4/13 We are packing a lunch and plenty of water and planning on taking the Old Ore Road which will take us from near the campground north towards the entrance to the park. This is a high clearance 4 wheel drive only trip of 26.4 miles and we are expecting to be on it for 3 to 4 hours. We drove along the Dead Horse Mountains or Sierra Del Caballo Muerto (sounds better in Spanish). We passed the grave site of Jose de Leon who was murdered in the town of La Noria which we later passed. As we drove along this “road” more like two ruts in the ground, we enjoyed the many views but worried about someone coming in the opposite direction, how would we pass each other? The landscape varied from plateaus to working our way through washes and old riverbeds with a mix of limestone and volcanic rock. There were many turnouts to hike into the various springs, tanks and canyons but we opted to stay on the road. We did stop along the way to visit the William Quail McKinney Ranch house or I should say the remains of it. About 12’ by 20’ and probably considered quite large at the time.
It was built atop a small rise and commanded a nice view of the surrounding mountains. A little further on we stopped and took the picture of the Chisos Mountains from a high plateau.
As we departed our high plateau we descended into a deep wash and were really worried about meeting another vehicle, which we had not seen to this point. The road narrowed where we had to drive over some rough rocks to avoid the pits. As we came out of this we did meet our first vehicle. I had just passed an area I could pull into, so I waved him forward and backed to that spot. That was the only vehicle we saw the entire road. Our trip lasted close to 6 hours and we were exhausted, and glad to return to our sweet home on wheels.
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