Superstition Mountain and the Lost Dutchman's Gold!

The last week and a half have been great.  We went to Apache Junction, AZ and stayed at the Lost Dutchman State Park.  The park is at the base of the incredible collapsed volcano, Superstition Mountain.  There is a lot of history surrounding the mountain, most of which I don't have time to tell about. : )

The most famous story is about the lost dutchman, Jacob Waltz.  He traveled up into the mountains and returned with GOLD!  It is said that he stashed the gold in different hiding places on the mountain and had a secret gold mine that he kept secret forever...or did he.  On his death bed it is said that he told two people where to find his stashes of gold and the mine.  After Jacob's death those two people searched two years for the gold but denied ever finding anything.  (mysterious music begins to play)  Years later three huge gold mines were found around the mountain that made over $2,000,000 in profit!  Keep in mind what that would be in today's dollars.  The mines drew in about 4,000 people and the town of Goldfield was started.  Even up in the 1990's people still lived in caves on the mountain searching for gold.  Many of them found it, lots of it.  One man found a saddle bag in the 80's that contained over  $500,000 worth of gold (that's about half the price he could get for the gold now)!

 

The state park is really nice.  It borders the Tonto National Forest which borders the Wilderness which covers the mountain.  Dad and I decided from the day we got there that we wanted to hike to the top of the mountain.  It's easier said than done.  The hike is six miles round trip and climbs about 3000 feet during the first half of the hike!  I actually should stop calling it a hike, it's more like bouldering.  The trail follows a gorge surrounded by thousand foot cliffs and is littered with boulders!  There are some places that are really tricky to get up.  We had a great time and the climb was definitely worth it.  The view was amazing!  The picture on the left is how the Pheonix valley looks from 4000 feet above it!

We also went to the Renaissance Festival while we were there.  Everyone got all dressed up, except me.  Hanna really enjoyed it because that's her favorite historical time period.  One of the coolest things was the jousting.  Gabriel was so excited!  We made him armor out of sheet metal and he was ready to take on any of those knights out there.  We ended up spending the whole day there.  There were a lot of neat things to look at, and listen to.  Some of the music was really cool.  The Renaissance Festival is definitely a mission field of it's own.  There were a lot of evil decorations and demonic looking people walking around.  If what we saw was how the middle ages really were, I wouldn't have wanted to live back then. 

We went to the Superstition Mountain Museum three times I think. : )  We never even actually went in the museum, they had so much to see outside.  The blacksmith there was really nice.  I talked to him all three times we went and he gave me some pointers on forging.  He showed me how to make little patch knives which can also be used as a paring knife or even a little skinning knife.  ( For those of you that don't shoot black powder guns.  A patch knife is a little knife used to cut away the extra cloth around a patch so that it can fit down the barrel between the powder and the ball.  For those of you that do shoot black powder.  I have a 50 caliber Hawken Rifle)

One afternoon Hanna and I decided to go for a hike.  We went the long and treacherous trail up to the Green Boulder. : )  It actually is green because of lichen, I think.  It was a fun hike.  We ended up going a different route than we first planned because we were moving along faster than we had planned!  We took Jacob's Crosscut across the valley and back to the campground instead of going back the way we came.

We also went to Goldfield which is now a living history type town.  We went through the museum and the reptile exhibit.  Gabriel loved the cactus shop because he said "I've never seen a cactus that close before"!

All in all, it was a great place to stay.  We got to do a lot of fun stuff while we were there and it's definitely somewhere I would like to go back!