We
got up at 8:00 am, cleaned out the jeep and then went into town to give
it a bath.
We
rolled into Napa at about 11:30 am for some pictures and to once again
thank all the folks at Napa for their support throughout this journey.
12:00 pm We met with Sylvia, a reporter from "The Pioneer" newspaper in
Snow Flake, AZ.
It
is now 1:30 pm and we are going to finalize this trip with a little
wheelin' and go see some of the Indian ruins near the Anasazi Valley.
We
followed a little trail back into the desert to one of the secret spots
that Will has found while wheelin' in the back country. It simply
amazes me that things like this still exist, and more so that they
remain pretty much unknown to the rest of the world...that is why they
still exist though. Nowadays I thought that any historic site like
this would be surrounded by a resort of some sort with vendors selling
t-shirts, tours and bottles of water for $4.00 each. It was a
pleasant surprise that it is not yet like that and I sincerely hope that
nobody else finds these ruins.
With
a little patience and a good eye it is not very difficult to find pieces
of the broken pottery around these ruins. These are some pieces
that Will found and then pieced together with some glue. These
pieces of pottery date back to around 500 a.d.
After
poking around and taking pictures of the ruins we jumped back in the
Jeep to head back to Wills house. We quickly realized that we had
once again lost the brakes on the Jeep. We found out when the Jeep
stalled out going up a fairly steep hill. Will managed to keep the
Jeep on all 4 tires and the trailer from jack-knifing while going
backwards down a fairly long and steep hill. It was quite a ride
and we were both very relieved to come to a stop after mowing over a
small brush. We put her in 4 lo and made it up without a problem
on the 2nd try. We both figure that this was a great way to end
our journey...certainly alot better than ending it with all 4 tires in
the air and/or stranded out in the desert for a day or 2.
We
then headed over to one of Wills good friends Clint's house to check out
his insane Cherokee and have a look at one of the "fully loaded"
Adventure Trailers, which until then I had only seen them in pictures...
I
was extremely impressed by the quality, layout, off-roadability, looks
and pretty much everything about them. These trailers are designed
and built to handle the abuse of off-roading in the most extreme
situations yet still provide all of the luxury amenities of camping.
They have ample room for storage and are designed to effectively utilize
every cubic inch of space, yet remaining very light (under 1,000 lbs).
I was most impressed by the sleeping quarters which is 8'X8' of
space...more than enough room for all of my 6'4"'s. This is my
kind of camping!
click on the pictures to view the
full size...
