11-22-09
Prescott, Quartzite, LUCKY DOG !!!

I have really enjoyed my stay here south of Prescott. The little campground of White Spar is about three miles south of town on Hwy 89. The campground is closing tomorrow for major renovation the camp host says. It sure doesn’t seem like it needs anything but I suppose they will put in gutters and curbs as well as new pavement. Probably better paved trails for handicap and to be sure you don’t step off the darn trail, or worse yet, make a cross country trip with your feet. I can feel daughter Tova biting her lip, she is a ecology restoration specialist for a park system. I am sure she doesn’t approve of people like me that don’t like to stay on marked trails. They have jobs for her, just because there are people like me!!!

The outhouse here is a regulation Forest Service unit but it is one of the cleanest I have ever been in. The camp host keeps the toilet paper rack filled and I think he must put up those smell thingys as well as a big plastic bag for ‘extra’ waste products rather than throw them down the hole. He even washed the floor today! I got to thinking of my outhouse arrangement and I guess I really must puff up my act this next summer. About the only thing my outhouse has going for it is a NICE view.

I have been doing some of the really nice trails and road system that are around here. I guess there is such a large summer vacation population here that things are really developed. There are signs everywhere and they gave me a five-foot by five-foot map at the forest service office of the forest trails and roads. The bike shop gave me a really nice color map of trails around town. This is big town and it sure helps to have a map to get around and pointed in the right direction. I will have to admit that I just take off without the map though and discover as I go along. Today I took the little trail that starts near came and took it over to a highway called the Senator Highway headed for Crown King. A couple of days ago I tried to get to that area on a little road that just got worse and worse until I got scared and turned around. I never did fall down but it was close. Falling down in sand is one thing but falling down in boulders is another thing.

It was a pretty good road but it sure was rough in spots. The sign said something like 31 miles to Crown King. After riding for an hour there was a sign that said 14 miles to C K. It was a first gear road and most of the time the going was really slow. I finally came to a group of motorcycles parked along side the road and had a talk with a group of them that were putting in new signs for a trail taking off the road. They were trying to dig postholes in granite boulder ground. They had a gas powered posthole digger that was about to tear the arms off two of them. They finally got that damn thing out of the hole and stared pounding with a big iron digging bar trying to break up a rock down there. Whoa, when one of the guys asked if I wanted to help, I pulled my helmet back on and told him I had to get going, otherwise I would. They did say that I should go to Crown King and eat up at the Mill bar and restaurant which is on the hill. It took me well over two hours to get there and the road was really a nice GS bike road.

The road is way up top of a rather rugged mountain range. The views from up high are always good it seems. Fortunately the air was pretty clear up there. The forest service is doing controlled burns over to the east but I guess the wind today was blowing it away.

The Mill restaurant was really nice. It is in the old Mill building and they have kept the original 10 stamp mill inside. The building is a little funky but clean and the gals running it were really nice. The little town of Crown King is a major hub of backcountry activities. They rent quads and dirt bikes and there are three bars I think. There were quite a few groups of dirt bike guys as well as other groups of quad runners. There was a group of six guys at the restaurant that left when I got there. They were all dressed in those flashy company logo-riding outfits. They also had on the plastic protection gear for chest, shoulder, arms, knees and big high top boots all buckled up. It sure looked like they were headed out to fall down. I am too damn old to go out riding like that. I guess they had friends with them thought that could ride for help and call for med-e-vac. I did see a heli port so maybe they can fly them out if necessary.

The road out of there was a lot better than the way I came in. I went through a couple of little towns before getting back out on the highway 69 at Mayer. These dirt/gravel major back roads in Arizona are usually very well taken care of. This road was no exception other than those spots where the road was across just plain old rock beds. I forgot to take my camera or I would have gotten a picture of a little Jeep that went off the road and rolled into a boulder patch. There was a deputy sheriff there taking pictures as I rode by. The little Jeep had a roll bar on it but I wonder if who ever was driving it was wearing a harness to keep them in.

As I was walking by the far side of the trailer I saw that one of the new tires was very low on pressure!! WTF? Damn and double damn!!! I pulled it off and strapped it on the back of the bike and took it to town. There is a little tire shop on this end of town and when I got there it had just closed……. Another damn….

Across the street was a little gas station that has one of those air stations that you get 3 minutes of air ‘service’ for 75 cents. OK, I put in the money and the little thing starts buzzing. Sheesh, it starts from zero and pumps up about as fast as I could blow it up myself. Well after three minutes of ‘service’ it was at thirty pounds pressure. I took it back to camp and made some soapy water and found the valve stem was leaking where it comes through the rim. The rim is a little rusty there so I guess I will have to have the tire removed and have them clean the rust off and hopefully some sort of sealer and put in a new valve stem. Well, this trailer has been a test all the way on this trip. 

Took it into town in the morning and the tire guy worked on it and had the tire off at least three times. Finally he put a metal valve stem in and he charged me $5.35 for the repair. I think he thought I had bought the tire there and they were fixing their own screw up. Once in a while a dog gets lucky eh?

On the road headed over the mountain and down into low country, there is an overlook and right down below is this cattle operation. I think it is a dairy operation but could be just a high tech feedlot.

I finally made it down to Quartzite and just north of there is the High Jolly (named after an Afghanistan camel driver that used to deliver goods across the desert around there) campground that is free 14 day camping. It is only about three miles from town so it makes it nice to run in on the bike for groceries and too look around. I have never camped in this spot before but it is sure a nice one. There is a nice big palo verde tree for shade and it is in the rear of the campground so there is very little traffic back here. I could get good cell phone service so Internet was readily available. There was poor radio reception but I could just hook up to our Yellowstone public radio (NPR) station in Montana and listen to local news as well as the NPR stations down in AZ on my computer.

I was inside eating an ice-cream cone and watched a guy that came up at the gas station on a new KLR. He came over to the Bloodhound and looked it over. He went back and filled up his tank and came back over and looked it over again. I was just finished, so I walked out and talked with him. He said he had just bought his bike and was about 400 miles into his first ride on it. He said he could hardly feel his feet from all the vibration that the bike had. He was thinking he had made a BIG mistake in not buying a two-cylinder bike. He liked the Bloodhound a lot and waited around for me to start it up. He felt the minimum vibration that it has and liked it much better than his bike. I think the new KLRs are suppose to have less vibration than the old ones, but evidently they have enough to make your feet numb…

I got my workbench out and situated in the shade of the tree and would make jewelry in the mornings and go into town and look around in the afternoon and get groceries for supper at the store. This time of year it is really slow down here as the winter snowbirds haven’t made it here yet. They come after thanksgiving and even more after Christmas. There were a few guys setting up early and I would go check the new ones out so see what they had brought.

I happened to go over to one guy’s setup that had some old camp stuff as well as quite a few boxes of ammo. He also had a binder with a couple of pages of old trade tokens. I told the guy that I had a few of the tokens that I had found in a little town I lived in years ago. He asked what town and I told him Goldfield. He knew Goldfield and said he used to go out to the dump and sift for stuff until they made it illegal for him to do that. I remember seeing people out at the old dump digging and screening the dirt around there. We got into a discussion about digging and finding stuff. I told him about buying a lot in Goldfield one day. After the deal was settled and my purchase was recorded at the Courthouse, I went on down to the lot to ‘take possession’ or more plainly ‘Piss on it, or mark my territory.” I then was walking around on it when I noticed something down in the branches of a little bush about a foot high. When I picked it out, I was surprised to see it was an old trade token. To tell the truth I didn’t think much of it since it wasn’t a token that had Goldfield written on it. I had found a few tokens over the years when I lived in Goldfield and it was always neat to find one from a saloon that was good for a drink but one from a grocery that was good for a loaf of bread was cool too as long as it was a Goldfield token. Some of the tokens were worth money but most were rather common and not worth much. This new token didn’t have Goldfield on it. It was a V. W. Earp…. Sawtelle and the other side said it was good for five cents in trade. Someone once told me that it was from Virgil Earp who was Wyatt Earps brother.

He said “ Oh bullshit, you are pulling my chain.” What? No I am telling you the truth, it is just a little token.” Well he said that if it was, it was worth $25-30 thousand bucks!!!! Whoa, I couldn’t believe that!! He wanted to bet me that it was, but ended up going in his trailer and bringing out a book. That book had a page with a picture of that token and sure as shit, it said it was worth that amount of money.

HOLY SHEEET!!! Somewhere in my five to seven tons of stuff is a token, but don’t have any idea where it might be in that mess. Well, I couldn’t sleep that night and in the morning I packed up my camp and headed over to Globe area to where I knew I could leave my trailer and motorcycles so I could make a run to Montana to search for that token.

I stopped on the outskirts of Globe to hook up to my computer with my cell phone to check email and such. Sometimes the computer connections down at the Windspirit community isn’t working, so I thought I would just check things before I went on over the hill and down there.

As I was dealing with the computer there was a knock on my window and I was surprised to see a highway patrolman motioning me to get out. He wanted to know where I was from, and I pointed to the sign on the side of the pickup…. Tongue River Farm…. Miles City, Montana….. He then wanted to know where I was going….. Dripping springs wash…. Well, he said I couldn’t tow two trailers. I told him that I thought it was OK as I had checked when I came into the state when I asked a highway patrolman and he said as long as it was under 60 feet I was OK. This cop asked if I thought he was lying to me? “No I just think you are mistaken.” He didn’t like that at all and took my license and truck registration. He wanted my trailer registration but I didn’t have that. He said that you need to carry that in Arizona. I told him that all trailers and motorcycles are permanent licensed in Montana and there was no need to prove that you had paid this years registration. He didn’t like that either. He was a rather unlikable type guy. Long story make shorter….. He gave me a ticket!!! BUSTED DOG…..

Then he made me back up my train and drop off my motorcycle trailer before letting me back out on the highway. Oh boy, what a bitch that was but I got it done to his satisfaction. Off I went over to Windspirit and parked my Pod and went shooting back over to get my motorcycles before it got dark. I was really lucky that this didn’t happen a longer way from where I could stash my outfits.

It was going to be impossible to move around AZ with my train now so I decided to take the yellow dog on the bike trailer and make a run to Montana where I could drop off the bike and bike trailer as well as take out the sidecar, and remove the topper. That would give me a way to be able to move around AZ as well as give me a way to get home at the end of winter. I would still have my bloodhound to ride this winter and could haul it in the back of the pickup when I needed to move with the pod.

Well, that gave me all the more reason to make a run to Montana and do a TREASURE HUNT. I haven’t seen that token in maybe thirty years and didn’t have any idea where I might be……or IF I still had it…..

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It is a long drive from the Windspirit to the doghouse but the weather was perfect all the way other than Wyoming and the ever-present WIND. Why does it always seem to be a headwind when going through Wyoming? Always is…..

Well I made it home and opened up the doghouse and was pleased to find everything in place and the temperature inside was not too bad at 58 degrees or so, which I didn’t think was too bad for early morning after a freezing night.

I opened up my big semi-truck toolbox and started poking around. I had remembered seeing an old suitcase that had some of my old treasurers in it but had no idea where it might be. I have trunks and boxes of ‘stuff’ everywhere but I was Lucky in that it only took me maybe fifteen minutes to locate that old suitcase. I didn’t know if my tokes would be in that case but I was sure elated to see this when I opened the lid….

The label “Tokens etc” is in my wife’s handwriting. As we were moving from selling my farm in Nevada we had a huge three month yard sale where we sold everything that we had, that was worth anything, to be able to afford the price of the new farm in Montana. I have no idea how these tokens were not sold or maybe I thought they were not worth much, or Susan had them stashed away for me.  I am a LUCKY DOG…….

The Token etc stash…..

The Virgil Earp token……. Oh, you LUCKY DOG!!!!!!!!!!!!

some of the other tokens that I had. I have not looked these up yet.

This is a interesting old Elks ‘medal?’. It shows some of the old ghost towns that were probably in production when this was made.

The Red Top mine was a big producer in Goldfield area. A miner would take this metal tag and place it on a board when he went down in the mine. That way, the mine bosses would know who was underground and if there was ever a problem, they would know where that miner was, as it would be placed on the ‘level’ he was working at on that board.

One of the other neat things in that suitcase is this pair of fold up glasses that perch on your nose when unsnapped and opened up.

They really pinch my fat nose and they are way too strong for my eyes. I am not sure where I found these but during the old days in Goldfield there was lots of this kind of stuff around and probably I found it out at the dump when someone cleaned out an old cabin or house. There used to be a lot of neat stuff thrown out at the dump… that was back before the government made the county ‘clean up it act’ and make everything that was brought to the dump buried and no fair recycling anything.

It has been quiet an adventure these last few days. I was going to head back down to AZ today but I decided I was too zoned and took a day off to rest and write this. This is really just the ‘short’ story, actually there is a lot more to the story but these are the main points……….. “The road goes on forever, and the party never ends”  my favorite song that Mayor Joe sings for me.

Good Dog

Hopeful Dog

Bad Dog

Busted Dog

Hunting Dog

LUCKY DOG

“The Dog goes on forever, and the story never ends…..”