Thursday, December 11, 2014 (Midland LTVA, Blythe, CA)

The day started off with a beautiful sunrise...it's going to be a great day for an ATV ride! At 9:30, with lunches packed along with extra water, we headed off. We stopped and chatted with Armand and Anne for a couple of minutes and then we all were on our way...they are joining us in their new side-by-side.

We drove about 10 miles further up Midland Road to the old mining town of Midland. We had explored the old site on our first trip to this area back in November, 2012...for a link to that blog, click here.

We off-loaded the quads in a large open area...unfortunately to our horror, we discovered that the area we had parked in was covered with old nails; not so good for the tires!


First Steve off-loads his quad...
...and then mine...

And we're off!
As usual, Steve took lots of pictures throughout the day...just a warning, this blog post is "picture intensive"...and remember, for a larger view, just click on the picture.





Anyone need a hat?
We headed out on the old AT and SF Rail bed through the Maria Mountains...



We left the rail bed and headed east...

Up I go...

...to a great view of the Rice Valley!
Back down we go...









There's a mine ahead...
We think this is the Mojave Tank area...


A BIG hole!



And another old mine site...

and another deep shaft...
Steve waiting for his rock to hit the bottom...(thanks for this picture, Anne!)

Anne doing the crab crawl down the hill...too funny!





Now we are going cross country with no trails in sight...


We're back on the old rail bed...
We passed the trucks and continued on...we're going to see if we can find the road to another old mine site...
Stairway to nowhere!

Crossing the first runway at the Midland airstrip...
...and a second runway...
We're off to find the Skelenger Mine...
We couldn't find any roads or trails so once again we made our own...



But we found what we were looking for! We're entering the Skelenger Gypsum Pit Mine area...









Note the fill between the mountains...



The trail we were on petered out so we couldn't continue. We had hoped to hook up with a road on the other side of the valley that was shown on our GPS's.
Time to find our way out of here...
Yah..found a road...


Very happy with their new wheels!
Back on the old rail bed...and the last stretch before we are back at the trucks...

It was about 2:30 when we arrived back at the trucks. As you can tell, it ended up being a cloudy day, but we had no rain...and it was a great ride! Thanks Armand and Anne for being our tour guides and leading the way...we had a blast!

Time to load them back up, pick up all the nails we could find on our original tracks coming in so that we could back straight out. Thankfully the tires were still round when we got back to camp. Whew!


We were home shortly after 3:00. Just enough time to put our stuff away and get cleaned up before heading over to Dennis and Charlene's for happy hour and dinner!
The men chatting (Dennis, Armand and Steve)...
...and me, Charlene and Anne...

We had a wonderful evening...thanks for the delicious spread of food, Charlene! And Dennis, for ensuring my wine glass never got empty and the guys always had a full can of beer!

Another beautiful desert sunset...




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