Kofa Spirits

It was time to leave the Roadrunner BLM camp, time to move on, time to discover a new area. My planning this trip has been absolute shit, yet I don’t care. I seem to have fallen into a pattern of starting to think it’s time to go, open the googles map and take a quick look around, with no more than a direction in mind. I scout an area with the satellite imagery view, throw down a marker, and head that way. That’s it for planning.

Today’s direction was south. I was looking at Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. The googles had me following down a road that looked interesting “Castle Dome Mine Rd”, according to the big G. I see an area where it looks like people had been circling just off the road, a good sign there is a level place to park there. Mountains near to the west to hike to – looks good. Throw my pin down.

I pack things up; getting easier now that I’ve done it a few times – I feel more confident about pulling up the stakes and heading out now. Check everything and go to say goodbye to Larry. We visit for a bit and then go to part. He gives me a hug and a kiss. Who’d have thunk I’d make a friend out here so quickly?

I drive away, stopping to adjust my mirrors, just so. It all seems a bit wonky though. I move the whole driver’s side mirror around and find it to be quite loose. Oh well, it’s probably been that way the whole time, I think. Go driving down the first gravel road back to highway 95. I see my front mirror is out of alignment again, not only that, but it has moved so far I can’t see a damn thing. Uh-oh. I pull over and inspect the thing. It’s not only loose, it is essentially just flapping around, in fact I can pull the whole thing right out of it’s mounting arm. I see a large Allen key nut that obviously tightens the mirror to the mount. Of course, I don’t have any actual tools for this. Now what? I briefly consider going back to my previous camp – Larry probably has a tool. But I don’t. Want to move on, want to do it myself. I improvise, but the nut is too tight to turn even a bit without the proper tool. I remember the advice the lady at Cruise America gave me “Buy some duct tape at least, if you break the mirror mount, you can always use it to tape it back on temporarily at least. Duct tape to the rescue!

5 minutes of wrapping and adjusting later, I had a workable temporary solution. I’ll need to re-tape it again to NOT tape over the wide angle mirror, it’s now pointing in too much, but it’s still at least of diminished usefulness to driving. Put the automatic in drive, step on the gas, nothing. Hmmm, strange. Park-neutral-drive; there we go! Down the road we head, revving up to 4000 rpm! And staying there. Uh-oh, times two! Drive-4-3-2-3-4-Drive. Nada. Stop. Park-neutral-drive. Feel the gear kick in. Well, at least I can get to Quartzsite if I have to. Park-drive. Accelerate gingerly. Lo – we have another gear… and another! and more! I turn south on the 95 towards Kofa, wondering if I should be turning back north to Quartzsite. My googles pin I am heading to is about 10 miles off the main highway, after all…

I forge on – RV is fine, as long as I can get a gear, I can at least make it back to the road and call Cruise America for help. My mirror is staying where I taped it – we’re good. Down the highway I go, happy to be in the blue sky and sun – mountains on my left are the first range in Kofa – looking forward to see the inside of the park! I stop to take a picture of the striking range.

I walk away from the rig to get a shot without power lines in it. Check for GPS tag, nothing. Duh, it’s pulling off my phone 500 feet away, out of range stupid! I walk back and snap a shot at the RV, just to get my location. Hmmm, still nothing. Look at the phone software – ugh. The recent update has reset the pairing, and on top of it something is different. I mess with the menus for a couple of minutes, cursing Sony programmers and managers for wasting my time I should be enjoying the desert instead. I eventually say ‘fuck it’ and just snap a cell phone pic. Sony, your camera is great, but you need to learn a lot about ease of use interface (camera AND software), and more obviously, STOP BREAKING SHIT WHEN YOU UPDATE THE SOFTWARE. Done with my rant, I move on.

I turn off onto King Road, leading into the park. It’s your standard gravel road around here – just take it easy and anything can make it through. There are a few people camped about in a range of rig sizes. I see the sign welcoming me to the park with a little booth with some displays in it. I snap some quick pics to refer to later, and proceed into Kofa! The road immediately turns more challenging, but still doable by all but the largest rigs. I consult the googles, I’m only a few minutes away from my goal, just need to turn right on “Castle Dome Mine Rd” The googles tells me my turn is up ahead 200m, then “turn right”.

That can’t be the road. That’s a cart path, and a rough one at that. I proceed down, wondering why the googles is now just showing me a circle rather than an arrow to show where I’m going, and is proposing a one hour “alternate route” to where I want to go. My map is all wonky too, I’m not shown on the center of the map, my circle is way down, and my zoom is way too close to show me any context of where I’m at. I pull over. “OK Google, zoom out map” I command in my commanding voice. I see what’s going on, the googles thinks there is no turn around for miles, and is directing me to head a long ways in, then head back to the cart path I’d passed a few 100 metres back. Hey Google, it is possible to find turn arounds on most gravel roads, ‘ya know?

I go up another couple hundred meters and turn around. Now the googles is happy, leading me back to my turn. I take a long look at it. The only signpost is a number, 42. Hmmmm. Take a deep breath, slowly ease the RV over the little dirt ridge to get on the cart path. Drive, slowly. One hundred feed later stop. Holy crap, look at that rough little wash crossing! Can I even make that?! Get out, walk into it to check it out. Yeah looks doable for my rig, just gotta be slow and pick where my tires go. Scout out ahead a bit – is this road going to get even rougher?

I walk a few hundred feet up out of the wash – looks better. I drive through, not too concerned at this point. A few hundred feet past my scouting, another wash! This looks worse, but no need to check out, I just need to be even more careful picking where my tires go over the rocks. Through I go, and up again. I keep scraping the vegetation on the side – my rig is really just a little too wide for this road. I wince every time, I’m sure I’m scratching up the decal job on the sides. Not to mention my poor duct taped up mirror.

I finally realize, you can push the mirrors in saving you scraping against those at least. A few washes later and a lot more scraping, I seem to finally be climbing a bit on a better cart path. Getting close to my pin, the googles say, now they are finally cooperating. It’s almost like the Sprit of Kofa was testing me, putting me through some hardships to test if I really was worthy of being there. I think I have passed the trials so far. I arrive at my destination according to the googles. There are some spots to pull off on, but I have just enough brave left in me to travel on a little farther.

A few hundred meters ahead, I see a promising spot, with a pull out to boot. Pull out, scout. The west side is nicer but has some poles on the faint track, probably signs were there telling you to not drive here. Plus, no sign of camping, or anyone driving in here. The east side is not quite as nice, but does have a faint track, plus I see an old fire pit, so old a fair sized Cholla is growing right beside it. But it’s been camped on, so that’s my spot.

I maneuver the Rig around facing south so I get a nice view of the sun coming up in the morning. The ground is softer than I’d like, I dug the rear wheels in a bit going back and forth getting my rig leveled. You do not want to be stuck out here, so I’m on hyper alert for any possible problem. This doesn’t look like much of a hole, but believe me, on the softer than expected terrain, that was too close to being stuck.

I look around me. Wow, just wow. I’m using that word a lot out here, but it bears saying again, WOW! This is an amazing spot. The spirt of Kofa has richly rewarded me for my perseverance today. I’m going for a hike next!