Another great day

Saturday Sept 26th 2009. Destination Pinos Altos. A small town about 40 miles North of Deming. It sits up on the mountain amongst the pine trees and has lots of BLM land around it. Bob, Candy, Wanda, Stu  and I were in attendance. We got a fairly early start from Deming. Got to the parking area that we wanted around 10:30 or so. Hit the trail not long after that. Within the first 1/2 mile we hit the rocks (I called it Pee gravel but no one believed me). It was the hardest part of the whole trip.

Here is a GPS track of the ride.

Looks like a long way don’t it?  Not at all, it was only 6.1 miles round trip and only took us approximately 4 hours.

View from the top.

I neglected to get my camera out until we started back down the hill and I was not able to get the pictures from Candy that we took on the way up. So here is what we got.

Lunch on top of the hill.

Do you see Candy still riding in back of Bob??????

NO!

 

She is standing at the bottom of the hill with me.

She walked down……..

Is that Tigar driving again?

That’s going to have to do for now anyway.

Later.

 

 

Here is a website link that was sent to me and I thought that Ya’all would enjoy it. It is really beautiful, turn on your speakers.

 

Additional pictures from Candy’s Camera. These were taken on the way up.

 

We don’t know the story on this house but it sure would have been a nice one had it ever gotten finished. There is a lot of lumber missing since I was up here a year ago. Some was blown off and some disappeared for some other reason.

Had to add this one for Justin.

Victoria Mountain Ride

 

Saturday morning September 12th, Wanda, stu, and I took off to Gage. It’s a little burg around 20 miles west of Deming. We were headed for the Victoria  mountains for an ATV ride. We ended up getting started later than planned, but what the hell we had all day.

Stu and I traded trucks for the day as his has and automatic transmission and we were hauling to trailers. WOW, it sure felt good to drive again and I never once tried to push in the clutch. We parked in a large graveled area next to some kind of rock quarry and proceeded to get the ATV’s unloaded.

Here is a GPS track of our ride. It covers an area of around 14 miles, which was plenty for the day.

There were quite a few mines in this area but they were blocked from entry by metal grates, fences, etc. This was part of the mine safeguards act back in 1994. This project consisted of safeguarding 120 shafts, 18 adits and 26 open stopes.  All disturbed areas were seeded. The various mines within the project area operated from about 1880 to 1948 and produced gold, silver, lead, copper, iron and zinc ores. It appears that the land was then sold to another company and worked for awhile in 1915 so the pictures of the rock building were not very old. They appeared to be employee housing.

 

I walked, hobbled up to this mine. From the ATV you could not see that it was sealed, so I had to take a look. Of course when I got there I was disappointed to see that it was sealed.

Inside the entrance I found the following plaque.

In case you can’t read it. A 10 year old boy that died in this mine in 1963.

 

This is one of the brass plates that they install on abandoned mines. It was placed when the mine safeguards act went into effect.

Here are a couple of shots of what's left of some of the buildings.

This is Wanda and Stu ripping down the road.

 

Stu and his very diligent navigator Tiger

The wide open spaces.

This rock we quickly dubbed as Apehead Rock, Can you see why?

We got back in town just in time to have a beer before heading to a Birthday party at the VFW. Wow what a day. I think we all died early that night.

Catch ya next time. Enjoy.

An enjoyable day.

Yesterday, Sept 05 Stu his dog Tiger and I went for an ATV ride on the East or back side of the Florida Mountains. Left camp around 8:00 am and had a really good time. It was kind of a test run to see how I could do on a days ride. I was quite happy as it turned out. Here are a few pictures taken during the day.

The first three were taken on the first stop we made. We followed the trail on up the hill past this building and found a mine and a lot of the stuff that goes along with it. There  was a structure with 4 legs which were set in concrete inside 55 gal drums.

 

 

 

Here is a rock wall we spotted off one of the side trails.

Here is the top doorway of one of the mines that had been filled in.

This one was a Vertical shaft mine.

These were just neat mountain pictures.

 

 

Here is another rock wall we spotted in a really neat canyon.

All in all it was a great day, The leg held up better than expected although I rode side saddle most of the way back. Stu said he would not tell anyone that I rode the ATV like a girl. we got back to town around 4 Pm, Stopped at the Elks lodge and had a couple of cocktails to wash down the dust and headed back home.

 

That’s it until next time.