Ride 1 - Lime Kiln Canyon

We took the tarps off the trailer and went for our first ride of the '08-09 snowbird season today.

Lime Kiln Canyon is just Southeast across the flats from Mesquite. Cross the Riverside Rd bridge (they're fixing it cause it nearly washed out) and immediately turn left toward Scenic Arizona. Up the road, instead of turning left to Scenic, continue on straight toward the mountains until you come to a cattle guard and a fork in the road. The road on the right goes up to Cabin Canyon and the one on the left to Lime Kiln Canyon.

Today we parked just short of the main trailhead at the first corral. We then rode the ATVs up to the second corral (the main trailhead) to check on the fish. There is a large round stock tank that someone had put goldfish in and they love it. The fish are still there and living under the thin coat of ice.

We rode up the canyon, through the narrows, and onto the top. The "reveal," as they say in the movie industry, is magnificent. At the top you can look out into the Parashant Grand Canyon.

We decided to try and find Red Pocket Tanks, and we did with little search. There was another stock tank, corral and -- a couple of bulls that didn't take their eyes off us the whole time we were there. The rocks looked like they might have petroglyphs on them but we didn't find any - at least those made by ancient indians.

We then rode over to the abandoned Lime Kiln mine and looked around. We didn't have a flashlight so didn't go in too far because it got too dark to see any shafts - or pumas.

We followed another trail to see where it would lead and worried that we would never be able to get across the chasm to where we knew the main trail to be. Finally it wound around through the pines and out onto the main trail. We returned back down the same dirt road to the trailer and were home before it got dark - about 4:30 here in this time zone.

I did figure out how to put our trails on to Google Earth and todays trip is located right here -->Day 1 - Lime Kiln Canyon - at least I hope it is. Obviously, you first need to have Google Earth installed on your computer then click the link with your mouse and it will download the small track file and open "Earth" with it already to go.