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...