Ok, I will fill you in. Two years ago Rick T. and I set off to do a little geocaching. Rick tried to use his car and did not get far and came back to camp to ask me if I could try in my 2WD Xterra. we traveled west on FSR 229 and ran into a patch of road that we needed to get off the road in between trees to get through. Later we came upon a area were the road was crossed by a stream that had all the soil washed away and only large rocks remained. After we rounded the T-Bar Ranch house the road was smooth and very easy to drive on. After we found the cache we continued on this road and using the Forest Service map I had we made our way back to the lake Mary Rd then back to camp. Having lived up here during collage I have driven on many Forest Service roads in a short wheel base (Datsun pickup) that many others could not access. Rick will agree that it was VERY bumpy so much so that it popped the hinges on my eyepiece case. That is why I advised Peter to add this comment on the website.
"If you have a Garmin GPS receiver you can click here to download a Five Mile Meadow Site Garmin (.gdb) database file <http://www.saguaroastro.org/content/gps_files/5MM%20Route.gdb> which you can open in MapSource and then send to your GPS unit. This will allow you to invoke your receiver's GoTo functionality to calculate a route to the all of the observing sites we frequent, complete with turn-by-turn directions. Note: please use the route contained in this file instead of the route your GPS unit may calculate. The former is the preferred route; the latter may have you exit at Stoneman Lake Road, which would make for a /very/ rough journey."
The road to the Stoneman lodge is fine just the road from our camp to the T-Bar Ranch house is not advised unless you have high clearance and know where your wheels are.
Andrew
