...

...and now used to store old railroad cars. This time flat bed cars or cars to haul containers were on the track. (Other geocachers told us they had seen abandoned vehicle (car carriers?) railroad cars when they cached along the Southern Pacific Road.)

I do not know the purpose of this concrete silo next to the railroad bed other than a cool place for a geocache. But a friend and blog follower knows what it is and sent the following information:

a phone booth for the railroad!

Thanks, Dee!!!

The train tracks looking west to where we saw the foundations and the abandoned railroad flat bed cars.

And the tracks looking to the east become a single set of rails.

This is the side of the phone booth facing the train tracks. It had hinges indicating it had a door at one time.

I knew when we got close to these tents we were close to the end of our desert adventure. We had seen the tents (but no people or vehicles) the first two days of our desert adventure. 

And the wrap-up:

The black area labeled #1 we completed last spring during our Covid desert caching adventure in February. 

The yellow line labeled #2 was what we completed on the Aqua Caliente Road on days 1 and 2 of this trip.

The red section #3 was completed on Day 3 of this trip. (I-8 is the road at the bottom of the green dots. Gila Bend is to the right of the green farm land/fields along I-8.)

The blue section #4 are the geocaches we found on Day 4 as we headed back to Phoenix. The green line along the green dots is Saddle Road and the Southern Pacific Road. That road joined the Aqua Caliente which is where we started on Day 1 of this trip.

(The 100+ green dots that make the π (pi) at the top of the map were completed in 2019.)

There are more than 2000 geocaches in the Shell Game series/power trail. 

On this four day adventure we found 580 caches. With those and the caches found in 2019 or 2020 and then those from February 2021, we have about 700 more on Hubby's agenda. The area we have left is below the green line and above the red area and between the yellow and green lines. We shall see...