Ok, so times have been a bit hectic around here lately. More accurately, lately would be the last six or seven months. It started with my wife's truck needing paint. That simple. Anyone who has priced paint recently knows a decent paint job costs a ton of money. I found that it was less expensive to buy a vehicle with good paint rather than pay for paint on the existing vehicle. That went well. Found a sweet little truck with a straight body and good paint. After a good detail we were in business. Then everything(!!) else on the truck decided to give me grief. Finally got everything working well and she is happy with it. In the meantime, my daily decides oil to the top end of the motor is no longer needed. I tried a few things and determined nothing easy was going to fix it, so it sits waiting for a motor (which is in the garage patiently waiting to be put in the game). Ironically, my wife's old truck with the bad paint is still putting in work daily serving as my daily while I deal with everything else and my truck sits waiting. In amongst here my buddy Lance's 70 Suburban came in for a cam change. It ran good but had way too much cam in it for what it was in. The cam change turned into much more and its mail was forwarded to my place for about three months. Along the way, it went to the trans shop to get its shift points fine tuned and I snuck out with the family for a day on the trail. On the way home my truck decided to spit the dowel pin out and blow it through the timing gear case. Google "killer dowel pin" for an explanation of what happened. After I took care of that, I noticed I had coolant seeping out of a couple head bolts on the Cummins. That is something typically associated with a high mile head gasket. Mine is only a few years old. The general consensus was to retorque the head bolts and it should last for a while. The words "should" and "awhile" used in the same sentence really doesn't work well with how we use this thing so off with the head again. Everything looked fine except the wet head bolts, and went back together with a new Cummins gasket and all new head bolts. In the mean time, Lance took his Suburban on his typical test drive down the Baja Peninsula in old Mexico chasing a race truck in the NORRA 1000. He got about seventy miles south of Ensenada and it snapped a rocker stud. With no easy fix available, he brought the truck home and he jumped in his wife's brand new car and turned around and went right back to Mexico. I finally got my Suburban back into the running column and now his hooptie sits here awaiting repairs. Ugh.
So that is the quick explanation of why there have been no updates lately--seriously. That list was only the high points with very little detail of the rest of the crap. Anyway, I have a bunch of stuff to post and figure if I don't get after it, it will never happen. I actually loaded these pics a couple months ago and haven't had a chance to post them up. So, without further adieu, here we go!! This post will make more sense if you do a quick review of the last picture post I did where we traveled on an old section of rail bed. I didn't realize this trip would relate to things on that trip, but was pleasantly surprised when I found the relationship between them.
The destination for the day was a place called Sheep's Crossing. It was a bridge used by sheep herders to get their flocks safely across the Verde River back in the day.
The ride started out through some scenic, higher altitude desert.
A nice view of what we are dropping into:
First view of the bridge:
The bridge:
Now comes something I didn't know. This bridge is an imposter. The original was replaced by this structure long AFTER the sheep herders quit using the original bridge. I still have no idea why we spent the money to build this if it is not used for herding sheep across the river. It is not wide enough for a vehicle to cross, only pedestrians or bicycles. Once I learn this, I am no longer interested in the new span. Any intuitive followers of the adventures around here will know I am now interested in what is left of the original structure. Good thing for me and the content of this thread, there are some remnants to be found.
Here you can see an abutment for the original bridge:
This is an original abutment from the far side of the bridge:
Remnants of the cabling from the original bridge behind the far abutment:
Interesting albeit somewhat sketchy anchoring of the cabling...
Anyone who know about cable will recognize this is not normal cable used to support bridge spans:
The people who built the original span were not wealthy individuals. They were ranchers who could not afford to lose sheep to the river while running them from winter grazing grounds in the south to the summer grazing grounds in the north country. That being the case, they had to use what they had available to keep costs reasonable. One of the most expensive things they would need is the cabling. The resourcefulness of the ranchers came through in the use of used tram cable for the bridge support. Yep, the tram cable from the Blue Belle Mine found its way across a couple ranges, down a big hill and across a couple abutments to support the bridge for their sheep to safely cross the river. That is why the cable is smooth on the outside. It is designed to have a heavy tram car run on it. So very cool to go see something that I thought was an original bridge, only to find it is a recent copy/interpretation of the original, but then find so many remnants of the original bridge lurking in the shadows of the new span. Cool stuff.
On our way out, we found this saguaro that decided it had enough and was leaving too:
It just can't get here fast enough.
