Trail Ride to Smith's Peak and Bullard Mine

 Hello Family & Friends,

Darrel is at a PT appointment (more on that in a different post) and I am sitting in the truck with my jet pack on for WIFI, the laptop on my lap and the tablet and phone on the console trying to update since my Internet seriously sucks -- sorry, Mom for the bad language (actually that is pretty tame compared to some of my other choice words over the last 2 weeks -- LOL< LOL<LOL<<<<

Anyway moving on, here's the last trail ride we did to Smith's Peak and Bullard Mine, the desert has been dry and dusty so I don't have any fabulous pics but it was quite the ride (47 miles + round trip) -- longest we have done to date.

Mostly scenery pics -- we didn't see any wildlife, some grazing cattle and water tanks.

What you see in the distance was where we were headed -- there is a trail clear up to the top.  There were 6 couples and I think 10 UTV/ATVs since some ride single.  It was a beautiful day with temps nearing the upper 70's as we traveled.

Getting closer and closer -- that is one guy from our group, Vern leaning on his UTV

Here we go up and up and up ... or maybe time for lunch???

Smith Peak and the antennas were are destination!

We actually didn't make it to the top, the trail was too rocky and the climb to rough, so we ate our lunch and enjoyed the view.

The desert is so dry and the Saguaros are thin but there were a lot of them in the area we rode.

We came upon a fallen down (mostly) structure, no one was real clear of the purpose but we passed several mines and were headed to Bullard Mine.

Absolutely beautiful (stark) scenery!!!

Bullard mine -- is a hole in the mountain -- it mined a mineral called Chrysocolla ( I found it on Wikipedia and have added a link if you want to find out more -- click here)

I did pick up a few samples but they were little chips and I didn't take any pictures of them.

This is Sue and Ernie in their UTV 

After the mine we headed back to the staging area -- that is where we drop off our trailers and trucks to start the ride.  It was a long journey back -- we got to ride in 2nd place to open the last gate -- everybody gets a gate opening/closing turn and you even get a piece of candy and you close it!!!!

The other treasure on this ride was seeing a crested Saguaro -- there are quite a few around but you cannot always see them from the highways or even the primitive roads --

I would have tried to walk up to get closer but we didn't stop, it was in about the first 30 mins of our trip and we had miles to go!

It was a wonderful day, a long day and we were dusty and tired when we got home.  It was a good ride because we knew the weather was changing and boy, did it change.  Check out the next blog to continue catching up with the Pendergasts!

Sending love and blessings from the road,

Susan and Darrel