Subject: Arizona- Muleshoe Ranch
Date: Mar 19 02:46 ES 1996
From: Emily & Leonard Mandelbaum - 0004999429 at mcimail.com


Serge's request for info on Arizona reminded me to report on the week
we spent last spring (late March) at the Nature Conservancy's Muleshoe
Ranch - 30 miles on dirt road NW of Wilcox. It doesn't have the spectacular
scenery of the Grand Canyon, but it's remote and isolated and very
beautiful. The ranch has 5 housekeeping units and a primitive campground
(a field with pit toilet, well, fire rings). Theres a small museum,
common sitting room and deck overlooking Hot Springs Wash. Occupants
of the units can use the 2 "hot tubs" in a thicket near the Wash (metal
tubs fed by the hot springs). You must bring food - there's no store,
no restaurant, just a very few people and some horses. The main attraction
is the perennial streams with their vegetation and wildlife, and the
desert one quickly finds after leaving the streams. Cottonwoods and
sycamores are spectacular along some of the streams. There are a couple
wonderful trails (one loop mainly in desert), another that starts about
4 miles from the Ranch and follows one of the smaller streams. We
hiked 4 miles up a jeep road to camp at the beginning of that trail.
Wildflowers were magnificent - poppies, a white chicory, paintbrush,
mariposa lilies, large evening primroses. Cliffs and the more distant
Galiuro Mtns. lent a grand feeling to the scenery. On our 4 day camping
trip we did not see another human being. The delight of such a lonely
experience was symbolized by a cracker at our campsite - the type of
cracker Mt. Rainier rodents would die for. It was there when we hiked
in and was undisturbed 4 days later when we left. Many birds - can't
find the list right now. My favorite sighting was a white canyon tree
frog in a pool under a flowering tree. One can just wander along these
streams (check for rattlers tho - we never saw one). Phone is
602-586-7072. Officially it's the Muleshoe Ranch Cooperative Management
Area jointly owned and managed by the Conservancy and the USFS. Oh
elevation 4100.

Emily Mandelbaum.
Seattle, 0004999429 at mcimail.com