Was I lost? It depends if lost means you don’t know where you are or if you don’t know how to get where you want to be? I was a little bit of both but not ready to eat humble pie! I missed a left turn on the 675-mile-long Arizona Peace Trail and found myself in an incomprehensible maze of rugged, century old mining roads. I knew I had to go east but the logical road was blocked off by a locked gate and a large NO TRESPASSING sign.
The Arizona Peace Trail is a series of interconnected Jeep roads looping between Yuma and Kingman. Most of the roads were made by ranchers or miners to access their respective mother lodes—beef to feed the miners and miners to buy the beef. The undulating western terrain parallel to the Colorado River is perfect for the symbiotic relationship between cowboys and prospectors. The valleys have the forage and the mountains have the ore! While a few towns popped up, it is unforgiving Sonoran and Mojave mixed desert land, and most of those towns today are only inhabited by ghosts. It’s also what makes the Arizona Peace Trail special! Ghost towns and abandoned mines!
I started at the BLM Burro Creek campground, a beautiful oasis just south of Wikieup, and headed toward the first of many ghost towns, Signal, Arizona. The road was posted as “closed” but to a pimped-out Jeep and a not-so-bright driver, that’s not a warning, but rather an attraction. The Big Sandy was running full of snow melt and had washed out the bank. The four-foot drop was nothing for the Rubicon and fording the fast-flowing stream was a breeze. After another 20 miles, I merged with the Wikieup-Alamo section of the Arizona Peace Trail in a mixed forest of saguaros and Joshua trees. The eastern horizon was dominated by Artillery Peak in the Arrastra Mountain Wilderness and became my beacon of hope after my errant missed turn. I knew where I was but didn’t know how to get to where I wanted to be! Lost, sort of!
My destination was Alamo Lake; tantalizing me with its beautiful blue, but unreachable, water. I tried Jeep road after Jeep road, only to find dead ends at every turn. Maybe I wasn’t the first dude to get lost in the Artillery mining district. In desperation, I decided to head south hoping that turning right would lead me to the left. Sure enough, pretty soon I was back on course searching for the next waypoint. Further downstream, the same Big Sandy was now the Bill Williams River, bigger and badder, at the headwaters of the Alamo. There were 4-wheelers on the other side watching me scout out the quicksand. Eventually I found a winch post, a clear indicator of passage by winch if nothing else. I turned on my lockers (locking axles), disconnected my sway bar (more suspension flexibility), and plunged into the 150 wide stream. With low gear and high RPMs, the roar of power parted the waters enough for me to reach the promised land! The 4-wheeler audience applauded and soon decided if I could do it, they could too.
I continued towards freedom only to get “lost” again trying to find the highway. A group of quads gave me directions and before long I was found again. My 50-mile meander covered only 20 miles of the Arizona Peace Trail, but I was headed home, with my tail between my legs and an abundance of humble pie.
Rob Samuelsen is an executive and adventurer supported by his long-suffering but supportive wife!
