A worn and hungry band of Spanish explorers camped at Johnson Wash, six miles to the east, on October 21, 1776, where Fathers Dominguez and Escalante called the place Santa Barbara. They found no water for horses or men and were subsisting on meager supplies of pinion nuts and prickly-pear cakes obtained in trade from the local Paiutes. After earlier nights without water and with only minimal nourishment, Lorenzo de Olivares was nearly mad with thirst after eating too many salty cactus cakes and disappeared that evening stumbling up the wash. After worrying about him all night, the padres found him the next morning at small pools near the base of the red Shinarump Cliffs to the north. The Arizona Strip confronted the expedition with some of its most brutal difficulties as, without native guides, they wandered first southeasterly and then north through a hard and rutted land searching for the Ute crossing of the Colorado River. Dominguez and Escalante returned to Santa Fe in January, 1777 after exploring much of what is now the Four Corners region but failing to open a land route to Spanish settlements at Monterey.