Crossing the Gila, or Plan B When Part of the Sonoran Desert National Monument is Closed

November 28, 2017; Don, Bob & Suzanne
We set out early to follow the old Butterfield Stage Line road in Sonoran Desert National Monument only to find the roads closed to all the places we wanted to visit due to damage by careless off-road idiots. So we changed to plan B, whilch you will see in photos below.

1 Arriving at West Maricopa Road (238) and BLM 8002 we find these sign. That's not what we expected according to the BLM map on the web. Ugh! Bob's Picture	2 But turn around and look at the sunset..............Bob's Picture	3	4 Bob's Picture
5 Bob's Picture	6	7	8
9 Bob's Picture	10 Now look back the other way	11 Wo we're on to find some other things - like an area marked "Ruins" on the other side of the Gila River to our southwest. But we pass a solar "farm" none of us had seen before.	12 Parabolic trough concentrators as far as the eye can see.
13 On to Painted Rock Petroglyph Site managed by the BLM>	14	15	16
17	18 Be prepared for lots of "rock art"	19	20
21	22	23 Bob's Picture	24 Bob's Picture
25 Bob looking down from the top of the little hill. Bob's Picture	26	27	28
29	30 A metate where native Americans ground their grain.	31	32
33	34 Now on to find a way across the Gila River. We had stopped to talk to an old rancher who warned us not to drive into the river as we would surely get stuck in the sand. We took that as a challenge.	35 The Painted Rock Dam on the Gila River, an earthen dam that was holding back nothing at the time of our visit (we had had months of zero rain).