We make it to the notch!!! More hiking outside Wikieup, AZ

We have been at our site for over two weeks now.  We will leave early in the morning tomorrow.

We have hiked 75 miles in this area, with a total elevation gain of over 2 miles (whew).  There are old mining roads that we frequently used, and occasionally we walked across country.  Occasionally we were scrambling, not hiking. 

Our camping spot is on a spur off of a seldom-used road.  We have had less than a person/day on this spur, which is the definition of the solitude we seek on our road trips.  We have had no one on our spur for most days. 

Today we decided to try, once again, to find how to hike to a notch in the hills above us.  You can see the notch in this photo from down below, about right in the middle of the photograph:

Another photo of the notch, toward the top middle of the photo:

Working our way up there:

See Vicky?
 

Close to the notch:



And we made it!!!!



 A view toward our camper from the notch.  You probably can't see it, but our camper is there, three miles away, right in the middle of the photograph:

Since our last blog entry we have taken several other hikes.  Here are a few photos from them:

On one of our hikes, off of the deserted road, Vicky found a stash of old tin cans.  We usually find these around desert mines.

What was even more interesting was a small "pit" close by.  It was the remnants of a spot someone had dug and then put rocks around, probably for sleeping.  

So we had a good time trying to imagine what someone did up in this isolated area decades ago, leaving the tin cans and then sleeping here.  

A mystery we will never solve......and don't really want to.

In other news:  Vicky has finished another knitting project.  We'll be sooooo warm!!!

We have a good IPad signal here, but not a good phone signal.  Vicky talked to her son, Owen, by climbing up on top of the camper, holding the phone as high as she could, and putting the phone on speaker phone.  Even with this, she lost the signal occasionally and had to call him back.

Here is a map showing our hikes in this area.  We have really enjoyed our time here.  It is so beautiful, quiet, and isolated.