Rain and Cloudy skies make for disappointing days.

Wednesday, March 18

Sunrise was pretty good, before the rains arrived:

Shortly after sunrise, it rained lightly, then it cleared.  So I rode over to Yuma and experienced the sights of empty shelves at the Frys Supermarket.  Troubling vision.  Got most of the groceries I wanted though in spite of what appeared to be panic hoarding by folks.

The other two items I didn't find at the big store, I found at a Family Dollar Store....sigh, this panic buying by people is just going to make things harder for everyone.

I did spot this nice wall mural on the side of one of the grocery stores that I went to, it conveyed to me a feeling of calmness, something that the crowds at the grocery store were not exhibiting!

It started raining again as I rode back to the campsite, and it would rain off and on the rest of the day, sometimes pretty heavily.  I relaxed inside the URRV, kept an eye out for flash flooding outside (none to be seen, but a few puddles did develop) and stayed dry.

Sunset was pretty good, the rain had stopped about an hour earlier and the skies had cleared somewhat but not too much:

Thursday, March 19

First day of Spring.  It would start with pretty good clear skies but the rain from yesterday would end up causing me issues on the way up Picacho Peak Road to check out Picacho Peak Recreation Area about 20 miles to the north of camp.

The road wasn't too bad, lots of gravel which proved a bit "squiggly" when the dirt/sand underneath was wet.  Long stretches of road with a thin covering of mud, like it had flooded over (most likely it did flood in yesterday's rains) which slowed progress down for me.

There was increasing evidence of ruts caused by flooding on the uphill and downhill portions of the road as I got past the 3 mile marker, with 15 more miles to go before reaching the peak area.  Still, I made progress on the nice stretches of road and just took it easy where flooding had caused damage.

Around the 11 mile mark, I saw this view and stopped Yagi for a picture:

It's good the view presented itself and I stopped because just around the bend above, the road sloped down steeply and it was heavily rutted and full of big, loose rocks!

I checked out the road, well more like a goat trail in the above condition, and decided that this was as far I was going to go today.

While walking around this area, got some more pictures.  Pretty rugged wilderness area leading to the  Picacho Recreation Area!

 That's part of Picacho Peak in the middle, the closest I would

be getting to it today.

 Can you see the arch in the making?  No?  See Below Pic

It was just as well I turned around, I managed to get caught in a muddy rut between some rocks on a flat portion of the road, and down Yagi went.  This time, my right boot was only lightly trapped under Yagi and I managed to free it easily.

 Yep, the state calls this a "Graded Road", I think the rain will

be forcing them to re-grade it!

Further south along Picacho Road, I found a spot where trails diverged from the main road.  One of them leading to a nice spot to pose Yagi with Picacho Peak visible:

 Using telephoto lens and shortening the focal field

Back at mile marker 3 or 15 miles away from Picacho Peak, there was a spot across the road from a camping area:

Got back to camp, had lunch then headed out to explore the dune area south of the I-10 Super Slab.  It wasn't as scenic as the area closer to camp and conditions were a bit "loose" on the access road.

 You can see the moisture settling down the sides of the dune.

Hopefully it'll dry out soon.

The skies were starting to cloud up again, dammit, so I decided to cruise north on Ogilby road to check out the site of the town of Tumco.  Funny name huh?  I thought perhaps it was an Indian name but nope, the origin was quite something else.

I parked Yagi by the sign designating the border of the town's site.  Not much remains except some shallow holes ringed by stacked rocks. 

 The sign above tells you where the TUMCO name came from.

There's a few trails around the rugged and rocky hills next to the townsite, it was these hills I believe where prospectors sought to mine gold.

One of the trails led me to this surprising collection of old tin cans and metal bits.  I'm thinking they're the remnants of the canned good and such that the miners of old used and discarded?

 One of the larger mine openings I spotted while riding 

around, the cage is to keep the curious out.

One of several flowering Ocotillo plants I'd seen in the area.

As you can see in the last picture, it had become heavily overcast by now, casting everything in a dull light.  Great light for pictures of people, not so much for landscape shots.

Got back to the campsite and just read my book, ate dinner and watched a disappointing sunset to complete a couple of days of disappointing picture taking (mostly) and riding.  I'm hoping things start warming up tomorrow.

It could be worse, I could be in Colorado where it's apparently snowing pretty good for the first day of Spring!