Ride 16 - Lone Mesa

This was "one of those days" - great for riding and for ending up where you didn't intend. [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Ride 16 - Lone Mesa]

We ostensibly started out to make this day a continuation of a previous ride where we didn't end up back at the trailer and had to call for a ride back to the truck. That day we started out at the Mesa Blvd trailhead, went around toward Beaver Dam and tried most of the day to get back to the starting point.

Instead we ended up at the Mesquite landfill and on a road that, with the new laws, we couldn't ride the quarter mile back to the truck (which was within sight).

Today we started at the Mesquite Heights trailhead (landfill road) thinking we would backtrack to see where we went wrong. Unbeknownst to us, however, we didn't get more than 500 feet up the wash before we missed the turnoff and ended up miles North of where we had intended.

Don't get me wrong, it was great country and we ended up seeing some great sights... strictly through "serendipity."

Similar in nature to the trail up the Sand Hollow Wash to 3-Corners, the wash we were in was high-walled and serpentiginous. If it hadn't been that we shortly realized we were heading in the "wrong direction" and were continually looking for a way up and out, it would have been much more enjoyable.

We did finally get up, out of the wash and onto the bluff; however, we then realized that the only way across the many chasms was to get back INTO the wash! That was another problem entirely, but eventually accomplished.

When the wash finally ended we were at the base of a high flat top mesa with the trail continuing up and onto.   I went up on top and it was an accidental surprise. The vista over the Mesquite valley was grand.

From that vantage point I could see another trail which took us up a little further to the powerline trail; which, we knew, ran back to join the trails that we had already explored.

The journey not the arrival matters.”
T. S. Eliot

Running East we crossed into Arizona, went South to the junction, West back to the border, and eventually found ourselves at the "troll fence" - called that because of the troll doll "geocached" in the fence along with beer cans.

We had already "gotten the T-shirt" for that ride so we knew how to get back to the wash, the firing range and the landfill. A much longer ride than we had intended, but we now realize that the Lone Mesa trail could actually be joined with the 3-Corners trail for an extended ride.

We also nearly tripled our tail map for the Northside Flats ATV area.