Suz and Frank stopped by and away we went to the Barry Goldwater Bombing Range again. We entered from a different direction from yesterday so everything new to us too. Think we drove about 60 miles on the range itself......at about an average speed of 15 miles an hour. Roads were pretty rough and dusty but passable. A Boarderpatrolman checked us out and then continued on toward Mexico in a cloud of dust. Never saw him again. On the way to our first cache we found a bunch of old tanks and bunkers with mock missles and gun emplacements. We kinda figured they were used for practice bombing runs. Frank was the only one agile enough to climb up on the tank. Desert is really green this year and Becky snapped a lot of pictures on our way up a canyon to the first cache. She even found a bear cave.....guess you could spell that "bare cave" 'cause there wasn't nothing in it.
We finally made it to the first cache site, Betty's Lee Mine, or something like that. Actually the cache was located near the entrance to the Betty Lee Mine. To actually reach the mine would have required a pretty good hike up the canyon. We didn't do it. This cache really gave us fits, it was located on a ledge above these old buildings.........the buildings we think were used to house explosives for the mining operations. They were haunted.....see third pic, Becky captured an apparition, took another picture and it was gone! We hunted and hunted for this cache and fortunately I had cell phone reception so I made a "call a friend call" for help. Even with some directions from him we still had a problem finding the cache. I finally sat down to survey the scene and almost sat down on the cache. It was tucked in behind some rocks! Better to be lucky then good. Spent way too much time here so off we went to look for "Black Box" a cache near an F14 plane crash site.
The road started off as a trail and then merged into a freeway, see pic 1. We passed some old expended ordnance pieces and finally arrived at the site of the plane crash. Both pilot and navigator ejected from the plane and were not killed in the crash. The aircraft was reported to have been on fire for some 15 hours after the crash; but, it was in remarkable shape. We were so busy browsing around the airplane that we almost forgot about the cache. We were supposed to locate the Black Box and from there we would have information to find the pilot and cache. Frank located the Black Box and it led us to the pilot hanging from a tree. Here's Frank with the cache in one hand and Black Box in the other. Becky took a picture looking up one of the engines.......in remarkably good shape! On to the next one another cowpath road.
On the next cache and we found more old tanks that probably served as targets for bombing runs. Going up the wash and Becky started screaming to STOP. She had spotted a "monster" guarding an old cactus (I'd type Saguaro...but I can't spell it). We found more greenry and an old Halloween Tree. Here's Suz passing a big rock while treking up the wash to the cache. It was supposed to have been a "moderate" hike. Ha! Frank made it all the way to the cache, I got about 2/3 the way there and Becky and Suz stopped short and took pictures of this rock formation. They told me what it looked like to them; but, all I could see were rocks. Found another emergency beacon on the way out. Frank was worn out from all his rock climbing and wasn't able to reach the panic button. We left him there.
End of day.
No comments:
Post a Comment