I’m going split up week 4 into at least two posts because we had a week off of work and did a ton of stuff. Probably too much ground to cover in one post since I tend to be a little verbose as it is.

Our first order of business was to get out of Kofa Wilderness on the first Friday of our week long vacation. This turned out to be quite an adventure just in itself. I wanted to see some old mines and cabins on the way out, so we decided to traverse basically the whole length of the the Refuge and exit at the Northeast corner, starting at more or less the Southwest corner. It was about 50 miles altogether, which should be easily doable in a day even with stops for sightseeing. I expected the road to be rough, but wasn’t really prepared for how bad it actually was.

The first 15 miles or so up to the old mining ruins weren’t too bad. A few wash crossings, a bit of washboard, nothing too bad. We made our way to the old Antares mine that had a cabin still standing that we explored a bit. Sitting on the porch were two guys with serious hard hats with serious headlamps on them. Their hobby was exploring old mines and they told us all about the dangerous and addictive nature of their pastime. They gave us some pointers on where to go if we wanted to explore this particular mine that only had a slight chance of falling through the floor. They didn’t make a great case for taking up the hobby. You can watch their adventures here on Youtube.

After stopping to check out the mining cemetery and having some lunch, we continued on down the road such as it was. That’s when things got really interesting. We crossed countless washes of varying depths and approach angles. We drove for miles actually in washes with deep sand that required pushing through in four wheel drive. There were steep rocky hill climbs that we crawled up in low range. We couldn’t go any faster than 5 miles an hour for long stretches. We saw some beautiful country and not another vehicle the whole way. This place is incredibly remote and has solitude and beauty in abundance. That’s what we were looking for here and we definitely found it. I would be lying though if I said we weren’t ready to be done after 4 hours of this when we reached Hoodoo Cabin. Built in the 1940s for cowboys to use when they were trailing cattle, the cabin is maintained by volunteers and can be used by anyone on a first come first serve basis. There are a few of these throughout Kofa. After another hour or so of bumping along the road, we were finally back to pavement and civilization.

We stopped in the first town we came to called New Hope for gas and to dump our trash. We also made a hotel reservation in Gila Bend, which was about 1.5 hours more down the Interstate. We had a hankering for pizza so we stopped at a place in Buckeye called Argento’s Pizza and Wings. The pizza was cheap, delicious, and there was a lot of it, enough for two meals. If you’re ever in Buckeye, I highly recommend it. We got into Gila Bend about 9:30, checked into the hotel and went straight to bed. A long day, but a great way to start a week off of work.

We headed out fearly the next day, destination Tuscon. First stop was for breakfast burritos at a little place called Rosa’s Taqueria. We sat outside in the cool morning air to eat. The area was a bit gritty, but the outdoor seating area was surrounded by palm trees full of songbirds, which provided a nice soundtrack for breakfast.

On the way out of Gila Bend, we stopped at the Painted Rocks Petroglyph Site. This place had the biggest concentration of petroglyphs I’ve seen. An entire South facing rock garden with every square inch covered in them. They spanned multiple different cultures and the oldest dated back at least 12,000 years.

We continued on toward Tuscon with our ultimate destination the Gilbert Ray Campground where we had reservations for two days. Our route took us through Saguaro National Park, which, as the name implies, has a lot of Saguaros. They were much more densely packed here than in Kofa and they also tended to be taller and skinnier. It was like a Saguaro forest. We stopped at the visitors center to grab some maps and we finally found a place to drop the recyclables we’d been carrying around there also.

Gilbert Ray Campground is just outside of the National Park and is actually run by Pima County. On arrival, a friendly ranger showed us where our site was and where bathrooms, water, and trails were. He also informed me of my favorite rule for any campground. No generators allowed, hallelujah. We had site 56 on the A loop and we were definitely the smallest rig there with most folks having travel trailers or motor homes. There are a few tent sites too. The site had an electric hookup, nearby water spigot, flush toilet bathrooms, and we could fill our water tank on the way out. Not too bad for $35 a night. A friend of Jocelyn’s who lives in Tuscon came up to visit us in the afternoon and brought some sweet treats from her favorite panaderia with her. We munched on cherry and pumpkin empanadas and chatted for a couple hours at the picnic table, braving the gusty wind. We finished out the day with a short hike down one of the nearby trails to watch the sunset.

It poured rain overnight and we woke up to chilly temperatures and wind. Breakfast consisted of leftover Mexican pastries and coffee. I spend the morning curled up with a blanket in the camper reading and writing while Jocelyn went for a walk. In the afternoon we met up with a couple more friend’s of Jocelyn’s who also live in the Tuscon area for a hike. The hike we did was called Brown Mountain. It started from the campground, wound up to the top of a ridge with great views of Saguaro NP and Tuscon down below, and then looped back around. I got a partial answer to a nagging question I’d had about Saguaros on this hike, that being when and why do they grow arms? The answer is that they don’t get them until they are about 60 years old, but no one really knows why they grow them. I also learned that barrel cactus will almost always lean to the South making them a good way to tell direction if you’re ever lost in the desert. The weather for the hike was just about perfect, but later in the day it turned windy and a bit rainy again. Our final activity of the day was a bike ride on some other nearby trails where we saw a beautiful desert rainbow and another spectacular sunset.