Bird Spring & Inscription Canyon 
Our
first trip in 2004 was a long one day affair that found us
going up Highway 395 to the Monarch-Rand Mine turnoff on BLM
road EF411. The idea was to approach Inscription Canyon
from the west so that we could stop by Bird Spring, which we
have seen on the map many times but had never been to. From
EF411 we turned northeast on EF473 until we were due north
of Bird Spring. We then turned south in quest of the
canyon that would drop us to the spring. However, along
the way we came to a most interesting sight! Out here
in the middle of nowhere was a dirt bike buried to its hubs,
a metal replica of an American flag, and lots of little memorials
to deceased desert motorcycle riders! Everything was
neat and tidy and no vandalism was apparent. Even if
we never found the spring this was worth it!After
proceeding down the canyon a bit we encountered the elusive
Bird Spring. If there were any birds around they had
better be carrying ice picks with them 'cause the spring was
frozen solid. We got lots of nice close up pics of the
ice as well as the spring itself. Then it was back up
to EF473 and on to the east. Finally, we dropped south
again to Inscription Canyon. Inscription Canyon is a
small finger of a canyon that winds into an ancient lava flow
on the far western edge of Superior Valley. There is
a varied collection of ancient Indian petroglyphs, including
several that depict big horn sheep. We really enjoyed
walking along the base of the canyon and spotting the petroglyphs
up on the rocks. Bill Mann has several pages devoted to
this site in his book Bill
Mann's Guide to 50 Interesting and Mysterious Sites in the
Mojave Volume 1. This
is a great spot and several trips would be needed to do it
justice. However, we were burning daylight and needed
to find the northern entrance to Black Canyon so we could take
it south to eventually rejoin Highway 15.
Black
Canyon proved to be historic as well as scenic. We made
a side trip to an old opal mine called Scout's Cove. Here
the miners had dug into a tufa cap and created a snug little
cabin. The BLM, bless their hearts, were thinking of
our safety and had bulldozed the old opal mine entrance. However,
with a bit of patience, you can still pick through the material
covering the entrance and find some chips of nice orange opal. Time
pushed us back into the Jeep and we continued down Black Canyon. Although
we found the Black Canyon road to be in good shape, we have
heard that it often turns into a real sand trap. For
that reason, you might want to tackle it in a 4x4. We
made one more stop at another petroglyph site, and then exited
the canyon and meandered across Harper Dry Lake. I say
meandered because we had lost the road and it was getting
dark. Finally we just bushwhacked a trail toward where
we thought a road should be. In the process we came across
a nice skull, probably from a cow. It must have been
a lucky skull 'cause we found the road and got on the
highway. What a shock after the solitude of the
rest of the day! This turned out to be a really packed
day, probably two days would have been a better idea, but it
had been really cold in the high desert at night and we opted
for our own bed at the end of the trip.