Big Eye Mine Ride

Four quads and one Razor made the ride to the Big Eye mine yesterday. It was a long ride, about 50 miles, but wonderful fun! The desert is really dry, so I had Norman stop for this picture. It's in a big wash full of green trees, shrubs and cacti. It is also the only area we go through that is this green. This year a couple of sharp eyes spotted a big eye in a rock formation in the morning sun. Unfortunately, we didn't take a picture hoping to get a little closer. But as we got closer, it disappeared, and the afternoon sun didn't shine on the rocks the same way...next time? Maybe...LOL

It's always a HOT walk uphill to the living area, and our guys grabbed a bit of shade to rest up and have a bottle of water before going the rest of the way to the mine. Kathy wanted badly to walk as far in as a person could, so she and I grabbed my man's little flashlight (worked good Todd) and went up two tunnels. It's a hardrock mine, or I never would have gone. Plus the miners dumped a bunch of debris not too far in, so a person would have to crawl through an area to go further. Sure is dark! WOOOOOO.....

Norman loves tools and machinery, as many of you know. So we have over half dozen pictures of these two items. The one on the left is a small forge for heating drill bits. On the right is an air-drillbit reshaping machine.

There are only 3 geocaches along the whole way. So we had put together seven caches in pill bottles the evening before. We don't have much stuff for trading, and haven't found anything interesting at the garage sales. Therefore, all we put in each one is a dollar bill for the 'first to find'. This picture of Norman and I supposedly smooching, we put together as a clue for one of the caches. We're calling the cache 'Near the Tunnel of Love' (we think), and I'm holding the cache in my hand. BTW...the tunnel behind us goes through the hill.

Ever wonder how we get the quad on our pick-up? Well, this is how my man does it...riding side-saddle. He figures, if he misses, he can get away from it. Me, on the other hand, I straddle that baby and don't like doing it...lol...We can't get the tailgate up all the way, so have short chains to hold it in place. It's important, because otherwise we chance losing the ramps, which go to the ground.