By Al Bossence
thebayfieldbunch.com
Under a clear sunny Sunday morning sky, my dog Pheebs and I rolled out the driveway with my iPod plugged into the Jeep’s sound system playing those wonderful harmonizing sounds of the Sons Of The Pioneers. Remember ‘Gunsmoke’ with James Arness years ago? Remember Festus? Well Festus, aka Ken Curtis was a member of the Sons Of The Pioneers and here he is singing, Tumbling Tumbleweeds. Who knew? It was a fitting morning for Cowboy songs as we cruised our way back on down towards Wickenburg again, here in Arizona. Not really intending to go into Wickenburg just yet we turned left off busy highway 93 onto Scenic Loop Road. and stirred us up some good old desert dust again.
Had it in the back of my mind to swing us around to Rincon Road then head south along the sandy gravel and rock strewn Hassayampa River bed to Box Canyon. Figured it had been long enough since recent rains for the river bed to be firmed up again and I almost figured right.
For anyone in the Wickenburg area this Box Canyon drive is a must but it’s best to come in a 4 wheel drive vehicle just in case. I’ve been to Box Canyon maybe 4 or 5 times now and have never had occasion to use 4 wheel drive but people have been known to get stuck in the sand here. Reaching the box canyon section I did notice a bit more water ahead than in previous drives but being careful to follow vehicle tracks ahead of me we were fine until I detected some soft wet sand under us.
The further one goes into the canyon the more it narrows and the narrower it gets means more driving through the shallow flowing river. We were about two thirds of the way into the canyon when I stopped at the point where the sheer rock cliffs on both sides begin to close in. I have driven through this narrower section several times before but this morning as I looked ahead at the water I figured I had better not push my luck and decided to turn around. Only problem was I really didn’t have enough room to turn around without driving into the shallow water flowing beside me and I knew by doing that turning of wheels back and forth I would greatly increase my chances of digging into the wet sand and becoming stuck. The watery sand at this point was already beginning to feel a little soft under my tires.
I’m a real darn good back upper so that is what I did. I simply retraced my tire tracks backwards criss-crossing the stream a couple times until I came to a wider dryer patch of solid gravely sand. A bit of wiggling back and forth and we were soon on our way back out of the canyon. Passed a couple big tire Jeeps heading the other way as we made our way back to Rincon Road.
Much of the Hassayampa River flows underground but where we were in Box Canyon, it seeps up and runs along the surface.
