Fleeing the snow and coming to Yuma
Very shortly after I took the pictures at Lagoon (like the next day), it started raining on the Oregon coast. And raining. And raining. And then it started snowing in the mountains, which I had to get across. And then there were storms coming everywhere…so I fled south as fast as I could go. I didn’t miss a blizzard in Nevada, though…I had the pleasure of driving 25 mph through a white-out in a motorhome with no snow tires. That was fun. Also, my entire propane system stopped working. That meant no heat, no refrigerator, and no hot water. In freezing weather.
In addition, I couldn’t make any arrangements for propane repairs because 1) I had no cell service, and 2) there was a winter storm warning for the next day. So I got myself an ice chest and a little electric heater and squatted in the Walmart parking lot in Fallon, NV for a few hours, then continued south.
I made it to Yuma in record time and camped on BLM land west of town. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now, but this year I discovered a bunch of interesting things to see that I had no idea were there.
It seems that the Chocolate Mountains have a long history of gold mining, starting early in the 20th century and continuing through several incarnations after that. The American Girl pit mine, which closed in the 1980’s, is apparently the last of these.
Here is the American Girl mine pit. And there’s plenty more of it that you can’t see here. All pit mines look pretty much the same…enormous, desolate pits. The American Girl mine is typical in this regard.
And here is a bunch of equipment sitting on the edge of the pit. I have no idea what all this stuff is for.
Also at the American Girl mine is this battered wooden structure. It is perched on a hill of what appears to be mining leftovers…gravel and sand and rocks.
Here is the front of the structure. The bit of ramp sticking out below the main structure seems to be part of a sluice, although it’s hard to be sure about that. Perhaps this is American Girl Pit Minus One (AGP-1 — previous incarnation).