Black Canyon Road Trip - Part II

We headed on up the dirt road through more saguaros. This barrel cactus was one of two we saw that were still celebrating Christmas -

This is part of the fence that fronts Bumble Bee Ranch. The barb wire has spacers about a foot apart with an iron pipe as a header -

The story goes that prospectors in 1863 found a beehive full of honey in the cliffs along the creek. The Bumble Bee Ranch had these silhouettes of a cattle drive on both sides of their main gate. 

It was nice to see that Bumble Bee Creek actually had water in it. So many of the stream beds here are dry except when there is flooding post rains in the mountains.

This is one of the only three cows we saw yesterday. She looks in pretty fair shape given the desert surroundings.

 
The road in this section is no longer nicely graded. It got pretty rocky in sections with some deeply eroded areas and ditches. The newspaper article that we were following said this 5 mile section of the road  would take at least half hour. It took us almost 50 minutes! Of course, we were doing some bird-watching along the way...

 

The rock through this whole area was sedimentary rock with the layers standing on end. It had a very shale like consistency.

The terrain gets pretty rough through here as it leads into the Bradshaw Mountains -

 We were almost back to the main highway, but there were still incredible rocks along the road -

And this is the reward for traversing this unique back country road. Back where the road joins the paved highway, you come to Rock Springs and the Rock Springs Cafe. The cafe is famous for its pies -- all 21 kinds! Now, I am a skeptic when it comes to pies. After all, I come from a family of pie makers: my daughters, Sister Sherry and Martha, my beloved mother-in-law. Martha used to bake 2-3 pies every day during harvest for the crew - and she could go for over a month without a duplicate!

But, even Martha could not have made a better pie than the piece of lemon meringue pie I had. Tart lemony filling with beautifully and delicately browned 1 1/2 inch high meringue. Forry said his chocolate cream pie was even better (but he loves anything chocolate!).

We saw Alan and his crew washing another RV when we returned to Eagle View Park last evening. We stopped and made arrangements for them to come over today and wash all of the dust off of Toad II!