December 31...Oatman AZ

We started 2009 camping and ATVing...a great way to start the year.  Although we're not finishing it that way we did decide to get out and enjoy the last day of one of the most difficult years we've endured.  We thought about several different places but highs were pretty chilly so figured we'd end up doing nothing.   Waking up, Timm said let's go to Oatman.  I'm always up for a road trip so we got ready and off we went...Cassy in tow (which isn't hard to do, she loves adventures).

We made a few stops along the way including McDonalds in Searchlight for a quick breakfast.  Normally, it wouldn't really matter but we have a sticker on the back window that reads, "Elect Anyone Butt Harry Ried".  For those who don't know, he's from the tiny town of Searchlight. Even though he's been a senator for Nevada forever, and he's the majority whip...he needs to go.  He does not have Nevada's best interest in mind anymore in our opinion.  Anyway, I'll move on.

We entered Oatman, parked and walked about the various shops, bought carrots for the donkeys, took some photos, hunted for the donkeys, and just all around enjoyed ourselves.  It was a beautiful day.  We just missed the gun fight but Cassy would have gotten really nervous because of the noise anyway.   Along the way Cassy almost went toe-to-toe with a big black cat...everyone's hair was standing up.  She was growling and the cat was making some very unpleasant noises, too.  Not a pretty sight, but both came away unscathed from the incident. 

I was about to give my carrots away thinking we weren't going to see the donkeys, along they came out of the hills...about a dozen of them.  Timm stayed back with Cassy (we were told they don't like dogs, they think they're coyotes and try to kill them).  Before I knew it I had several donkeys nudging me for carrots. 

Oh my gosh, I really am turning into my mother aren't I?  I really did enjoy feeding them, infact I went and purchased two more bags of carrots for them.  Don't feed the baby ones though, they don't have back teeth and will choke on the carrots.  There are notices all over town and they have stickers on their foreheads too. 

We exited town to the northeast with Kingman as our next destination.  When we were in Oatman several years ago we were told not to take the trailer thru town because the road was not built for large vehicles.  We traveled that way this time and for sure it is a narrow road climbing 800 feet with lots of twists and turns in it.  But we've taken our trailer on worse.  I couldn't get a shot of the really curvy stuff (bummer) but it did keep you on your toes while driving.  There are active mines and old mines also along the road.  At the top we found a makeshift graveyard...more of a memorial I think.  Not like any graveyard I've wandered thru before (and I've been through many).  Most of them were from 1998 and more recent.  Someone even had a cross with Jimmy Hoffa's name on it.

  I really don't think he's buried there either...hahahaha.  Maybe it's for people that have lost their lives on that road.

  

We traveled historic route 66 the rest of the way to I-40, hit Kingman, enjoyed lunch at Golden Corral, and headed home.  Seeing that was New Year's Eve, the traffic to get over the dam was backed up for miles....really...miles.  It was over an hour at a crawl, a steady stream of brake lights to make it too the dam.  The new bridge....amazing!  Our last stop was A&W in Boulder for rootbeer freezes and a potty brake before reaching home at 5:30pm.  What a wonderful day we spent together, a great way to finish off 2009.

Memorial Day...part 3

Thank to Alan for sending over some pictures so y'all can see.

Here are some of the burros we saw almost daily. This group actually had 7 in it at the time. Never could get very close to them. They run pretty quick too...not like the lazy ones you see in Red Rock waiting for food by the roadside.

Taking a break on the trail.

No place to turn around up here guys...stay on the lower level.

Another old mine structure...how did they decide where to look for gold anyway. Did they say "This place looks good I guess, let's try here."?

This is the Carrera Marble Quarry. Each tier is about 10-12 feet tall (I know, it looks so tiny in the picture). So gold isn't the only thing they looked for around here. We even found the fountain in the middle of the Carrera town sight. Awesome! They ran wood piping from Rhyolite for the town. You can still see some of the remains from it. Apparently, Carrera was a busy place.

Memorial Day...part 2

Yes, it's a desert...watch out for snakes! Please don't remind me. Fortunately, I didn't see any. Keith ran over ones rattler on the trail...does that still make him a rattlesnake...hmmmm. Well, he's a sneaky snake now so watch out for him!

This radio tower must be fairly new...there was no conduit running from the tower to the building. The Nevada Test Site isn't too far from Beatty...I wonder what it will be for? Tracking aliens? lol

We had to run through Rhoylite everyday to get to one destination or another via the back roads, can't ride ATV's on designated streets in Beatty...yet. Nevada really needs to look at Utah and how much of a boost to the economy ATVs are to small towns...but I will get off me soap box now. :o)

The Beatty RV Park was the spot to be each evening. Yummy potlucks with way too much food, campfires for everyone to gather around, and lots of fun conversations. It was so nice to come back to the RV's with the air conditioners running to keep them cool, and endless water for showers. That's quite a treat for us dry camping, gravel pit staying ATV group. There was cell phone service and WiFi there too. Some of the girls even drug their laptops out to the campfire to check up on and add friends to their Facebooks. It was nice to have a few more of the comforts of home for a change. We look forward to the upgrades they will be doing to the RV park for the next time we stay there.

Memorial Day Vacation...part 1

We took a couple of extra days for Memorial Day and headed to Beatty, NV. What is in Beatty you ask? Most of us only stop there for gas and potty break (and some candy from Eddie's World) on trips between Reno and Vegas; but, for those that like to explore and wonder there is lots to see in the desert around Beatty. Well, that's us and a few of our friends (14 joined in for the adventures). Each day we took off from the RV park on our ATV's to explore and find interesting stuff...and we weren't dissapointed.

Rhyolite is a ghost town just a few miles outside of Beatty that was a hopping place in it's hayday. Banks, bars, brothels, hotel, and a school among the bunch of buildings that remain in this once thriving mining town. If I remember correctly, the volunteer at the bottle house (yes, someone used bottles to build his house) said there were 53 bars in town. No wonder that guy had plenty of bottles to build with...a great recycler! That's my hubby, Timm and my BFF, Liz in front of the Mercantile in Rhyolite. I'm in the picture with my hubby that overlooks the town and the valley beyond.

Out in that valley roads wonder off the highway up to the mountains to many mining ruins. This is one of them. It's hard to believe that folks could and would drag such heavy materials up the mountain side to construct these pieces so they could mine for gold and other minerals. We found more than a hand full of these structures. They are kind of a hopper where the ore would be dumped into then it would slide down thru the shoots to fill trucks, ore carts on train tracks, etc so it could be hauled off and be processed. What a hard life that must have been.

Here are some old buildings still remaining from another day's adventures. They are for some sort of storage I think...to small for people. They were next to a larger building that had collapsed. There were several large structures like the one above as well as several others, but seeing how my camera battery died I can't show them to you. I was so bummed. So I'm waiting for photos from friends to show you the rest.

Look for part 2 of this adventure in a few days...when I get more pictures.