The last day of January and it's only going to get warmer - we hope. But, the forecast shows a little different. Its supposed to be cold the middle to end of this week, so its its a great day to do some more tourist type stuff.
While researching things to do around Bouse, Arizona we found a couple of interesting nearby sites to check out. We should probably do a better job of finding these sites ahead of time as today requires driving through a few areas that we have already visited.
First stop was in the nearby Bouse townsite where along the highway is a series of markers commemorating the various military events that have occurred in the area, including Camp Bouse. Apparently during World War II there was a secret experiment with a device dubbed the "Gizmo". It was apparently a 13 million candlepower light attached to the top of a tank, to be used during night time battles to blind enemy soldiers during an attack. Its an interesting story. The site also has a couple of old tanks on display.
Next stop was southeast on highway 72 to visit the town of Hope, Arizona. There wasn't much interesting to be found in Hope, except for a couple of signs that should explain the reason for our visit.
From there we travelled northwest on Highway 60 again, past Brenda, and on to Quartzsite. There, in the northeast part of town stands the Great Tree of Arizona. It's not something that most people would associate with the desert in Arizona, but it was definitely worth checking out. It isn't the most imposing tree that we have ever seen, but given the fact that it has grown in the desert for so long is incredible. By counting the rings on a cut limb it was determined to be over 1,000 years old. When considering the amount of rain it receives each year, you can understand how slow it would grow.
Our last stop of the day was to visit a Geoglyph created by the Native Americans who lived in the area. It is located just a few hundred yards off of Plomosa Road in the mountains between Bouse and Quartzsite. Fortunately they have fenced off the area to keep people from driving or walking over the site, to preserve it into the future. The unfortunate part is that it is nearly impossible to get a decent picture of the design. A person really needs a drone or something similar to really get a full view of the design. We tried a to take a video with a cell phone on top of a selfie stick, but it didn't turn out as we had hoped. The area did have some interesting varieties of cactus.
All in all it was an interesting day, visiting some of the unique places of the area.
