With the starter problem on Lou and Val’s pickup truck resolved we decided to give the Florence to Kelvin Road a second try.  Bonnie was pulling out today so we said our goodbyes before we left for the day.  We took a different route than yesterday, heading west on I-10, which runs more north-south at this point, and then heading due east to Florence on AZ-387.  It still took 45 minutes, but the scenery was more interesting than the route we took yesterday through Eloy.

As we approached Coolidge we saw the signs for the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument and decided to stop.  It was getting to be lunch time so we spread our items out on a picnic table under one of the Ramadas and enjoyed our meal in the shade.  A park employee wandered by checking the area for rattlesnakes and we ended up having a nice chat with him about the Monument and the local area.

After lunch we gained admission to the grounds using Val’s Senior Access Pass.  We spent a few minutes in the Visitors Center and then went outside to see the ruins.  It was a small but interesting site that is still being actively examined and preserved.  We learned that it was the second driest national monument in the country; only Death Valley NM was drier.

We finished the trip to Florence and started looking for the road to Kelvin.  Even though we had a GPS and knew approximately where we were headed it took us two tries to find the road.  We were glad we did.  The Florence-Kelvin Road is gravel for most of its length and runs through some amazing country that is, indeed, very scenic.  It was a good road in most places but had some washboarding, pot holes, and small boulders.  Along the way we did our best to photograph what we saw.  We also rescued a Desert Tortoise by removing it from the road in a construction area and putting it in the brush just off the road.  Hopefully it continued on into the desert instead of back into the road.

Kelvin is a dot on the map with a huge strip mining operation.  We eventually wound our way out of the high country, past the mine, and back to Florence.  From there we headed west towards Casa Grande and a Chinese restaurant that Linda had found through a Google Search.  Before we got to the Chinese restaurant we saw a Golden Corral restaurant and decided to go there instead.  We ate at one in Yuma back in December so we knew they had things we could eat.  It was dark by the time we got back to our rigs but Curtis was still up and we visited until we were all tired and turned in for the night.

Following is an image gallery of some of the photographs I took today along the Florence to Kelvin Road.

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