ROFs Arizona Sunshine Trip Report ☀️ [emoji266] ☀️

jus passin thru

Adventurer
Ace. I wrote we were coming to Parker while sitting in the breakfast room at Best Western. That was before my wife woke up with a cold, no more camping for us. We are on our way home which is about 300 miles. It's going to be 83' in Green Valley today. Thanks for a very good trip and a chance to see what my shiny new Cherokee Trail Hawk would do despite getting stuck twice the first day. It's not a lifted big tired Wrangler but driven carefully it did good. Mike
 

Ace Brown

Retired Ol’ Fart
Ace. I wrote we were coming to Parker while sitting in the breakfast room at Best Western. That was before my wife woke up with a cold, no more camping for us. We are on our way home which is about 300 miles. It's going to be 83' in Green Valley today. Thanks for a very good trip and a chance to see what my shiny new Cherokee Trail Hawk would do despite getting stuck twice the first day. It's not a lifted big tired Wrangler but driven carefully it did good. Mike

Yes it did. I will admit to being concerned about how it would do pre-trip. But now that I’ve seen it in action no worries as Oz and Clare would say. My best to Vivian and hope she is better pronto.

Today I watched the time trials and the stuff in town. Tomorrow is tech inspection and hope to find my old racing co-drivers son who is now a second gen off road racer.


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vevans

Retired 4-Wheeler
I will not be back for the rest of the journey too!

Ace,
Both Susan and I woke up Wednesday morning with the "crud".:drool:

I will not be able to make it to Parker for the weekend. Guess I'm stuck at home with the super bowl. Go Eagles!!!

Thanks for the nice three days last week.

We'll do more some other time.

Vince
 

Ace Brown

Retired Ol’ Fart
Ace,
Both Susan and I woke up Wednesday morning with the "crud".:drool:

I will not be able to make it to Parker for the weekend. Guess I'm stuck at home with the super bowl. Go Eagles!!!

Thanks for the nice three days last week.

We'll do more some other time.

Vince

Hey Vince,

Good running with you a few days and thanks for showing us some local spots. I’m sure we will join up again somewhere. We ROFs are restless and like to travel.

Ace


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Ace Brown

Retired Ol’ Fart
I did find the second generation racer mentioned above. Talking to others there are many 2gen racers out here and a few 3gen. Good to see the sport trickle down.

Just got a PM from Vince about possible doing some more exploring in Northern AZ so if anyone wants more dirt we ROFs might be serving.
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Ace Brown

Retired Ol’ Fart
Vince and I are going to add one more day. Meeting in Bagdad at 9:00 this Wednesday.


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gwittman

Adventurer
It looks like I missed out on some more nice parts of the trip. I will need to allocate more time in future trips. I was thinking I would like to go back to Barry Goldwater Range to do some more exploring in the mountain areas. Our permits are good for a year, so why not.
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Here are some more pictures of the first part of the trip. This one is over the ridge and headed down to the area where we were planning to hike up to an old Anasazi ruins. You can see in the distance in the upper left where the white pickup is parked and that was our anticipated parking area. Unfortunately, we found out we were trespassing and asked to leave without being able to get up close to the 'Sacred Grounds'. After passing the planned parking area we did find an area to stop and get a distant glimpse of the ruins and wished we could have gotten closer.
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This is a sunset at Tule Well camping area in Cabeza Prieta with monument in the foreground.
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Here we are headed into Christmas Pass. It is not much of a pass at less then 1,000 feet but a lot of work was done many years ago to carve the rock to make it passable. Why Christmas pass? That is the day it was completed.
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There are many arms on these 'back to back' Sonora cactus.
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This must have been a very important rock. Everybody wanted their mark on it.
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gwittman

Adventurer
Ace, I am guessing you were stuck in that last picture. Were you? Any problem getting out if you were stuck, other than putting it in 4WD?
 

Ace Brown

Retired Ol’ Fart
Ace, I am guessing you were stuck in that last picture. Were you? Any problem getting out if you were stuck, other than putting it in 4WD?

No, I wasn’t stuck, just down in a deep hole dug out by the high horsepower race trucks. I had to take that line to stay fairly level. That was the worst hole I saw but I only drove a pretty small percent of the course.


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Ace Brown

Retired Ol’ Fart
I’m working on the start of the trip report and will post soon. Meanwhile here are the last few days:

I continued on to the ghost town of Swansea where I spent the night and saw no goblins. The BLM had some nice campsites scattered around town.

Leaving there I took a trail called the Old Railroad Grade which turned out to be the most challenging part of the entire trip: soft gavel wash with big embedded rocks, then a steep rough climb out and tight and twisty stuff for a long ways. It was really more of an ATV trail. On some better roads I made good time to Alamo Lake State Park but it was too civilized for me. Found some lakeside camping on BLM further north. But again the trails down by the water are more suitable for ATVs with some very steep up/downs. Got a nice spot about 20’ above the water but access was poor so I gave up planned paddleboarding. I had a laugh at a guy pulling a good sized toy hauler following me in. He got to the point of no further travel and tried to turn around on a narrow ridge. He was too far away to go and help but I did hold my breath a few times watching him.

Next day I headed out on Alamo Road. I was told it was fast graded gravel until you hit the La Paz County Line, then it was mostly on-maintained. Miles of soft sand cross road washouts but that just makes it interesting. Finally back to Hwy 93 where I aired up then went south to Congress for fuel. It looked like things were happening there unlike the other Congress. Returning north to Bagdad to meet Vince the next day for one more day in the dirt.

Vince was there as promised so soon we were on dirt roads driving through some very pretty country. Vince was searching for some 4x4 trails seen on his map. It had a sign “4x4 Road 1” which sounded promising but it looked like no one had driven it in a long time. We walked part of and decided to run it. Lots of overhanging tree limbs were grabbing at my trailer but after a couple of miles we lost the trail completely. But after stumbling around in the brush we relocated it. But it did not go far before it dead ended at a fence with no gate. Finally we gave up and retreated back to CR-5 where Vince went south to home and I continued north to find a camp for the night. Spotted and old abandoned cow camp and set in a corner of the fence. Funny how often when I find a place to camp in not very happy with it but by morning I’m thinking it was alright. The coyotes singing at sundown and some whiskey added to the charm.

The next days were just traveling home and very uneventful.

Some trip stats:

23 days
2460 miles with 502 on dirt
$1100 spent on fuel and supplies. That number is high because I was getting bad mileage and gas at $2.50 a gallon adds up fast.

Ace
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Fvan

New member
Any suggestions on semi-current/updated guide books for southern AZ?

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toddz69

Explorer
I continued on to the ghost town of Swansea where I spent the night and saw no goblins. The BLM had some nice campsites scattered around town.

Leaving there I took a trail called the Old Railroad Grade which turned out to be the most challenging part of the entire trip: soft gavel wash with big embedded rocks, then a steep rough climb out and tight and twisty stuff for a long ways. It was really more of an ATV trail.

Sounds like you went through Railroad Canyon, which was part of the Parker 400 race course up until about the mid '90s. Always love to read your reports! Thanks for sharing.

Todd Z.
 

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