March 15, 2005

March 15, 2005

Congress & Wickenburg, Arizona

DAY 270

 

Today was sunny, but cool and windy.

Teddy was sick this morning. Poor kitty. I think he must have been grooming himself to lick off the flea "spot-on" treatment we put on him yesterday. I wasn't feeling well this morning, either. I wasn't sick from licking the back of my neck, however. HA HA HA ! I did my regular preventive maintenance this morning, then took an empty propane tank for refilling. I thought more sleep would make me feel better, so I took a nap until lunch. After lunch, we drove to the town of Congress, about 4 or 5 miles north. We wanted to get haircuts. Congress was a smaller town than we thought, with only one hair stylist business. There was a line up waiting, so we decided not to wait. We looked for a service station to fill up with diesel, but Congress doesn't even have a gas station. There was a sign pointing down an old trail up into the mountains, to the old Pioneer Cemetery. We decided to go take a look. We drove a few miles up into the mountains until we reached an old, abandoned gold mine. There are quite a few old gold mines in this area. Most of them are long ago abandoned by mining companies, but some die hard individual prospectors known locally as "scroungers" still work the mines and nearby streams / "cricks" running down out of the mountains. Near the old mine is a cemetery from the mid-1800's that served the town that existed up by the mine back then. The path to the cemetery was a couple of miles of a path that got less and less defined the further up we went. I switched Dee-Dee to 4 x 4 mode and crawled, at idle speed, up and over and around a trail that was more horse trail than vehicle trail. It was an interesting old cemetery, and a very interesting "off road" experience. We were both very impressed with Dee-Dee's capabilities.

We drove down out of the mountain, and back into Congress. Joanne bought some fresh produce at a road side stand. We decided to drive south about 15 miles, past North Ranch SKP Park, back to the town of Wickenburg. Wickenburg was a much larger town than Congress, perhaps a population of a couple of thousand people. We both got haircuts, and filled up Dee-Dee with diesel.

We drove back to North Ranch, and had a great barbecue supper. I spent most of the evening working on updating and analyzing my investment files. We watched Amazing Race.

DSK