Aqua Fria. North of Black Canyon City
and south of Cordez Junction AZ on I-17 there is a huge chunk of BLM land surrounding a
monument. I am only slightly ashamed to tell you that I never went
to see the monument. I was just desperate for a place to park. I
was trying to stay close to north Phoenix for a doctors appointment
coming up, but also trying find someplace that had enough elevation that it was
not so terribly hot!
I had blown right by Badger Springs
Road as a possibility since it had so many of those huge Power Towers
all along the roadside. But I had hopes for Bloody Basin Road since
the towers went off to the west of I-17 and the camping spots were
supposed to be on the east side.
I went down Bloody Basin and there was one
spot about a mile in, but it was on the side of a hill. No way to
make it level so I kept going. I got to mile marker 6, which is
actually only 3 miles off of I-17. (Don't ask me. Just reporting the
facts! LOL ) Anyway, it was a nice little turnout and despite the
warning I received from RV Sue about not staying anywhere that had
signs for sightseeing it looked pretty good to me and I set up camp. But there were not so many sightseers as
there were off road vehicles. Everything from Dune Buggies and Dirt
Bikes to ATVs and Golf Carts. Evidently, it is a favorite spot for
off-roading in any fashion. But still it was a good spot for me so I
stayed, until.... Yup. Bugs, and really I still do not know what
kind of bug got me for sure, but I wound up with 50 or 60 vicious
bites that looked like mosquito bites at first, but were far more
active. Oozing, and itching and on fire, kind of like combining a
fire ant bite with a bee sting on top of a mosquito bite! I kid you
not. It was wild and woolie! The tough part is this is where the van broke down. After I got all of the bug bites I had to stay through the weekend because it was Easter weekend and the shop was not open. They could not squeeze me in til Tuesday morning. Trust me, when I finally got to a store, allergy tablets became my best friend. In fact, I just took two more since I irritated one of those spots last night and evidently rekindled the fire!
But that comes at the end of the story!
While I was there I met a wonderful BLM Officer who was a delight to
talk with. If you ever want to know about the best places to
Boondock, ask a BLM officer. They have all kinds
of good information. For instance, just 3.5 miles from where I was
parked there was actually a campgrounds with a vault toilet and great
big trees to park under. Check it out!
But you do have to get there. At 3.49999 miles it gets a little interesting! This is a picture of it going back up. Not nearly as impressive, but I was having trouble with the van at this point and did not want to stop and get a picture looking back down the hill and all of those lovely rocks sticking up out of the road.
Wait, did I mention the stream? Before you get to the interesting part there is a stream.
There are signs.
Some I felt were a little personal. If you keep going, it calls you names ...
...and since you obviously did not get the message the first time, it tells you again!
Naturally I went across anyway!
Hey it was only a couple of inches deep! :)
I took care of all things necessary. Pardon the Pun!
Then went exploring!
But you see those power towers behind the van?
Yup, even at that distance I could feel them.
Which is Not a good thing!
They were on the way down there too.
Soooo....
Back to my little spot at the 6 mile marker!
There was all kinds of beauty right there on the hill behind my home!
The desert has it's own call to the senses,
even though it does sometimes try to hide its beauty.
Beauty is always there for those who are willing to take the time to look for it. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment