Crystal Hill gives up her treasure!

Tiny quartz crystals in a horsehair basket

Small crystals sparkle in the light.

We didn’t find any large crystals. This area has been well picked over. The US Fish & Wildlife Service has banned use of any tools or digging for collecting, so we can only pick up the leftovers on the surface. It’s very mesmerizing to hike around on the hill, eyes glued to the ground, looking for the sparkle that will yield up a treasure!

A Painted Lady Butterfly

We’ve had a weeklong hatch of thousands of Painted Lady Butterflies! Imagine walking or riding along the road and hordes of butterflies flutter around and past you, more like a flurry of orange, black and white. Thank goodness the roads are rough so that we never ride fast enough for them to splatter! Mavrik loves chasing them and their shadows.

Cactus flower eye candy!

Twelve Mile Well

Besides the natural and enhaced water ‘tanks’ scattered around the Refuge, US Fish & Wildlife has drilled several water wells, equipped with working windmills to pump water into the nearby concrete basins for wildlife to utilize. We also utilized the water, scooping out buckets full to water the dog, wash up and resupply our solar shower. This windmill is just shy of 1/2 mile from our campsite.

'Welcoming' Saguaro

We named this the “Welcoming Saguaro” because of the outstretched arms as well as the fact that it’s located near the entrance to the former campground. This area was definitely an established campground at one time by evidence of roads, curbs, concrete pads (for I expect picnic tables and lantern posts) and a dump station that is thoroughly sealed off. We did an online search for information or pictures of the old campground but all we could find was a Congressional Report from 1974 that proposed converting part of the Kofa Wildlife Refuge into Wilderness Area. Or maybe it just got too expensive for US Fish & Wildlife to maintain!

Nurse Tree

This saguaro outgrew it’s nurse tree, but it appears to still be hugged by it!

We had a great surprise a few days ago. We had just started on our morning walk and looked up at Crystal Hill to see 3 Bighorn sheep looking down at us! An unusual treat since they are supposed to be elusive and shy.

They watched us for a few minutes then one by one turned and headed down the backside of the hill out of sight.

The view the sheep might have had of us (the tiny dot of white at the lower right).

Today we start our second week of camping at the base of Crystal Hill in Kofa National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona. Check out the fabulous new feature at the top of the right hand column – a map titled “Where are Robert and Mary Jo now?”, showing exactly where we are! Thanks to our “all things computer” guru, JC Burns, you can click on the map to open the interactive google map which you can navigate around in, zooming in or out, to see our whereabouts!

A view of Crystal Hill from about one mile away. We're camped at the base of the mountain and to the left.