Last week we packed up our Turtle and headed west to to Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. This unique refuge was established in 1939. Eighty-two years ago our government had the foresight to set aside over 666,641 acres (i.e., over 1,000 square miles) of Sonoran desert habitat in western Arizona as a safe place for wildlife and plants to flourish.
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service manages this vast tract of land that is approximately 45 miles north to south and 30 miles east to west. And they do a fantastic job! Bighorn sheep are thriving in the two rugged mountain ranges. They reintroduced the endangered Sonoran Pronghorn in Kofa in 2013, and their population is growing.
We have camped and hiked in Kofa three times previously and three additional times just east of Kofa in the Little Horn Mountains.
There are several reasons that we keep returning to Kofa and the surrounding area. One is that we love the rugged wild and untouched beauty of Kofa. The roads here push the limits of even 4-wheel drive vehicles. Good thing that our Toyota TRD is an official “rock climber!”
Another plus is that there are no campgrounds in Kofa, but dispersed camping is allowed. With our small, sturdy off-road rigs, we can camp and hike far out into the wilderness all by ourselves. The only people we see in the interior of Kofa are a few hunters and a handful of extreme off-road vehicles enthusiasts. Strangely, we see no other hikers and we have never seen any one else camping within miles of our campsite.
Everyone is friendly and waves as they pass us. They all are enjoying the wilderness, each in their own way. They also are in Kofa because they want the same solitude that we are seeking, so they move on quickly and leave us alone in our desert.
But everyone is helpful and looking out for others. We are all far out in the desert, and we all know that the desert can be brutal. We are each our brother’s keeper there.
Another bonus for Kofa is that although there are two beautiful mountain ranges, the elevation is relatively low. This means that if it is fairly warm in Mesa, it should be warm enough for us to hike and spend our afternoons relaxing in the warm winter sun in Kofa. The nights during the winter in the desert are usually 30-40 degrees colder than the daytime temperatures. So in the winter, we head to the wilderness areas with lower elevations (like Kofa) for our desert trips.
We camped for two nights in our first spot on this trip. We explored the area and searched for campsites further up the road that would be accessible with our Turtle.
I knitted a blanket for Candice’s new desert home and Dan started constructing a 1936 Chevy Dragster model car.
Relaxing together in the sun after hiking in the desert all morning is our idea of afternoon delight:
We hiked off road and up a wash and found a vast secluded valley surrounded by mountains. This area is calling us. On a future trip we will camp here and hike in a different direction every day. We even found a good campsite with a dance floor “made by nature," just waiting for us!
We moved to a spectacular campsite further up the road for our last three nights. It was high above a beautiful wash!
It reminded us both of our site at the
Grand Canyon where we were 1,500 feet above Marble Canyon. Luckily we didn’t get darn near blown off the cliff like we did on that Grand Canyon trip in 2019!
On our map we could see that Red Rock Pass was further up the road. We hoped to be able to reach the pass within our sweet spot for hiking which is 5-6 miles.
As we hiked toward Red Rock Pass, we quickly found that our Turtle (F350 with a slide-in camper) would not be able to go further on this road. The road deteriorated and became a “Rat and Quail” road. In other words, next time we camp further along this road we will bring our Toyota 4Runner TRD (Rat) and TC Teardrop off-road trailer (Quail).
Here I am as we scaled the second to last hill before Red Rock Pass.
Dan enjoyed the panoramic view from Red Rock Pass:
This is the mountain that loomed above us during our stay in Kofa. We spent hours gazing in awe at it.
We just had to hike in the stunningly beautiful wash that we looked down on every day from our high campsite perch.
I am so proud of all the thousands of miles and the difficult terrain that Dan is able and willing to hike on his surgically repaired and rebuilt foot (three major surgeries so far)!
We could see a road on our google and GPS maps, but it was not on the Kofa map. In fact, the obscure “road” had clearly not been tread upon in many decades. That was just the challenge we needed....find the road and (hopefully) find out why it had be laboriously built sometime before Kofa became a wildlife refuge 82 years ago.
Dan’s GPS indicated that a substantial part of this old road was on a wash. So off we headed up this wash.
Without the GPS we would have never found the road. Over a mile up the wash, his GPS showed the wash going one direction and the road veering off at a 90 degree angle. But there was not road there, only a jumble of rocks and dirt on a hillside. Even though there had been jumbles of rock and dirt throughout most of the wash, we decided to climb up this particular jumble.
And at the top we found clear evidence of the road that we were searching for!
We followed this faint indication of a road for over a mile and found an ancient mine!
There were old railroad rails and an open hole with rotten wooden braces. Dan cautiously stood back a bit and threw a rock into the mine......and the rock hit something, kept going, hit something else, and finally way down deep we heard the final thud!
This had been a perfect hike! We got to explore a beautiful remote area. We made our hike into a loop hike. We had to work very hard. And best of all, we were rewarded by discovering this wonderful road and mine that no one may even remember or know of it’s existence anymore. This mine is not on any of our maps, so we don't even know what the name of it was. This is a part of history that has long been forgotten.
This next photo doesn’t even need any explanation. I was so stoked to find a deer antler. I think Dan was too, since he had been hearing me throughout the years chatter as we hike about how, “I hope I find my antler today.” Over.....and over.......and over.....and...
But I never expected to find such a perfect antler!
There are unlimited areas to explore in Kofa. We will spend countless days and trek many miles through these mountains, valleys, and washes. We will soon return to this beloved desert wilderness.
Every morning we watched the sun rise over our mountains. In the afternoons we relaxed above our wash and gazed upon our lovely desert view. As the sun set and the warmth began to wane, we went inside our little home for dinner and another night together. In the morning as we awoke, we could hear the music of the coyotes yelping in the early dawn.
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