Wheeling in the Bradshaw Mtns

Today Ray, Elen, Marcia and myself went wheeling in the tracker. We too I-17 up to Bumble Bee where we picked up a dirt road that took us through the Bradshaw Mtns. We stopped off in Crown King, a mining town up in the pines. The is a bar/eatery, a souvenir shop, a fire department, and a few houses in this little town. From the stories we heard about the town it really comes alive on weekend nights, with the bar being the main attraction.

We left Crown King following the dirt roads to a place where Ray and Elen spent a couple weeks boondocking. The road he pulled their 5er through wasn't much more than a goat path. Although I didn't have to put the tracker in 4 wheel drive during the trip I did have to be careful and some of the switchbacks were tight in the tracker let alone Rays big dually and a 5er behind it. He really took away all doubt about me thinking he was missing a marbles when he described pulling the 5er across that road.

At one point we stopped to stretch and snap a few pictures and all we could see in any direction was high desert mtns and and area of pine trees called Pine Flats. As you can see in the pictures below there was a lot of nothing all around us.







It was a really fun day and Ray shared some gold mining secrets with us, enough for me to decide that I will leave the gold mining to someone else.

Tomorrow we leave Ray and Elen and will be headed to Tucson to visit family....