2006/02 Southwest USA trip (NM-AZ) - Round Mountain |
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This time we took the “safe” advertised route for larger vehicles, just to see some different scenery. We passed through dry ranching country, sometime with great eroded cliffs along the streams and rivers. We came to the gigantic Santa Rita open pit mine, one of the oldest mines in the country, and still producing high quality copper, as well as gold and silver.
Back in Silver City we realized that we had enough time to get all the way to our next destination at Round Mountain, another of Sandie’s rock collecting areas. We drove to Lordsburg where there is a truck stop with water and a dump station as well as gasoline. Lordsburg might be a pleasant city, but we drove in along a major road that had been bypassed when Interstate 10 was built, so all we saw was derelict petrol stations, restaurants, campgrounds, and businesses, before we found the truck stop, the “Love Travel Plaza”.
From there we had a thirty-mile drive on the Safford road towards the Arizona border, and then we took off on gravel across the Lazy B Ranch towards the Round Mountain rockhound area. It seemed that this was BLM land (Bureau of Land Management). Ranchers rent grazing rights on this land from the government. The BLM’s emphasis, though, is on multiple use (ranching, hunting, camping, and mining), so we could go onto the land too and do our mining amongst the cows.
The road steadily deteriorated until we got to the collecting area in the dark. This is flat desert country with just the occasional yucca, creosote bush, and mesquite bush, and mountains on the horizon. We just pulled off into the desert and camped for the night, with no one within miles and no lights in any direction. We thought we were probably in Arizona, though we hadn’t seen any signs indicating the border. The air was crystal clear and the sky was blazing with stars. I picked up a few rocks and they looked to be an interesting combination of chalcedony and agate. We would find out more in the morning.
Thursday February 2nd
We had a very windy night but luckily this desert is mainly rocks, not sand, so there was no sandstorm. Many of the roads in New Mexico carry warnings of zero visibility in sandstorms, telling drivers not to stop on the roadway if that happens. I guess the advice is “If you can’t see, head for the desert!”
A quick check in the morning showed that we were in the middle of a field of volcanic rocks with blobs of chalcedony 
everywhere. This rock is pearl-coloured with a waxy appearance, rather like melted candle wax but really hard. The top prize at this site, though, is chalcedony with red or brown patches, commonly called “fire agate”, so that’s what we were mainly looking for. The pictures below show a nicely sculpted piece of chalcedony on the left and a rather nice agate on the right.
We had a successful session in the morning, filling two containers with good rock. We were considering staying put at that site, but then a rancher’s pickup truck drove along our road. This disturbed our solitude, so we moved a few miles to another road with less traffic. Most of the road’s gravel was long gone, but the bad road obviously kept most other collectors away, as there was plenty of fire agate around our new spot, shown in the landscape 
picture. Sandie combed the area around the camper while I walked up a nearby arroyo (stream bed), sorting through the piles of rock brought down by floodwaters. She found the prettiest rocks and I found some of the biggest, including a few ball-sized agates.
By mid-afternoon it was in the seventies, a great day for sun tanning, but rockhounds only tan the backs of their necks.
Friday February 3rd
Our plan for the day was to head towards the Tucson area of Arizona and to Saguaro national park. But, as it was a beautiful morning, we first took a short walk along the road to see where it led (a cattle trough) and then the walk turned into another rock collecting session so it was quite a while before we were away. Then we met Larry from Ontario who was driving into the area we’d just left. We had an hour of swapping stories and looking at each other’s rocks and talking about some great places to visit. Then we met a couple of guys from Ohio who complained that they’d been told by their wives to limit themselves to collecting just one bucket of rocks. By the time we made it back to the highway our plan was shot and there was no way we were going to make it to Saguaro and Tucson.
So, we replanned, if that’s the right word. There is a national monument and a campground in the Chiricahua Mountains and that seemed a reasonable spot to head for, about halfway to Tucson.