THE DESERT STONEMAN

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 6/08
Another great thing about the southwest's deserts & mountains is the abundance of rocks, lots of rocks. A rock hounder's paradise. Rocks, rocks, everywhere. Lava, quartz, granite, shale, & limestone just to mention a few. Of particular interest in this neck of the woods is the much prized desert rose chalcedony which is a small white quartz rock. Kelly has found 4 so far & all of them right here at Hickiwan Trails. One of the 4 is perfectly formed.
This morning we set out scanning the desert floor for desert rose quartz to the east of the park. Our hike took us around a rocky ridge & into our favorite walking place, Valley of the Saguaro. (that's the name we gave it) This is a beautifully serene little valley lush with prickly pair cactus, numerous chainfruit cholla, hundreds of tall Saguaros, organ pipe cactus, palo verde trees, mesquite trees, & quartz rocks. Many beautiful pieces of white quartz scattered about. We didn't find any desert rose pieces but we did bring back a bunch of quartz pieces that I later took a picture of. http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy I'm sure the desert rose pieces are here because I don't think there have been a lot of people in this little valley. We also heard donkeys braying on the far side of the valley. When we were here in December of last year I bicycled over here one day & took a bunch of moody mountain pictures of the Ajo mountain range on an overcast & storm tossed day. Those photos can be seen in our web album for Dec 10th, 11th, & 12th. of 07. http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy
There was something else we found here in the valley last December & this morning we came across it again.......The desert stoneman. He hadn't moved since the last time we saw him & I hope he will be here the next time we come. You can see him in to-days album pictures.
Checkers got herself into a pile of cholla prickers so we had to stop & gingerly get her all unstuck. Cora had some in her paws as well & Kelly had to carefully remove them despite Cora's obvious objections. Nasty things, those prickers. I had one stuck to my shoe the other day.
As we left the Valley of the Saguaros this morning I knew it would be our last walk there for a long time. To me, it's a very special little valley & I'm allready looking forward to returning someday.

The afternoon was spent on computer stuff again. Put Google Earth & Mapquest on the park's computer this afternoon & worked on the Picasa Web Album. Kelly wrestled with some connection problems between Outlook Express & Hughesnet. Ray went into Ajo & purchased a larger Wifi antennae that he will put up atop his office. We're hopeful this will be enough for the Wifi signal to reach the farthest reaches of the park. Still a few bugs to iron out getting the site onto the web. Checked a few minutes ago but Google hasn't picked it up yet. The Hickiwan Trails RV Park's website will be...............
hickiwantrailsrvpark.com
The site isn't totally finished but it is at a point where it can be on the web. I can continue to work on it from our own computer here in the rig so that will be a big help.

We hope to get down to Organ Pipe again shortly to do the second hike on the Ajo loop drive so maybe in the next couple of days we can take a break from this computer stuff & get ourselves into some WOW country again:))))) That would be nice.