There's Gold in Them Thar Hills (Tuesday, April 25th, 2017)

The weather has been so beautiful here, 85 to 95, although it has been bit windy the last few days.We picked our friends Alan and Linda up at 9:30 this morning to go for a desert ride.  They are much more "boating" people than "RZR" people, so it was fun to have the chance to take them out.  They live on the north side of town, so we decided to start there, heading into the desert on the far north side.  We then made our way east, heading up around the top of the city.  There are trails everywhere!

We love riding along the crests of the hills because there's always great views.

Part way into our journey, we came across the foundation of an old cabin.  It's now full of trash that people have collected from the desert, but we thought it was interesting that it was just out there all alone in the middle of the desert.



As we went a little farther along the trail, we came across an old abandoned mine.  We're sure it's left over from the gold rush days.

We explored it for a few minutes, but the shaft going down has been filled in with debris, so there wasn't too much to see, so we continue on our way.

  

It wasn't long before we came across another area that looked interesting.  It was a small area marked with rocks and fenced in.  So we turned around to go see what it was.



It was another mine shaft, only this time fenced in.  We threw a couple of rocks into it to see how deep it was, and there was quite a delay before they hit bottom.  We're guessing it is about 35-40 feet deep.

I'm sure at some point in time there were some beams or something that allowed them to get in and out of this very deep shaft, but there was no sign of anything any more.

We made our way up around the Foothills Estates that lies up above the city, with a plan of re-entering the city on the south side, but every time we found a trail leading back into the city, it was blocked at the road.  

We finally found our way out of the desert and headed into town for some lunch at In-N-Out Burger.  It was fun exploring the abandoned gold mines that we found along the way.