Finally Locating the American Girl Mine after a second Fail due to Google Maps

Today, since google maps had told me I'd turned around yesterday a mere .6 miles from the American Girl Mine; I decided to give it another go.

This time though, after riding to the .6 mile point, I parked Yagi, my TW200 and walked the rest of the way to where Google was saying the mine was located.

This was the washout that had stopped me yesterday.  It doesn't look steep but I couldn't even walk down it without slipping too much.  I had to go off to the side a bit to get down.

The rest of the .6 miles that lay ahead of me, steep, rock-strewn and rutted:

I get to the destination, no mine!  In fact, once I wandered about a bit and get a cell signal, google maps was telling me I now had over five miles to go!  WTH.

This is what I saw from the top of the "pass" where the mine was supposed to be:

I walked down the above trail a bit, to get this shot of the valley below where google maps was now saying I had to go.

Obviously, google maps was confused.  So I walked back to Yagi and negotiated the sketchy washouts I'd gone through to get to the bad destination.

Once back in the campsite area, I decided to "wing it" and try and find the American Girl Mine using basic map navigation.  I kept an eye on where google maps said I was, and I headed in what I thought was the general direction of the mine's location as reported by Google.

Google Map continued to insist that I use the route I'd already tried and had discarded.  Eventually, I found the mine!  The water filled pit was a dead giveaway.

American Girl Mine is now a large open pit mine complex.  There must have been a bunch of gold here, to justify the efforts and equipment involved in creating this:

There was a rough trail leading down into the open mine pit, all the way to the water:

As I had walked about near the water, I'd spied four people walking on the top of the rim.  Curious, I located them once I had gotten out of the mine pit and took this picture:

I think, they were digging up dirt that they believed contained gold ore.  They took four 5 Gallon buckets of the stuff back to their car.  I guess they'll sift through it somewhere else where they've access to water.

One last look at the open pit mine that is

the American Girl Mine

The rest of the day was spent around camp.  Temperatures would climb to the low 80s and it felt great!  Even when there were wind gusts, they were warm wind gusts!  Best of all, the one remaining RV within line of sight of me, left!  No one now within easy sight of my camp.  Good stuff.