Springfield Ohio to Tucson Arizona, ~1800 miles in most of 3 days.
Sorry Stix, I was trying to get a picture of the rig by the Mc Donald’s over I-44 but it is closed for renovation.
Picture shows the rest area on the east side of Texas on I-40.
Nice rest area with a display of the history of the area.

Favorite part of the trip was Clovis NM to Roswell.
100 miles on 4 lane, passed no one and only one car passed me.
We left on Thursday morning to beat the holiday traffic.
Caught up with some of the crowd from Las Cruses NM to Tucson AZ on I-10.
Most of the traffic was headed the other way but had to wait to buy fuel.
Not a bad trip so far.

Plan to ride in the Tucson area.
I brought only 4-stroke toys.
Maybe I have too many toys when I can ride the family on 2-stroke or 4-stroke?
Might be riding tomorrow or Tuesday, I will post how it goes.
I planned on 4 days of riding:
i) Around Florence – box canyon, Martinez mine and the bee hive coke ovens.
ii) In Redington pass just north of Tucson.
iii) Gun sight pass and Helvetia (ghost town) in Coronado National Forest.
iv) Kentucky camp (ghost town) also in Coronado National Forest.

We will have a full 2 weeks in Arizona before heading home.
Most of the time will be spent with the wife’s family but she let me bring the toys so I’m not complaining.

Pics pics pics please. I especially love to see the ghost towns.

What days do you think you'll be in box canyon? Maybe we can meet up.

Careful in the National Forest they have slightly different rules and regulations.

Looks like a killer trip, what machines are you taking?

I stop at that rest area every trip out West when I take the Southern route

That was at one time the largest McD's in the world. I have stopped in there many times to just to shake off from a road trip. McD's wil come back but with a Subway and other shops...

Hey man enjoy your road trip and hav fun on the quads!!

Hoser, we brought just utility ATVs:
2 Honda ranchers – ’05 350cc (mine) and ’12 420cc (borrowed)(same as the Pilot deal)
Honda Recon 250
Suzuki king Quad 400

Afastcar, sorry about the timing.
I purposely tried to make this area on a normal work day.
I would guess I saw 40 to 50 vehicles in the box canyon today.
Most were parked having a BS session.
Once out on the trail we saw very few vehicles and had no issues with traffic.
I would have to guess this place is crawling with peeps on a week end.
This area is only 40 miles from Chandler / Phoenix area.

Hey Hoser, it was 65 degrees F today.
I was out riding in a tee shirt.
So if the Pilgrims where so smart, why didn’t they stay in their boats and keep sailing to Florida?

Box canyon, Martinez mine and the Florence coke ovens.
Due to a late start and some difficulty ‘motivating’ my teen age kids (OK so one of them has aged out of the teen thing but he is still on my insurance) we did not ride near as much as I had hoped in this area.
When I was a kid I saw all sorts of stuff out camping with my family, abandoned mines, cabins, meteor craters, abandoned railways.
One of my goals was to show my daughter a decent ‘ghost town’.
The Martinez mine is not exactly a town but as abandoned stuff goes its pretty good.

We staged about 10 miles outside of Florence Arizona on state land trust land.
However most of the trails are BLM land.
A quick ride through box canyon set the stage.
This is just wider than a slot canyon, it looks like something from a John Wayne movie.
The canyon is so narrow and flat it almost comes off as fake.
This was really easy riding.

Next up was a turn down the wrong trail.
Found a dead end at an old cattle corral.
I’m sure back in the day the road was in better condition, the washed out areas could have been graded.
But the areas of exposed rock would have been just as rough as they where today.
Getting an old single axle truck back in there must have been a chore and the cows would have been as worn out as if they had walked I guess.

After getting turned around we made it back to the Martinez mine area.
The trail is closed about 1.6 miles from the mine now, BLM conservation of the yada yada.
The hike to the mine is mostly up the canyon in the shade.
About half way up are a few cabins where the miners stayed, not much of interest.

The mine is in amazing shape for its age and its proximity to Phoenix.
You would expect the place to be stripped bare by now.
There is still the tatters of belts hanging from the over head line shafting.
Most of the big parts for the old oil Engine and air compressor are still there.

There are two gravity feed bins and a large water tank in the complex.
However it is difficult to understand what processing was performed on site.
I’m sure the compressor was supplying air to mine shafts in the area.
It looks like the building is built over a shaft with a lift coming out of the ground nearly vertical.

Some of the roof and much of the walls are stripped.
Probably from the nails working through the tin from the effect of the wind.
There is evidence of water in the canyon several feet deep, sheets of corrugated tin wrapped around rocks.
The water hasn’t effected the mine building yet.

Seeing all this stuff was worth the walk.
However the walk ate up a lot of time.
We did not make the leg down to the coke ovens.
There is a lot of stuff in this area that still needs investigation, next time.

We only rode 14 miles today according to the King Quad.
It sure felt like more.
I think we left the trailer around noon and returned around 4pm.
It was dark by the time we loaded up and drove the 10 miles back to the McDonalds in Florence.
Driving back to the sister in laws in Tucson I could hear the kids sleeping in the back of the truck.

Attached is a PDF of the file I made to find my way.
The topo maps are available on line.
I used the older ones as the new maps have anything not current wiped off.
So the old mines that don’t have a current BLM permit do not show.
Also the trails and roads that the BLM does not maintain do not show.

Also I found a map that shows who controls what land in the area.
This is surprisingly difficult to find.

http://www.blm.gov/style/medialib/blm/a ... 41309p.pdf

Wish we could have met up. Saguaro lake is another area to ride at that's close by.

We took Hoser to box canyon and Martinez mine before. Good times!
viewtopic.php?f=113&t=9973&hilit=Hoser+afastcar+azmonkey

Looks like a great place to go for a ride and explore

Great way to spend a Christmas I wish I could be their too, enjoy take plenty of pics and try to do some mapping with the GPS

Very cool pictures and descriptions. Looks like a blast. Thanks for keeping us posted on your trip. Keep it up, and travel safe.

Hey Lee,I love the BAZinga shirt,was that just for me?

Redington Pass
Went for a ride on Monday.
Redington Pass is one of the trails out of Tucson Arizona that was more utilized in the old west.
There where farms and ranches that supplied food to first the solders based in Tucson and later to the miners and the town as it grew in size in the 1870’s.
Today the pass is mostly ignored, the transportation corridor avoids the pass to the south and there is no development in the area to warrant road construction, or maintenance apparently.
The main road requires street legal registration so I assumed taking the truck and trailer up was not going to be an issue.
The last 11 miles took a little over an hour, low range and ride the brakes to keep from beating the trailer to death.
I was going to say that this road was not ‘Ritz’-able but there was a 30 foot class C mot0r home about half way up camped out.
My recommendation would to be use the first staging area and cut your transit time, better yet live in a house at the base of the hill and street register your ATV (I found a youtube vid of a guy riding up the pass from his house on a TRX450).

Riding was good.
This area is beautiful and the rolling hills made for a scenic ride.
There was snow on the Rincon Mountains, 8664’ elevation.
We were staged at 4200’ elevation, temp was cool in the morning with ice in some of the creek crossings.
By mid morning the temp was up to 60F.

We made it up to Chimney Rock and returned to the truck.
Then we headed down towards Chiva falls.
We did not make it to the falls, turning around due to the late hour.
I promised the wife dinner with her sister so we needed time to get back down the road and clean up.

My wife drove the trailer off a curb on the trip out (I thought I did a really good job of not getting excited about the incident but the kids inform me otherwise).
After driving back down the road my wife let me know that I no longer had any points to cash in for that incident.
There were several times we could hear the enclosed trailer making a huge oil can noise as it bumped over the ruts.
There were two curves marked 5mph on the pavement and a few marked 10 mph on the dirt.
To be honest I did not have much opportunity to look at the speedometer while driving, but I rarely saw the needle get near the 10 mark.

All in all a good day.

Taking the family riding in this area was fun.
My wife grew up in Tucson but she didn’t know about Redington pass.
Her Daddy’s Impala didn’t go up that road – surprising because her parents where quite aware of many of the back roads in the area.
Her dad was a disabled vet, injured in the Pacific during WW2.
Mr T had a lot of time on his hands and seamed to use it trying to show his girls the world around them.
It makes for a good match, my wife almost sees my desire to wander as normal.
Nothing stirs the soul like a good walkabout.

We logged an additional 17 miles yesterday.
I had thought we could do more like 40 to 50 mile days when I was planning this trip.
Based on family trips to Brimstone in Tennessee we logged as much as 70 miles in one day.
Bottom line, getting to the staging area is taking longer than anticipated – trying to not beat the trailer to death.
Also the terrain is rockier and a little more technical in the areas we have been.
I’m riding with family so we slow down a little for the girls also.
My wife and daughter found a chiropractor after each ride – they say it’s because of the rocky terrain.
I’m not being played am I?

Even with the shorter distances I am having a great time.
I figure I’m coming back so this is just the initial scouting trip.
Long term I would like to drive the toy hauler out at Thanksgiving time, store it and fly back to Ohio.
Return at X-mass and drive back.
When it’s just the wife and I we will have a little more flexibility with it all.

Sorry Hoser, no GPS trace.
Kids seem to think facebook doesn’t do that.
But they would be happy to give you positive feed back if you want ;-).

While packing for this trip I dug out my old GPS, a Magellan 310.
Capable of storing 11 waypoints.
My Dad got me this unit many years ago.
I lugged it around Japan when I lived there.
But it predated a lot of the functionality we take for granted today.
It did what I thought was amazing things back in the day.
But half the screen died so in the trash it went.
I will have to decide what I want in the future, for now I have attached a PDF of the map I used.

About how many miles of trails were on this ride any GPS data or directions so I can view the area on Google Earth and wish I was their too lol.

The road trip almost sounds like that 20+ mile crappy road up to Killpecker Dunes in Rock Springs WY, 20 miles of really rough gravel/dirt road but great riding once you get their.

Thursday, January 1, Empire Ranch Arizona.
Spent a day riding with the wife’s family.
Husband of the wife’s nice had an area that they like to 4 wheel in.
We took the ATVs, some relatives and a few of the locals and rode on the BLM land around Empire Ranch.
I had not planned on riding this area as it was too difficult to understand what the rules where from the internet.
Riding with locals has advantages.
They had a nice staging area, we set up a fire and turned the kids lose with the bb guns and bicycles.
It had snowed on New Year’s eve in the Tucson area so the high temp was in the low 50s.

We had a `10 mile loop to ride around to get a feel for the ATVS.
Got a few of the relatives on the bikes, it made for a good beginners loop.
The terrain in this area was smooth and could be fast.
The loop was about 1/3 on a ridge so it swooped back and forth with a fantastic view of the valley.
Nothing too technical.

I let some of the older kids ride around the staging area.
Gave them a few pointers than had them follow me or the son around to get some riding in.
Hey, they already call me ‘Crazy Uncle Lee’, might as well earn the title.

Made for an easy day of playing around.

PDF map of the area we where in.

Friday, January 2

My brother in Lancaster Kalifornia contacted me and suggested we meet half way for lunch.
So I traded a day of riding to see my brother and his wife.
Originally he suggested we meet in Yuma.
Somehow I couldn’t do it, drag utility ATVs 2000 miles and have lunch within sight of the Imperial sand dunes (Glamis).
We met up in Blythe instead.
Drove over without the trailer to speed things up a little, 500 mile round trip from Tucson.
My ’04 Duramax still gets 20 mpg running 80 on the interstate, not too bad.

After lunch we went out to the Blythe intaglios.
http://www.blm.gov/az/st/en/prog/cultur ... glios.html
The Native Americans etched some large figures in to the desert floor possibly as long as 1000 years ago.
There have been some crazy things said about these, UFOs must have helped them, maybe they had hot air balloons.
Personally I imagine some teen agers drinking beer and making these shapes for the fun of it.
The white man didn’t realize they existed until the 1930s when they flew over with planes.

Hoser, FYI, there is a snake intaglios just off Shea road near Parker Arizona.
http://ronkilber.tripod.com/geoglyphs/SWAviator.htm
Something to look for next time you’re in the area.

I'm more surprised some drunk teenagers havent jumped the fence and screwed up the figures,looks like it wouldn't be that hard,just a matter of time before they do.
Looks like a great trip

Got back to Ohio late Tuesday.
Work on Wednesday.

I'm a big fan of traveling on the non heavy travel days.
Didn't have any issues coming home other than a little snow.
It had snowed ~10" in Amarillo, the roads where cleared but the wind had cased some drifting.

There was a storm that moved threw Ohio Tuesday night but the interstate was cleared off so it was a non event.
Until I pulled in the drive.
Some idiot had my plow ATV in Arizona.

Back to reality.

Stix, the 'Will Rogers travel plaza' is opened.
We stopped on the way back.
Mc D and a Slub Way in there now.

Glad you made it home ok and had a good trip, I know about the snake by Parker have camped by it many times its also just about a mile from the last check point of the Parker 425 course but I didnt know about the Blythe intaglios I will have to stop and see them next time in the area.

Thanks for taking the time for the story Lee.