Boonie Tooling

Our love of tooling around in the boonies started on our Baja California trips when our sons were just kids. We bought a '69 International Travel-all that served as our principal means of transportation to Mulege (the closest town) and the ideal way to see the rugged Baja penisula. We experienced a lot of adventures in that old truck, scraping and easing our way over boulder strewn roads and inching up mountains, always wondering what the next turn would reveal.

So it's no wonder that even if the old Travel-all is a pile of rusting metal in some Baja scrap heap that our interest in tooling around the desert wilderness is as strong as ever. Hence: the FJ Cruiser. While it in no way resembles the hardy International, it does have four wheel drive. And while we used to have to drive with the windows open to keep from cooking in the Baja heat while the dust about choked us out, we can keep our windows rolled up and enjoy the air conditioning or the heater and breathe with no dust up our nose.

This week, we loaded up the Cruiser with my sister, Glo and her husband, Al, and our slowly-beginning-to-like-to-travel puppy, Chuy and drove off to the wilderness. We were armed to the hilt with canvas rock collecting bags, Al packed a dandy rock hammer, bottles of water, sun screen and some chewy granola bars, as well as two way radios and cell phones. Travel had never been this thorough in the old Baja Days!

Bill chose a route just west of Superior on the old Silver King Mine road. It goes out past a calcium plant run by a Swiss company and then you enter nice Sonoran Desert. Saguaros and aloe and jojoba dot the landscape. The road was dirt but for the most part, well maintained and we ambled along at a decent speed. We passed the back side of the old Magma mine's slag heap where the water for the mining operation was stored. It would make a fine lake if it was filled up but Bill said it would probably be toxic enough to kill you if you fell in.

Soon we came to a stream bed and another road edged off into that. Too inviting to pass up, Bill turned off into that and we drove a short way up the creekbed. We stopped and got out and soon were scrutinizing the area for likely rocks. Some of the bigger pieces of quartz congomerate were just too appealing to pass up but their size forbid carrying them around. We ended up putting them directly into our return path so we could collect them on our return. We went about half a mile up the stream when Bill and Chuy returned to get the Cruiser and attempt to get up the streambed to pick up our rocks. They managed to get about halfway there and we lugged the bigger rocks back and loaded them into the trunk.

We were off for the second leg of our rock collecting trip. This time, after a short sojurn up the well-maintained road, Bill spotted the remains of an old mine halfway up one of the mountains. It was just too appealing to leave it alone. So he took a route that was rain rutted and boulder-y and proved a much slower pace than the previous road. We inched along, sliding over boulders and jouncing over rocks and holes. I was wearing a talking pedometer my son gave me for Christmas, and every once in a while it would announce, "You have walked three tenths of a mile" just from the jounciness of sitting in the backseat. What did it know?

Halfway up the mountain, we passed the first of an old mine shaft that had been concreted closed and I looked down alarmed to find what might have been a ditch next to the cliff had sloughed away into a six foot deep ravine. "Uh, Bill? Maybe we've gone far enough."

"We can't turn around here," he grunted, steering over an opposing hole.

I looked over at my sister, who is not at ease with heights and fally-away-roads. She was sitting on the hillside-side of the road. When I looked at her with my eyes wide, she said, "What? Did you see those perfect specimen of soapweed?"

"That aloe stuff?"

She nodded, immune to the six foot ravine on my side of the car. "The Indians used to make soap from it. And look at all these plants here."

"Goody," I mumbled.

At that junction, Bill stopped and had us disembark. "I'm going to try and turn around," he said.

I amused myself with taking one picture after another to record the tortuous twelve point turn he was inching around to get the truck headed downhill. Chuy amused himself by trying to tow me down the hill and back toward civilization. Gloria amused herself by admiring the soapwort or whatever it was called. Al amused himself by trying to point Bill in the best area for his next turn. There wasn't much to choose from.

At that point, the four of us heard a distinctive 'clunk'. Something had snapped under the Cruiser's running gear. Gloria fingered her cell phone. I looked at my shoes. I doubted they could bear up under the distance to get us back to Highway 60. Al picked up something hard and black and rubber-like that had just bounced off the undercarriage of the Cruiser.

Bill finished turning the car around and then crawled under it to see what the damage was. The three of us held our breath. "It's part of the sway bar. Looks like the bolt came out of the bracket."

"And... is that bad? Can we make it down?" I held my breath.

"Yeah, we can make it back down. We'll go easy. But we won't take any more side roads today. It's still on warranty. We'll have to go down and get it fixed."

Glo and I let out our breath and loaded back up. Chuy fell asleep in her arms, tired out from his desert adventure. The rocks we picked up rolled back and forth on our tortured trip back down the mountain. Not the most auspicious start of our boonie tooling adventures, but definitely not our last either. Stay tuned!