Post by rockpickerforever on Jan 5, 2018 16:26:09 GMT -5
Or, what I did the last ten days of 2017.
One of the two prospecting associations we belong to has several claims out south of the Cargo Muchacho Mountains in extreme SE California. We left mid afternoon on 12/22/17, and did not return until 1/1/18. The main goal of the trip was to prospect for gold. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.... you get the idea. Very little of that found.
This was our camp. The trailer stayed there for the duration. Had the place to ourselves.
The city of Yuma, AZ, is in the far left distance off the page to the left. This shot actually looks to the southwest. The white is the south end of the Algodones dunes. The hard to see black line behind the funky shaped sign in the center of the pic is the border fence.
Some deep prospects out this direction! This one may be only 25 feet, but many are much deeper.
Some have posts and cables around them to keep people from falling in, most do not.
This photo taken from around the mountain, a bit south of our camp. The mountain is Pilot Knob, a volcanic plug.
It is located within California, justt south of I-8. Yuma is again in the background at the far left.
I think the black volcanic rock on the left is the Pasadena Mtns. The thin light-colored strip at the horizon is the Algodones Dunes, south of Glamis.
Same vantage point, zoomed in
Kinda boring shades of brown/grey. The sun is pretty low in the sky this time of year, so not so much color to be seen.
A little green to liven it up.
I've already posted some photos of the kit fox "Foxy" that visited our camp most nights. I had never been close up to one before, but mrrockpicker says when he went to the desert as a kid, they had a kit fox come up and sniff the heads of the kids in sleeping bags around the fire.
This is my favorite pic.
No, this one is.
Such a sweet little girl!
Although the geology of the area all looks about the same, there are variations to it.
Piles of quartz, eroding out of the ground
Quartz everywhere! We did find a clearer quartz point (nothing special) about under our trailer when we went there in November.
A fish hook cactus. Dried brown bits are remains of the flowers, red part is the fruit, holds the seeds.
We found a new area to hound. This is a bit to the southeast of camp, I-8 travels east and west
over the horizon at the rear of this photo. These huge fields (and they go on for miles!) of
polished rock were carried down the ancient Colorado River a long time ago. 
Desert varnish. While a lot of the pebbles were covered with desert varnish, they were not as bad as in some other locations to the southeast.
Powerlines to the sunset, energy going full circle. The transmission lines carry renewable energy from the sun, generated by vast arrays
of solar panels in the desert westward to the coast and cities. Some energy being transferred may be generated by wind turbines, but
those windmills are mostly to the west of here.
The same sunset, but from back at camp
A painted sky
Since this was a prospecting trip, I had to put in at least one photo to show that we actually did a little of it.
Bob prospecting in creek. Of the two locations we dug at, this produced a little better than the second.
The wash has been dug over many times, so maybe people actually found some there, to make it worthwhile?
This is the second location we prospected at.
This is the hole I dug when we were here in November. Hole as we left it in - 
When we were finished with it this time. A little bit bigger.
This is a large, water tumbled petrified wood boulder found in that hole. Typical desert wood, kind of blah.
A good foot long.
Looks better wet.
Not the prettiest, but the largest I have personally found around here
It boggles the mind to think of where this came from??? Have to assume it was buried while this entire area was flat. Had to have come down the CO river as well.
This wash we were digging in was so of the Cargo Mine. This is owned by someone else, and is just to the north of our Cargo 1 claim.
A lot of interesting stuff washed down this creek bed, from bones, pottery and glass, to old metallic objects.
The Cargo Mine. Off limits!!!
The bones varied from heavy cow knuckle bones and ribs, to daintier bones, which I thought might be deer. A lot of deer poop around here. Then we found this, which made me rethink deer. Unfortunately, it was crumbing as we removed it from the dirt.
I believe this to be the inner front sinus portion of the skull of a bighorn sheep! They have developed convoluted bone in the fronts of their noggins to help cushion their brains - protecting them from concussions - when they do what bighorn sheep do. When I looked online, I read that biologists are doing research on this adaptation, to see if it can somehow be used to reduce concussions in humans!
Sunset another night, over the dunes. Laguna Mountains behind them on the horizon.
Almost a full moon.
The only casualty of the weekend - my camp chair!
Guess it wasn't built "Ford Tough!" Lol. (Note to self, do not locate chairs in the shade in front of truck to eat lunch...)
I still have yet to go through the rocks, wash and photograph them. Next week, maybe!
Hope you liked the show! Jean
over at 
