Coyote Canyon

Our four-wheeling guide book indicated that Coyote Canyon trail had one section that was a real rock- climber so we were ready to meet that challenge.

But first John had the opportunity to be a Good Samaritan.  A man had tried to turn his van around on the plowed out, sand road and got his rear wheels stuck in a sand bank and not just stuck but dug in!!  Another man had stopped to try to help but they hadn’t gotten very far when we drove up.  The winch on our bumper got them both excited but it wasn’t going to help them as there was nothing on which to anchor.  After several minutes of contemplation, John asked if any one had a shovel.  The next thing we knew, two shovels appeared, the guys started digging while I gathered wood to put in front of the tires and voila!  The man was out of the sand and away with a grateful handshake.

 

Now on to our own adventure.  We continued on down the sandy road towards a steep hill that promised to be a bit of a challenge but the challenge never appeared.  It seems that this area received a severe storm earlier this year and there were a lot of wash outs down most of the canyons, this one included.  We found out later that the road had to be plowed and they moved the rocks at the same time.  So no challenging run today.

It was still a pretty drive into the valley, across a dry wash and then across two small creeks which our guide book said would have water up to our hub caps.  I guess once the storm passed there was no more rain to supply the creeks as we could have jumped over them.  We spotted two palm tree oasis in the valley. One set of palm trees was up in a canyon and appeared to be an easy hike but it was deceivingly hard so we gave up.  Then we tried to find the road to the other oasis we had seen but due to the size of the valley we were unable to find it once we left the canyon.  We enjoyed a nice ride through the brush and cacti then turned around to drive out of the valley.  That is when we spotted the larger oasis again.

Later this afternoon we loaded up our golf clubs and practiced hitting balls on the driving range.  It was pretty ugly.