Arizona Adventures - Part 2

Lost Again:  The Search for Preacher's Pass

It's that way!

The trails around Bouse bear a striking resemblance to a bowl of spaghetti.  You start out thinking you know how to get to a point on Google Earth and find you are completely headed down the wrong trail.

For three days we searched for one of the trails leading to Preacher's Pass.  Local lore has it that the area preacher rode over the pass from Brenda to Bouse to conduct Sunday services....NO WAY.  It took us all day to get to the pass from Bouse, much less to Brenda.  

Some of you may be wondering "How hard can it be to find a mountain?"  Well, the problem is that other mountains keep getting in the way.  Every time you come around a curve you think "Okay, we are getting there."  And you aren't.  Can't see the pass until you are almost directly below it. The pass is actually not visible in the photo...it's behind the mountain where you see the trail, up another mountain.

See the road to the pass?

Great views and a popular spot.  When we reached the pass, we had it to ourselves.  By the time we left, there were 13 people and 7 rigs at the pass.  Not a trail for the faint-hearted, I might add. 

Convention at Preacher's Pass

See the bulldogs?  The owner told us one had backed into a teddy bear cactus and a chunk stuck and broke off.  The unfortunate dog tried to lick it off.  It took two guys and a pair of pliers to get all the spines out of the dog's tongue and rump.  

Teddy bear cactus

On our way back, we encountered another traveler who said he had just passed three big horn sheep close enough to the trail to see clearly.  By the time we got to the spot, they were gone.  Drat.


Took part of a day and drove over to Parker, CA to visit my Hidden Valley Ranch neighbors, Gary (Gary is a girl) and Craig Stewart.  They spend winters in Parker, spring/fall in Deming.  

The old iron bridge at Parker.  No longer in use.

The Colorado River

Note to potential visitors to Parker AZ in the winter:

Plan to spend at least two hours in Walmart buying groceries. Many, many, many retired couples whose weekly social outing is Walmart.  Patience, Mary Anne...

Woke up the other morning to a VERY COLD RPOD  (low 50's).  (It is hot in the desert during the day but gets cold at night.  Our 85-year-old neighbor saw us thrashing around and asked what we were doing.  Talking with him, Mike isolated the problem to a bad propane regulator valve.  Of course, there's nowhere in Bouse to buy such a thing. 

Excursion to Quartzite.  Another note:  don't go to Quartzite.  Small town completely overrun with winter visitors.  It took us two stops to find a regulator valve which would work.  (On the positive side, Mike saw three big horn sheep about 100 yards off the Bouse-Quartzite Road.  I missed them as I was driving.)

Sign in the hardware store in Quartzite

Okay, so back to Bouse.  And a very long afternoon for Mike getting the new valve installed.  But it works:  we have range burners and a furnace again.