7 - A DIFFERENT QUARTZSITE EXPERIENCE

Our day started early by heading off to find the Cibola and the Imperial National Wildlife Reserves. 

According to the map, Imperial Wildlife Reserve is just south of, and connects with Cibola Wild Life Reserve. 

Well, not exactly. After finding the Cibola Visitor Center they told us it was a two hour round-about drive, or an hour long 4-wheel drive to get from Cibola to Imperial Wildlife Reserve. Sometimes maps just lie.

At Cibola we saw birds, but not as many as we expected.

There were lots of Sandhill Cranes.

This one flapped his wings for the camera.

Of course there were tons of Canada Geese coming in for a landing on an already crowded pond.

This area was called Mine Marsh and had a lot of ducks (all hiding at the moment).  Duck hunters had launched boats at this location.

Then we drove along the Colorado River with the desert mountains in the distance.

Since finding drop-dead, amazing wildlife hadn't turned out to be as exciting as we expected, we decided to go find some petroglyphs which, according to a book we had, are in the area. 

Don said he wanted to write a book entitled, "Finding Glyphs" but it turned out to be more a matter of "Searching for (and not finding) Glyphs."

We had exact directions to find the petroglyphs and so off we went. When we got to the "exact location," the road we were to take was completely washed out. 

Never let a washed out road stop Don and his trusty Jeep.

I was holding on tight as we bumped down this hill. We went a little further on before we decided it was time to walk and parked the Jeep.

Now our Jeeping friend, Bill Smith, no doubt would have continued down this hill without even putting it in 4-wheel drive, however, we chickened out at this point. 

We could see at the top of a hill in the distance the fenced area (Federal Land) where the petroglyphs were supposed to be located.

From here we walked about another quarter of a mile to that fenced in area that was supposed to contain the petroglyphs.

We climbed all over the area. Don climbed higher up the very, rocky hill looking for signs of petroglyphs. None were to be found, at least by us.

 

There was a small canyon that if it had been raining, would have had water and even a waterfall, but no petroglyphs. Finally we gave up on this location. 

From here we went into Blythe, California for a quick lunch and then headed about 40 miles west to look for more petroglyphs.

This time the directions were to Corn Springs. Corn Springs is an oasis out on the desert near Desert Center, California. (The Middle of Nowhere in case you are wondering where this is).

We drove eight miles back off the I-10 highway on a gravel road. 

A rather washboard gravel road, but not too bad. The mountains in the distance added to the interest of the trip.

When we finally reached the eight mile mark we found petroglyphs on rocks right next to the road.

Most of these are geometric shapes as opposed to animals or humans.

Some are up where we don't want to climb but where it obviously didn't deter the original artist.

There were lots more I could show you including those by what I call, "Modern Morons," people who desecrate these ancient drawings by carving their own names, dates or other useless writings on the rocks.

You can see some words written on the rock under these petroglyph drawings by someone with no respect for the ancient art in this area.


As I said, Corn Springs is an oasis...or at least it was. Now there is a BLM campground there. The original palm trees are still there, however a fire has destroyed most of them. Maybe from a campfire that got out of control? Who knows?

At one point this must have been a very pretty place to rest from tough travels. There was water, purple mountains and palm trees for shade. Maybe it will be again someday as some of these palm trees, though scarred have survived.


We are still camped on the desert in Quartzsite. One of the attractions for us here is the amazing sunsets.

 Tonight we have a full moon.

And then of course, there is the sunset over the mountains.


Tomorrow we will attempt to find the hour-long 4-wheel drive to Imperial Wildlife Reserve. We will let you know if we find our way back.