Wednesday, November 16, 2016

FaceTime Traveler

Wednesday, November 16th, 2016  

It’s another gloomy, wet day here in Newport, Washington. How may days has it been like this? I ponder, as I sit listening to the morning news and finish my second cup of coffee. Startled by the vibration and ringing in my pocket, I pull out my phone. Who could be calling me this morning? My home care nurse? Another solicitor? No, it’s a FaceTime call! I answer and am magically transported two-thousand one-hundred miles east to Honey Hill Farm in Nicholasville, Kentucky. On my screen, is a image of my daughter-in-law. “Hi,” she greets, “Thought you might want to accompany me as I inspect my hives.” 

“Sure!” I say. “I certainly do.” She switches the camera to forward view so I can watch as we walk up the hill.  Ahead are two hives, then two more to the left as she pans the camera around. Farther ahead I can barely make out two more. Unlike Newport, it’s a warm and sunny day in Nicholasville. The camera jiggles erratically as we walk. I can hear the dry leaves and grass crunch under her feet and imagine the sweet smell of decaying oak leave and dew as we approach the hives. 

The camera switches back to an image of Ruthie. She is dressed in her bright white bee suit, smiling through a screened veil as she explains that this is a perfect day to inspect the hives because it is so warm. “Going to get to seventy today,” she says.  

Behind her, I can see the oak trees at the top of the hill with orangish-brown leaves still clinging to the branches. Behind them is a cloudless blue sky. Around Ruth’s hat buzz honey bees poking at the net as they warn her away. “I didn’t bring the smoker with me today,” she confesses. “Just lazy.” In the distance, I hear a lingering songbird singing brightly. Probably a farewell tune as he prepares for his southerly flight. 

Ruth switches the camera back to forward view and I watch as we open the first hive. There are a few bees on top and they seem lethargic and sluggish. Slowly they disappear between the frames. “There should be more bees here,” Ruthie says. She explains that earlier this season she treated the hives with Api Life VAR, a ‘soft’ chemical made with thymol and other essential oils to kill hive mites. Hive mites can devastate a hive over the winter if not treated.  

But could the treatment be the reason the bees are so lethargic? I wonder, as Ruth pulls the frames to observe what the bees have been doing this fall. We notice the frames are packed with bees and heavy with honey which reassures us they have an adequate supply of winter food. One after another, we inspect the hives together. Some are like the first, sparsely populated with lazy bees. Other hives are robust and active. All the hives have plenty of honey for winter.

However, there is another mystery here. While there is lots of honey in the hives they lack any signs of brood cells and very few pollen cells to feed new brood. Could the treatment for mites somehow damage the queens ability to lay eggs? Would the current population be able to live through the winter without new bees? 

We speculate as to what the cause could be for this behavior. It just might be normal—although it wasn’t observed in previous years.  As Ruthie replaces the frames and closes the last hive, we agree she should contact her beekeeping mentor and find out what, if anything, needs to be done before winter sets in.   
Then I notice a weird sort of vehicle near the hives. I saw it, a time or two before, as the camera flew past. It was long and low to the ground which makes me wonder if it is some sort of new ATV. “Oh, you mean Black Lighting?” she ask. “No, it’s just an old lawn mower given to us by friends who have since moved from the area. John put new tires on the back and removed some of the broken fairing that surrounded the engine.”  

The tractor has an exceptionally low gear and is very slow (tongue-in-cheek Black Lightning) but perfect for climbing the steep hill to the hives. Ruth said she attached the small trailer to carry her bee keeping tools. Because it is small, the tractor can turn and maneuver easily in small spaces. I remember carrying five gallon buckets full of bee tools and sometimes sugar water up that hill and realized Black Lighting was the perfect solution for such a task.


After we said good-bye, and disconnected from FaceTime, I considered what a wonderful adventure I just had. I felt refreshed by the excursion. The November sunshine of Honey Hill Farm kept me warm all day. I chuckle thinking someday I might get a chance to ride Black Lightning up that hill!  

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Joshua Tree National Park.

Thursday Feb 4th  We pack up a lunch, some drinks, camera and sunscreen then headed out to go through Joshua Tree National Park.  Neither of us had been there, yet we both grew up in southern California. We fueled up at Chiriaco Summit and took the next exit to enter the park from the south, and leisurely drove across the park taking in the sights, stopping and taking pictures along the way.


I didn't realize how large the park was. Only 120 miles from the second largest city in the United States, Joshua tree national Park is 1,234 square miles of untouched desert wilderness -- over three times the size of the Salton Sea.



Took several short hikes (walks) and left the park around 5:30 at the town of Jushua Tree on the North west side of park. Tried to find the Mexican restaurant our friends from Olympia had told us about  but couldn't find it. Even texted a request to our friends Ron & Beth Storye but couldn't confirm a name or location.

No, this wasn't Denny's.  This was lunch.


Ended up at a Denny's for dinner around 6:30pm in Yucca Valley. 😮 Hey, we were hungry! The food was fine.  Then made the long trek back to our motorhome in Tamarisk Resort at Desert Center.

Joshua Tree Nat'l Park, Feb 2016

Searching for the Happy Day

First day: Because of my fascination with Wyatt Earp, it was important that we find the mine that was so much a part of the last quarter century of his life. In this blog, I detail our two-day adventure of investigating and searching for the mine--not that the mine is actually lost. Plenty of people have been there over the years, some have actually worked the mine. But finding it is still an undertaking that requires a little bit of research and effort. There are no big "This Way to the Mine!" signs.

Google maps and GPS coordinates are convenient tools of choice these days, but having a topographical map and compass are still the most reliable tools in the desert. Amateurs (like us) often find out, finding the right trail is more difficult that it first looks. The night before our first attempt, I made a plan and printed a google map as our guide. It appeared our destination was less than 2.5 miles off Highway 62 very near the unincorporated town of Earp.
"the Plan"  maps.google.com

This map was 'the plan' I had in mind when we set out. We looked for the 'road' as we returned from Vidal Junction. Unfortunately, because it was nearly 2:30 p.m., my stomach played a role in our misjudgment. On our way past this area in the morning,  I saw a road that looked similar to the turn we needed to make. There were several RV's 'dry-camping' along it. So, on our return, I was looking for RV's and not paying attention to the GPS coordinates. We passed the turn shown above, and, instead, continued another mile to where I saw the dry-campers.

The trail was hard packed and well traveled. Surely this was the road the Wyatt's mine. Why else would anyone be camping out here? My map indicated it was 2.1 miles from the road to the mine so I was pleased that the trail off-road was negotiable in our little Honda CRV.  Instead of having to walk, we could drive. Sunni plugged the GPS coordinates into her iPhone and we agreed to continue down the nice wide dirt road as far as we could. I asked her about every 100 yards if we were getting closer.  She kept saying, "No." The distance seemed to remain the same although the bearing changed from 'northerly'  to a 'more easterly' one as we drove.

Stopping for lunch
The well-traveled road played out after about a mile and Sunni was raising some objections against continuing. Past experience has proven she's right, so I pulled off in a level area and parked. The GPS indicated the distance to the mine was 1.9 miles, even though we had traveled a mile. We were a little discouraged tha we weren't farther along. Sunni asked, "What are you going to do?" I replied, "Let's have lunch and think about it."

From the tailgate of the Honda we ate our lunch. We could see at least three other vehicles on the hilltops around us, each about a half mile away and closer to the highway. We decided to continue to walk up the trail to the conical shaped hill to the north and see what our GPS read there. So we packed our cameras, water and a few other things and headed down the trail on foot.

About 200 yards into our hike we were met by a couple on an ATV, and we asked if we were on the right trail for the Happy Days mine. They gave us dumb looks and pulled out a map. "There are a lot of old mines out here," they said pointing to an area on the BLM map far beyond where we intended to go. They wished us 'Good Luck' and continued on their way.

My first assumption that "The Happy Days" mine was a popular destination was wrong. People dry camp out here to run their ATV's on the numerous desert trails. From the BLM maps they can see there are numerous mines in the area but seem unaware of what was mined or the history connected to them.  I might as well have asked the couple about the Mickey Mouse Mine. The fact that Wyatt Earp had a mine here called the "Happy Days" and had developed over 100 other mines in the area is not common knowledge. Making it all the more important we find the "Happy Days."

Earlier, I had assumed we could walk the 4.2 miles to the mine and back without a problem, but now I had lost some of that optimism. After traveling a mile by car, the mine was only .2 miles closer. And, as we continued walking, I realized that even in February the desert sun can be awfully hot and the dry air makes walking even more strenuous.

Walking in the desert isn't like walking on flat ground.  It is up and down, sand and rocks, vermin and cactus. Four miles would have been a little tough on two old sedentary computer geeks.

We continued walking until we were around the hill on the north side.  Looking up at the top, we could see there were two, maybe three large openings that had to be someone's dig.  Both of us were tired and I suggested we use our remaining energy to climb up the hill and explore the openings. It was obvious we weren't going another mile and a half, much less the mountains on the BLM map the ATVers had.

Sunni decided not to climb and would wait at the bottom. Her ankle has been very weak since she broke it several years ago. It gives out on her when descending a grade -- treacherous.

Took about ten minutes to climb.  Distances are deceiving out here. Close things seem far and far things sometimes seem closer than they are. From the bottom, I would have guessed the openings to be 5 feet and 3 feet in diameter. When I got there, the holes were actually 3 feet and 1.5 feet respectively. They had been excavated and not natural. Inside the smaller hole was a GPS Cache notebook with several entries.  I stood and read a few before descending.


This entry says; "Praise God, 10com., B of R, constitution, Socialism is the antithesis of our founding! WAKE Up America before it's too late. 
God Bless, 
Wally Jolly, the Joker."

Others posted about their day, or the hike, their faith, so forth. Very interesting.

Sunni was waiting for me at the bottom and we made our way back to the car.  Both of us were exhausted and disappointed we had missed the mine.

View from the top of hill looking south. I know it's hard to see, but the arrow is pointing to a black dot.  
Day 2 Searching for the Happy Day

The next morning, I spent more time scrutinizing Google maps trying to figure out where we went wrong and determined that the road we should have been on was a mile west of where we ended up.

The yellow line is our drive.  The red line is our hike up to the top of the conical hill.  maps.google.com

A better way would be to drive to the canal road then east to a wash on the east side of the moutain and walk in. The walk should be fairly flat, most of it would be in the wash. When I started to tell Sunni this, she interrupted and said, "We should have gone up the canal road." Apparently, she had been reading some blogs on the mine. We both smiled and knew we were going to try again. Packing more water, cameras, sweat rags and hats we set out to find the road north to the canal road.

The turn going to the cannel road of of Hwy 62 just happened to be the old Parker to Needles wagon road. We followed it for 1.5 mile to the canal and turned right. Then followed the canal road another 1.5 miles east to the wash, turned off the road and parked the car.

There was no road to the mine from this approach, only the dry wash which made our  walk harder today because the wash bottom was dry sand much like you would find along an ocean shore. But it was also cooler because the sky was slighty overcast. The distance we needed to travel was a little over a half mile.

We followed the wash around the mountain, and because I didn't know exactly where the mine was located, we angled up the side of the mountain a little sooner than we should have.  Upon reaching a ridge we had to decend to a flat area that had some old steel barrels and other metal objects lying around.  I was sure this was the mine site we were looking for, but it took a while to locate the mine because it wasn't visible until you were right in front of it. We truned a corner and there it was, Wyatt Earp's Happy Day mine. No wood post and beams, no "Welcome to the Happy Day Mine," no picks or shovels, just an ominous gapping hole in the ground.

Had we continued to follow the wash around it would have crossed a trail leading up to the mine, so, I suppose we got there the hard way, but a way that I was sure wouldn't miss it.

We weren't prepared, didn't bring rope, didn't bring a flashlight. I'm sure Sunni was sighing with relief. The shaft was heading down at about a 45 degree angle, so I could only climb down into the mine a few feet for a photo op and then took a couple of pictures of what was below and the vent shaft to the right.

Hard to see, but there was a 55-gal. drum at the bottom.


Very fun knowing that I was standing where Wyatt Earp had once worked. A few more pictures and we headed back to the car and out for Pizza and Beer in Parker.  I'm sure Wyatt and Josie would have done the same thing if pizza had been invented back then.  Boy did they have it rough!




But wait! ...there's more!


The "Secret Mine" of Wyatt Earp.  There is evidence that Wyatt discovered a rich gold mine near his desert home of Vidal, California. It is a well know fact that Earp explored and registered at least one hundred mining claim, called the "Happy Day"group.  But on the back of a file copy of a typed letter, from John Flood to Josephine Earp, is a map drawn in pencil and labeled "Diagram Secret Mine, from Vidal to Mine." Nothing in the letter itself refers to the drawing.  The letter is a report to Josephine (Wyatt's wife) about routine affairs. Only one comment refers to mining. "I understand that Vidal is experiencing a boom; perhaps you will remain there and open a store. As soon as we have our mines in operation, that will be an active country."

Photo of the map to the secret mine. http://clantongang.com/oldwest/earp_home.html

According to John Gilchriese, who was a lifelong collector of history on Wyatt Earp, and a good friend of John Flood, Josephine makes occasional references to this lode in her letters to Flood. From Gilchriese's commentary and Josephine's letters, it appears that Earp knew the mine was on an Indian Reservation and a claim could not be filed. He would wait until there were no people in the area and only approach the mine at night. According to Gilchriese, Flood had told him that in a few weeks time in the 1920s, Wyatt mined nearly $16,000 in gold nuggets from the mine or close to 535 ounces of gold. Today's value would be 6.5 million dollars.

An agatized vein of rock cut near the Happy Day mine.

Along with the map, Flood had a pencil sketch of two gold nuggets that he said were drawn by Wyatt Earp on a fragment of notebook paper.

According to Gilchriese in 1955 he and John Flood "believed" they visited the mine. It seems by his statement ('believed') he wasn't sure. If they actually did, they did not mention finding any gold.  (Remember, John Flood's profession was mining engineering.)  I suspect they didn't actually find the mine.

Looking back from the ridge above the Happy Day Mine are two things I wanted to point out.  First, in the distance is the peak I stood on the first day. And second, just below and to the left of the peak in the larger photograph is another mine which we neither saw nor explored.  t is about a half mile from where I took this photograph. In the blow up, you can see Parker Arizona in the distance.
 John Flood was an engineer and personal friend of the Earps who wrote the first and only authorized biography of Wyatt Earp. When Earp died, much of his personal effects were given to John Flood.  Then at Flood's death, all his documents and collections were willed to his friend John Gilchriese,  University of Arizona field historian and lifelong collector of history on Wyatt Earp.

Upon John Gilchriese's death in May of 2004, most of the Wyatt Earp collection was sold at auction in June of that year. This is important and sadly interesting because Earp's history remains (to my knowledge) in the hands of private collectors and not accessible to the public.

So, the "secret mine" location, if it exists at all, to this day remains a mystery.





























Sunday, February 28, 2016

Earp California and the Happy Day Mine

When a friend of Sunni’s asked if Earp, California, where the Riverview RV Park is located, had anything to do with the infamous lawman, Wyatt Earp, neither of us had a clue. But after we set up our motorhome and got on our computers, we were surprised to learn Wyatt Earp spent a considerable amount of time in this area. After his death in 1928, the Santa Fe Railroad and the U.S. Post Office changed the name of the railroad siding and post office to Wyatt Earp. That was shortened to Earp, by which it is still known today. 
At some point in his life Wyatt Earp lived just about everywhere in the west, his most famous years being the two he spent in Tombstone, Arizona. It only took 30-seconds of those two years, on October 26,1881, to become one of the most infamous lawmen in the American west. Those seconds were spent in a gun battle at the OK Coral, for which he will forever be remembered.  

What people don’t know is that Wyatt Earp was a prospector, and in 1906 he discovered a gold and copper mine in the Whipple mountains a few miles to the north and west of here, and spent nearly a quarter of a century working his claim and developing over 100 other mines in the area. With his second wife, Josephine Sarah Marcus, he first lived in Drennon, or Calzona, as it was know back then, a ferry crossing and railroad siding on the California side of the Colorado River.  



Later, he and Josie purchased a small cottage in the town of Vidal where they spent their Fall, Winter and Spring seasons whenever they weren’t camping out at the mine.  Summers were spent in Los Angeles where they partied and hung out with Hollywood movie stars of the day.  The cottage was the only home Wyatt ever owned in his life although they sometimes lived in the many saloons, gambling halls, and dance halls Wyatt built, owned and operated throughout the west.


But it was in Vidal he and Jose seemed to be most happy, so, it seemed appropriate, since we were staying in Earp, that we pay our respects to him and visit his home in Vidal and his Happy Days mine, the place he loved and lived longer than anywhere else in the West.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Corn Springs

Tuesday, February 23rd Today we set out to find the dwelling place and grave of August “Gus” Lederer, self-proclaimed ‘Mayor of Corn Springs’.  


As I have explained before, we are staying at Lake Tamarisk Desert Resort, which is 2-miles from Desert Center — a ghost town with a post office. Desert Center is in the middle of the Colorado Desert, 50 miles east of Indio and 50 miles west of Blythe on the California Arizona border. Our destination today is in deep desert, a canyon 20-miles inside the Chuckwalla Wilderness Area.  


Gus Lederer lived in a small stone cabin at the spring. A plauqe placed on a rock along the road as we entered the oasis, memorialized Gus as being a prospector, burro fancier, and vegetable gardener. The story goes Gus made pancakes for his burros who would show up each morning and await their treat.  


In 1932, he was bitten on the neck by a Black Widow Spider and died because he couldn’t get medical help quick enough to save his life.  



It was ‘Desert Steve’ Ragsdale who went up and buried Gus at Aztec Springs, further up the canyon next to Gus’s friend Tommy Jones who died in ’29. A third more recent grave, is Tim O. Crowley who died in ’48. The grave markers have really deteriorated.  From a previous internet photo, we determined the middle grave is the oldest, belonging to Jones.  Gus's grave is the far left and the newest addition, Crowley's, is on the right.  

There are two more graves that exist according to Findagrave.com which we did not find.  They are  Dixon Dale Hill, D.1942 and Donna Marie Taylor-Kidd D. 1994.  There was one other monument (pictured below) near the three graves but it was not marked.


If anyone knows more about any of these graves or has pictures of the deceased, I would like to learn more.

In regard to Gus's grave, any friend of Desert Steve is a friend of ours, we felt obligated to pay him a visit and we were glad we did.  



The spring is a true Desert Oasis which explains Gus's lush vegetable garden that he grew to help sustain himself and guest.  Gus kept the oasis in resort condition for the travelers and prospectors who might show up at his door. 


After Gus died, the springs reverted to the BLM. Because of the exquisite condition of abundance of petroglyphs it was to be preserved as a national monument.  



Unfortunately, that never happened.  So, it remains today, remote and mostly forgotten. Some embellishment and additions to the native artwork now exist, but for the most part people have respected the significants of the ancient history the site represents.