Wandering Adverturers See Arizona

The Wandering Adventurers #3 - Arizona, Utah and Texas February 2011
January 28-February 3
We took off bright and early and after 12 hours we got to Chico in time to take Jake and the kids out for dinner. Visits with Jake, Jaiden and Jordan on Saturday and then down to San Jose and Santa Cruz for quick visits with Bryan and Doug and their families on Sunday. Monday was on to Mom’s in San Clemente. After lots of driving, we stayed at Mom’s until Friday with a visit up to Norm’s Mom’s for lunch with family, a day working in Mom’s garden, and dinner at the pier.
February 4
Off we go into the wild blue yonder! For the next four months we will be exploring Arizona and Utah with a week down at Big Bend National Park in Texas. The last two weeks in March we are flying to Hawaii for a week on the Big Island and a week on Maui. What lucky ducks!!! We will finish up with a few days in Yosemite in June before heading home.
It’s my birthday! Lucky m, we had a long day of driving ahead of us but decided to take a detour to Penasquitos in San Diego where Christy and I both lived when our kids were young. Wow, has the area grown. We took a four lane parkway over from the coast. In our day it was a dirt road that we would take as a short cut to get to the beach. Without Maggie, the GPS, we probably couldn’t have found our homes. It was nice to see that both neighborhoods looked great. We made it to Yuma by lunch time for a stop at the grocery store to load up and get a hot dog for my birthday lunch. YUM! Everything took longer than we thought and we ended up looking for a place to camp in a small town after dark. We found out why we couldn’t find the trailer park we were looking for after calling and finding out that they didn’t have any lights on. We ended up stopping at a RV park next to a gas station and truck stop! Wondering what we had gotten ourselves into, we were pleasantly surprised with clean fully equipped bathrooms. Trucks and trains roared past us all night but bed with my new sheets felt good and we were refreshed in the morning. A different birthday but I loved it. After much planning, we were on our new adventure!!! It was nice that my girlfriends had given me a great party before I left! We celebrated Mom’s, Norm’s, and my birthday at Mom’s.
February 5
Our first REAL stop was Organ Pipes National Monument in the Sonoran Desert near the Mexican Border in time for lunch. We have 25 feet tall saguaro cactus and palo verde trees right in our campsite. The campground is only about 20% full and nice and quite. We are soooo happy to be in the sun! We each took time to organize our stuff before going over to the visitor center. We learned that in the U.S., this is the farthest north the large organ pipe cactus is found. In 1976, the United Nations designated the monument as an International Biosphere Reserve. The visitor center had a film and a nice trail to introduce us to the desert and its plants. After a gorgeous sunset and lots of picture taking we went to a ranger talk on the stars. So many stars! We were reminded that for thousands of years people have been gazing at the same stars in wonder. Dinner was a little late; we miss calculated a chicken and rice recipe. Instead of white rice and 45 minutes in the oven, we used brown rice and it took 90 minutes in the oven. Oh well, a little wine and some veggies held us over. We quickly got into our routine of playing cards after dinner.
February 6
We hiked 4.5 miles today! We walked up to Victoria Mine with an old miners cabin going up and down hills and crossing several dry washes. The Sonoyta Mountains were one of the only areas in the park that is rich in minerals. The desert landscape is both lovely and interesting. The 30 foot tall saguaro cactus lives for up to 200 hundred years, has beautiful red blooms, and can store 8 gallons of water per foot after a rain storm. We saw some of the ocotillo cactus in bloom with bright red flowers at its tips.
Relaxing the afternoon away was wonderful.
February 7
We took the 2 mile hike up the beautiful Alamo Canyon at the base of the Ajo Mountains to a ranching site. It was a little higher elevation and much more lush and green. The saguaro, organ pipe and other cacti looked really green and healthy. The tiny old ranch house is the second one built there. The first was adobe and this one was brick. There was a well and corral also. We couldn’t imagine that cattle could thrive on the desert plants. Later we heard that the ranches in this area were established at the turn of the century and they brought in the very invasive bull grass for grazing. When the ranchers closed up business in the 1970’s there were thousands of cattle in the valley. Two volunteers are constantly battling the bull grass today.
After lunch we took a 3 hour free guided van trip up Ajo Mountain Dr for the scenic loop. We had a ranger and a volunteer along to educate us on the desert plants and geology. There were only 10 of us along for the tour and between the two guides we learned so much. We can now identify much of the flora, find pack rat nests, and see where and what animals have been eating the cacti. The resourceful Tohono O’odham native people built dams to trap water from the torrential summer rains so they could farm, used the plants for food and medicine, and hunted mountain sheep and deer. I love this kind of stuff! It was nice to have them do the driving since it was a curvy gravel road.
February 8
This morning we took the 2 mile Desert View Trail stopping at the informative trail signs along the way. By now we could identify most of the plants. The views at the top looked over the valley to Mexico with the Ajo and Sonoyta Mountains at it’s edges. Then we took the 10 mile gravel North Puerto Blanco Drive taking our time to enjoy the scenery. I have started making a list of desert plants and birds that we are identifying.
This area is definitely not the barren, brown and boring desert! It is wonderful to have it protected. As a protected area, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument allows the Sonoran Desert life to flourish. I like this quote from President Lynden Johnson:
“If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them something more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through it.”

Tomorrow we head for Tucson and a RV Park. We spent time in the afternoon getting up to speed on all there is to explore in that area for the next 12 days. in that area.