Thursday Thirteen: Rockhounding...Back in the Day.

1. When the Jeep was young....we took her everywhere!

We took off across the desert, following will of the wisps,  and to explore and find rocks and Treasures!

Remember, all photos enlarge with a click.  And if they don't, I am going to hunt down that feature and hogtie it.

2. Old West on the ground and 21st Century overhead...

While out in the back of beyond, this old fence caught my eye.  On some of the posts were strung lots of horse shoes from when the cavalry made encampments and roamed about.  I took a couple of them as mementos.  We actually met a retired Cavalry officer in San Diego when we delivered meals on wheels.  He told us many interesting things about life in San Diego when he was still in uniform here.

Back to the "bad lands"....Across from this fence, and down the road, was what remained of the cattle ranch- the one that put this fence up.

You can see some of the caretaker's buildings down in the canyon.  At the time there was permission to be on this land.  Of course, you should always find out if that permission is still active or not before going onto the land.  Life threatening "Issues" CAN, not don't.. Ahem.. Life threatening issues can arise that way.
When I was a child, my parents didn't do this checking thing, and we had to witness a very angry man, with a very red neck, roar up into the Wadi in his beat up pick up truck with a rifle rack, and pull said rifle on my parents.  Not typical of Arizona but very typical of most other places, like the California Desert.  Beware.  The red necks are alive and well, and now they probably are making meth.

3. Looking out across the mesas and lands
 across from the Fence in the second photo..

We were headed up to the reddish outcropping in the land cut to look for a mineral called Rhyolite.  If I'm wrong, and that's happening more and more, do not be alarmed.  Something collectible was out there.   We went on a lot of trips where we found nothing at all, so things get a little gnarly in a Rockhound's head.

The accepted definition of a rock hound is that you carry around a bag of marbles.  And, when you pick up a rock you put down a marble.  And then, when you have lost all your marbles, you are a rockhound.  True!  It's been proven many a time.

4. The destination

On the way up to the face, we also found an intrusive plug eroding by the side of the road.  It's interesting, and in fact the whole area is very interesting from a Geological stand point, because the deserts of the southwest are full of these things.

5. Decomposing Igneous plug.

6. These expanses were HUGE!

Since I don't have enough pictures from the early days of any given trip, I'm now going to shift to the focus to two more areas, one being where we drove for miles into a place, found an old mine, got stuck on a road, and didn't find what we were looking for.  I'm sort of glad we don't do this anymore. lol

The trip to an old mine face to look for material in the tailings. That's the stuff that get's left behind when a place is mined.  And, by the way, don't EVER go into an old mine.  What can look like a solid, undisturbed floor, can actually be a down shaft covered over with ever rotting beams and a layer of dirt fall.  Setting our feet on it could send you plummeting down 50 to maybe 200 feet to a lower dig, and kill you in the fall.  Or if it doesn't you will wish it had because you are out in the middle of nowhere....  You get the idea.

7. This is called Four Metals Mine.
Do not go into it.

This is a picture of another mine face.  It's more likely called a quarry.. In it was supposed to be some Blue Agate, which is really sort of gray-blue.  This mine is in the California Desert.

8.  The agate face.

9.  Breaking into the blue...

There was a lot of overhang in this place...One of the more aggressive members lodged
himself down into the opening and worked the face.  He was so greedy that he refused to yield his place for hours.  We were digging with a couple other clubs that day.  Extremely bad manners..

10. "Digging" for "Road" agates.

This one, above, brings tears to my eyes.  "A" was a grieving grandma whose beautiful teenage granddaughter had died about 6 months earlier in a car accident.  She had that hard edge of grief in her voice and, as she looked diligently for blue agates in this place along the edge of an Arizona mining road, she told me how the only place she found some peace was when she went out rockhounding.  I can completely understand this now.  Something relatively mindless and undemanding is required.

11. The foliage doesn't match a Bristlecone
But this is a very old tree.

You see all sorts of things out there in the four corner.  I absolutely LOVE the Southwestern states.  This, above, is just a very old conifer, but not a Bristlecone pine - to my knowledge.  I wish I'd gotten better pictures of this tree.  We were headed down yet another dirt road in Eastern Arizona.  When I spotted this tree, we stopped to take a photo. I'm using the Ricoh for all these.  It's not a bad camera but it gobbles up batteries!

12.  The Rock Boss! The biggest sledge
Hammer we brought!

Why do we go out there and work so hard?  This is one of the reasons.  I call it my Ocean Rock.

13.  Isn't it pretty?

Hope you enjoyed this small romp through my photo album.  It was just brilliant fun while it lasted.  Sometimes I want to be out there again, and then I think better of it.  There is a time to every purpose, under Heaven.