Day 20 : Bouse, AZ

We were up and on the road at about 6:15 with about 12 miles to go to get to Bouse. We wanted to get there in time for lunch, and still have some more time to walk in the afternoon. Nothing much about the walk, it was still cool. We arrived in Bouse about 11:00. We didn't know what was there. I saw a building that said Auto Repair, but it also said " Eggs for Sale and other supplies" so I headed over to see if they had any sodas. There were two open doors. I yelled in, but no one responded. So, we just headed out towards Bouse. We had only gone a hundred yards or so when a man came running up the road hollering for us. He asked me what was I doing in his garage and I told him I wasn't in his garage that I thought he sold grocery supplies but when I looked in I saw it was just cars.

So then he said "We can do this the hard way or the easy way, but I am going to find out what ya'll were doing in my garage". So having just walked 12 miles, we selected the easy way because the hard way didn't sound like it was going to be a lot of fun. Then he said he wanted to search all our bags to make sure we didn't steal anything. I told him he wasn't going to do that, but if he wanted to search us he would have to call the police and we would wait for them to settle it. I told he we were going to wait in the shade while he called,but he never did. He continued to insist that we had taken something from his garage though. I told him to call the police, but he said he didn't want to do that he just wanted to see what was in our pockets. We finally convinced him we had nothing of his, and he turned and left.

We walked on up to the General Store and Laundromat to rest and we inquired about a place to eat. The woman in the laundromat said the only place to get a sandwich was a bar up the road called The Occidental. We walked up and sat down to order, I ordered a hot dog plain (nothing was offered on top) and a salad with ranch. The only thing good I can say about the food was, it had calories.

We wandered back down to another General Store and met a really nice woman who had moved there from Montana. I inquired as to why people lived in Bouse. She said a lot of people retired there because it was close to L.A., the Grand Canyon and other places. She said Bouse was the training grounds during the second World War for General George Patton's tank crews. She said they have a lot of mesquite trees there, and they are valuable for both the wood (used in BBQ's) and the beans (which they use for making flour). There is also a lot of minerals out there, so there is a lot of mining and they are getting ready to re-open a large Gold Mine.

We hung around town and rested for awhile longer, then headed back out on the road. We walked another 8 miles and then slipped under a fence to find another campsite. Soon we had our tents up and were ready to settle down for the night. But peace and quiet was short lived. It seemed that about every 18 wheeler in Arizona passed up and down the road next to where we were camping that night. It was so loud and made it very hard to get to sleep.