JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL MONUMENT AND THE AZTEC TRAIL

April 20-22, 2006

Bright and early the next morning we packed up and drove into the Joshua Tree park.  We wanted to visit here because we had a fun camping trip here when DJ and Gary were little—about 6 and 2.  That was 35 years ago!! 

We drove around exploring the park a bit and then parked the car and headed off on a bike ride.  The scenery is typical desert, with cacti and rock formations and we enjoyed the blue sky, interesting rocks, and animal and plant life as we rode along.  Don got a flat and so we had a bit of a layover and got to watch the rock climbers while he changed out his tire.  Then we rode down the sand and gravel road to visit the Keyes Ranch, a new park feature since we were here last.  It turns out that the ranch is open for tours only, so we decided to have some lunch and return at 1 for the next tour.

Our tour guide was Ranger Lureen Lentz, a Hawaiian who ended up in the California desert with her Marine husband.  She was very entertaining and enthusiastic about her tour, which made it a lot of fun.

The Keys Ranch was started up in the 1800s as a mining claim.  Bill Keys went to work for the owner and after several years the landowner decided the mines were not going to pan out, and was ready to abandon the property.  Keyes was able to work a deal and acquired the land very cheaply, trading labor and some money.  This turned out to be a good investment for Bill.  He leased his 5 mines out to naïve Easterners who wanted to be gold miners.  In addition to his lease income, Bill operated the stamp mills and provided food and lodging to the Eastern miners.  Most of them tried for a year or two and then gave up and moved on and Bill got back his land to rent out to the next guy who wanted to try it.  Most of the clients worked in vain, but one guy eventually extracted over $1,000,000 of gold. 

In addition to the mining enterprises, the ranch had an orchard, vegetable gardens, several wells, and cattle.  The ranch was littered with old equipment—vehicles of every kind, old iron bedsteads, trays full of nuts and bolts, pieces of scrap metal, rusted machine parts and scrap lumber.  As on many old farms, nothing was thrown away, everything could be reused for something.  The grounds were a huge resource center for equipment and building repair.

Bill Keys was a colorful character and was friends with Death Valley Scotty, another desert character.  One time Death Valley Scotty sold a mining claim to someone, and when the guy actually arrived Scotty didn’t actually have a mine for him, so he had to get ole Bill to represent one of his mines as the one Scotty sold. 

Bill quite often got in trouble with the law.  His land was completely surrounded by National Park Land and he got into a feud with the government over mining claims that weren’t exactly on his property.  He was involved in a major dispute over water rights and eventually ended up in jail for killing his neighbor in a gunfight.

The Keys family continued to live on the ranch up until the 1950s and Bill’s sons eventually sold the land to the government.  The ranch is maintained as it was left, with all of the old equipment, buildings and junk littered around the grounds.  It was fun to see some of the old items, such as an old blue Taylor Tot, and a cooling box covered with burlap, and a pants frame.  Many of the people on the tour, who were under 50, didn’t know what any of these things were or how they worked.  If you don’t know either, a Taylor Tot was a type of stroller made out of metal and painted powder blue.  The cooling box was a wooden box with screen on the side and burlap on the top.  The box was attached to the north side of the house and a holey pan of water was set on top of the burlap.  The water dripped out and soaked the burlap.  This kept things in the box cool.  The pants frames were metal shapes to put inside the legs of a pair of wet pants to prevent wrinkles instead of ironing.

After the tour we drove along the road and out the south side of the park, passing by the Jumbo Rocks campground where we stayed many years ago.  As we drove across the desert I made a courtesy call to our Sedona exchangers and left a voicemail reminding them that we would be arriving the following afternoon.  Both Don and I were looking forward to getting out of hotels and settling into a home for a while. 

We checked into our hotel in Blythe and settled down to watch Survivor.  Needless to say, we were dismayed to get a late call from our Sedona exchanger backing out of the deal!  I couldn’t believe it!  What to do now? 

Don got online right away and found that hotels in Sedona and Prescott were pretty booked up and he began to fret.  I got online and sent off a few inquiries for exchanges in Sedona.  Don was skeptical about this, but I was hopeful that one of the Seniors Home Exchangers would come through.  We finally made a reservation in Payson, Arizona for the following night, just to be safe.

The next morning we headed out through more desert.  I pointed out a scenic route that was marked on my map, a little back road alternative to the big freeway, so we decided to take the Apache Trail route over to Roosevelt Dam, just about 40 miles.  Things looked good as we made our way through Phoenix and out onto the desert roads, and we stopped briefly at a little demonstration mining town before traveling down the road into rolling hills covered with ancient Saguaro cacti.

Now, a side note about the Saguaro.  These are amazing plants, especially when you realize that they only grow one foot in 15 years and they don’t start growing their first branch until they are 75 years old.  Some of the Saguaro we saw along the way had 8-10 branches.  By the time the Saguaro is 150 years old it is 50 feet high and weigh 8 tons.  The Saguaro is a valuable desert plant, providing food, liquid and shelter to many animals.

The Apache Trail, which started off as a nice paved road, quickly turned to hard packed dirt and gravel.  The road narrowed and our progress was very slow.  At the summit we stopped at the ramada to enjoy the views and read about the road, which is purported to be quite famous.  It seems the road was quite popular in the 1920s and 1930s and they actually had rallies and races quite often.  All tourists wanted to travel the Apache Trail, according to the storyboards.  We, however, would be willing to forego the trip next time.  Our little one-hour side trip took us about 2 ½ hours of dirt and gravel through unending cactus and ups and downs on a narrow road. 

At the end of the trail were the interesting Roosevelt Dam and a beautiful bridge.

The best thing of all during the day was that we got a phone call from Mary Ann and Bob, who responded to my inquiry on the Seniors Home Exchange and offered us the use of their very nice townhouse in Oak Creek, just south of Sedona.  Our saviors!

We made our way to Payson and spent the night comfortably before proceeding to Sedona the following day.