A little more from Goldfield

We  thought  that We'd give the  mules  a  rest  one day so, we  decided to delve into the  little tourist  town of  Goldfield a bit  further. We took the  train ride with my favorite conductor and Facebook friend, "Hurryup" at the controls. He gave  a  fine little tour of the  surronding goldmines and history of the  area.

The train ride lasts about  20 minutes  and is worth it just  to gain knowledge of what surrounds  you.

of course  the  scenery  ain't too shabby either. That's Superstition mountain in the  backdrop.

The train station at  Goldfield.

the  hoose cowl

boot hill

nice  cholla cactus

blacksmith  shop

this  is what  replaced many  mules

lots of yard art around these  parts!

the  town from the train

Hurryup's  train

It's a  good  ride and  if you take  the time; I'm sure  that  you'll enjoy it! We did!

Cootonwood Springs ride

We rode out  out  of  our  campsite on BLM land behind the  town of Goldfield for a day  ride to Cottonwood Springs  with Ron Stolp. It  was a  nice  cool morning after a  previous  day  of Showers. The  trail was #3515 which was  mostly  jeep and  ATV trails. Mostly  rocky except  for the  occaisional sand draw that we  rode in.

We headed NW from Goldfield towards the Goldfield  Mountains.

We passed many Cholla Cactus along  the  way. This  is  commonly known as  "jumping  Cactus" by the  locals and  is a  total disaster when your  animal comes  in contact with it. Peg has  had  several contacts with this  stuff on this  trip but so far, nobody has  gotten hurt. Notice  the  nursery at the  bottom of  this big plant. When you  ride  through it , it kicks up and sticks to anything. Try  to pick it off without  a weatherman tool or Big  tooth comb  and  you have it  stuck in you. To rid yourself of  it , You have  to "Flick it off" with a  comb or  other object.

We saw this really  cool dry waterfall on the  ride too. Although it was  dry, you could see that after a big  rain, it flowed pretty  darn good!

The girls  taking a  break and eating some green grass along the  trail.

Cottonwood Springs

Ron rode  to the  top to checkout  a  potential gold mine.

Maude and I wait  for Ron to come  back down from the  top of  the  hill. There  wasnt really  room for three of  us to be up there.

Boulder Canyon and the #104 trail

Today we  went  on a trailride  most  wouldn't  like. It  was classified as a "Black Diamond" trail and  not  reccommended for  horses. There  were  sections that  were "Edgy-Ledgy" with steep rocky declines but, all of our animals and riders did  fine.

We started this ride  at the  first water trailhead  and  rode the  trail towards Hackberry Springs (Trail 78) and  took the second  water trail to the Garden valley. 

Alan leading  us through the  Garden valley. We ran into several groups of hikers  and  found  our  weak links  in our  chain. Rita  shys away from hikers  that  are  carrying  ski poles or  walking sticks and Maudie  just  doesn't  trust  anyone she  meets  on the  trail. Something that they  both have  to work on. 

We were surprised  at  the  amount  of people  on these  past  two rides  that  don't  understand the  reason why  they  need to be  on the  low side  of  the  trail when we  are  passing them along the  route. We passed  one  group of 13  hikers that wanted to scatter all over  high and  low. We stopped and  got  them all to go to the  low side before  we  would  pass. We  explained  to them that  if the  mules  were  going  to spook; we wanted them running uphill not over  the  edge and down a 100'.

Once  we  started  passing them they  got  a  show  and  quickly  saw  the  reasoning. I wish that  I had one of my  BCHW trail etiquette  DVD's  to give  them for their  next  club meeting. Most  hikers  that  we  meet are  understanding and compliant with our  requests.

The  trail down to the  hackberry  Springs  turnoff is  kind  of steep and we  ran into two other  groups  of hikers  that  were  much nicer.

The  turnoff to Boulder  Canyon trail #104

This  trail was  rated  a  black diamond trail and not  reccommended for horse  travel. I found  it very  rocky and hard  to follow because  of brush and not a lot  of  use in the  middle  section.

This  is the  actual trail.

We had  beutiful views  along  the  trail. We  had lunch  under these  hoodoo's.

Aptly  named Boulder canyon…..

parts  of this  trail are  hard to follow because of the  amount  of  brush.

Weavers needle  can be  seen in the  background. 

Riding  in the  Arizona  desert has  a  lot  of terrain changes  with many  training obsticals and  opportunities.

Alan riding  his  new  mule  Miss Kitty.

This was  a  great 12.67 mile  ride with a  peak difficulty  of 9 and  average difficulty  of 6-7.

Salt River and Suguaro Lake ride

We really  had  fun on this ride with Kelly  Brooke  Allan, Ron Stolp and  Alan Gillman. /we  did  a bit  of training with our  mules during  a  fun follow the  leader game  in one  of the washes. The  scenery  along the Salt  River  was  breaktaking as well.

Although it got a little  edgy  ledgy along the  river , it  was  nothing like we  were  about to encounter.

Just when you come out  of  this  ledgy  part, you end  up on a  beach at the  bottom of  a wash. We traveled up this wash to the  trail that would  take us to Suguaro Lake.

We stopped  along the way to have  lunch at something that resembled  an old  mine  but we weren't sure  if it  might have  been a  well too.

See how the rock are stacked at the  top behind  Alan? each one  is over 100 lbs. and  the  walls  are  over 3 feet thick.

The trail got tougher , the higher we ascended but, it was totally worth every step because the scenery was spectacular!. It was  like  riding  through a very expensively landscaped desert  scene!

Once  we got to the  top we caught  views  of  Suguaro Lake!

The trail down to the lake was probably the  hardest pert of the  entire trail. It  is  very steep with deep ravines carved in the  rock trail from years of rain and erosion.