26-Jan-2014 -- This would be an early morning dash in a clockwise loop around southern Arizona. My wife and I left before sunrise which was observed as we saw the first rays of light illuminate the tips of Baboquivari Peak and Kitt Peak. It was extremely cool to see the sunlight race down the mountains in front of us as the sun rose behind us.
We turned off Highway 86 here and went through an unmarked gate (Picture #8). We continued until a point about 200 meters from the confluence where I got out and hiked over very flat ground with a slight downhill slope to the west and crossed a small wash prior to reaching the actual zeropoint. There was an existing cairn (Picture #7) and that’s where I placed my Trimble GPS to collect data for post processing.
There was a lot of evidence that cows roam freely throughout this area. Cholla cactus and creosote bushes are very widely dispersed. The views north and south are very flat. South Mountain is prominent to the west and the South Comobabi Mountains are visible to the east.
TerraSync post processing of the GPS data reveals the actual confluence location was 3.7 meters northeast of the existing cairn with a horizontal precision of 2.0 meters.
Total round trip time off Highway 86 was 0:30 and 3.4 km and I spent 15 minutes collecting data at the confluence.
We continued our trip north along Indian Route 15 before returning back south along Interstate 10.