Thursday, February 22

Since I am hanging around in southern Arizona this winter in order to avoid really cold weather, I’m finding that the pace of life is much slower.  After being on the go so much last year, it is a nice change.

I’m still hanging out in Ajo.  I love this area and have a great campsite.  The drive into town is only about 4 miles.  The last couple days I’ve been going in to the library to get my devices caught up on updates, work on the blog, etc.  And to Olsen’s IGA grocery store.  Olsen’s has a very good selection for a small town.  I eat a whole foods plant based diet, so I buy a lot of produce.  They have a good produce department, although not much organics.

A cold spell has arrived in the area, with lows in the 30s the last couple nights. But it warms up nicely with sunny days.

My camp is just to the right of the RVs in the distance

Cholla skeleton

After breakfast Misty goes out for her morning patrol around camp. I follow along with her to make sure no coyote grabs her.

Today I plan to go to the Barry Goldwater Range for a short hike.  By the time I get all the morning chores done and get ready to leave it is already 11am. But where I’m going is only about 15 miles away and it is a cool day.

I enter the range at Gate 15 and drive up the access road a short ways.  Looking at the map I decide to hike over to Slovan Well.  There aren’t trails in this area, so it gives me a chance to practice my map and compass navigation.  There are a lot of small volcanic rock mountains here.  So the landscape is mostly grey and black.  But still interesting.

I take a compass bearing to the well, which is at 40° from where I parked.  It’s a pretty easy walk and only a little over a mile.  I head up a wash and then over a small ridge which then goes to open desert.

Once over the ridge, I can see a white iron pipe tower a ways ahead which was for the old windmill. I head on over there and look around for a bit.

On the return, instead of reversing my course, I take another cross country route and go over a couple of the ridges. Do you see the bear in this photo 🙂

A closer view . . .

On one of the ridges there was a rock wall with these unusual markings.  I don’t know if these are historic artifacts or something modern. I wasn’t able to get close enough to tell.

I ended up walking west of where I parked, so followed a southerly course and came to a power line which I had crossed on the way out.  I followed that a ways and then saw the truck not too far off to the left.  I like going off trail, but really need to work on my navigation skills.  🙂  It was pretty easy here, as it was a short distance and the desert being mostly flat you can see a good ways.  Much harder in the mountains.