Jan 27-28 Anza-Borrego to Organ Pipe

Wednesday, January 27

Last night's camp site at Blair Valley

Woke to 27 degrees this morning!  Last night was beautifully clear, with many stars and a nearby owl serenade. Brrrr… up early  to see the sun rise, and then drove down through the park and back a sandy, single-lane road to the trailhead for Pictograph Trail and Smuggler’s Canyon.   Had some cereal and banana for fortification and then hit the trail.  We are the only folks here this morning – the way we like it! Cool, but wonderfully clear and fresh!  I told Greg it is like looking at things in HD!

The trail is a mix of sand and rock and has quite a mix of vegetation, most already familiar – cholla, barrel cactus and others including this interesting bush with vibrant red berries. 

  We reach the big rock with pictographs 

and continue on to Smuggler’s Canyon.  The trail first climbs, then drops into the canyon.  Here there are juniper, oaks and some agave.  There are quite a few chipmunk-type rodents playing in the rocky hillsides.

spent pods of a century plant 

No water down there now, but wait for the monsoons

The canyon is very beautiful and ends with a steep dropoff to a “dry waterfall”. 

  Flash floods are very common here and one can imagine the water gushing down the now-dry wash and dropping to the valley below.  It is easy to see the path the water will take/has taken.

We hike back to the Trek and continue south on Hwy 78.  This was the first road into Southern California and one of the only all-weather routes.  We stop at Box Canyon overlook, which is above the trail used by the Butterfield Stage Coach, the short-lived Pony Express, and a large Mormon contingent. 

We talk with a couple here who are from Washington State.  They spend a month every year either here or in Florida and they rent an apartment rather than camp.

Next stop is Vallecito Stage Station,  a county park/rv park which features a reproduction of the original Butterfield Stage Station located here.  

It was first used as an Army Supply Station and then became a stop on the “JackAss” mail route between San Antonio and San Diego, and between 1858-61 the Butterfield Stage Coach Route which ran from Tipton Missouri to  San Francisco in 25 days.

We connect to 8E, a major highway which roughly parallels the US/Mexico border for quite a while.  We begin to see irrigation and crops near the city of El Centro which has about 45,000 people.  It is the largest US City completely below sea level -39’ according to one article. Someone tells us later that it is the "lettuce capital of the US" and that is what these folks are harvesting.

We pass the first of several huge expanses of solar panels near the town of Seeley. We have seen several wind farms too.

Just west of Yuma, AZ we stop briefly at Imperial Sands Recreation Area at the southern part of 25-30 mile long dune area. Folks having fun with dune buggies and such.

We stop for the day at Mittry Lake Wildlife Area which is northeast of the town of Yuma.  We pass many fields where workers are harvesting cabbage, lettuce and other crops. This tiny chapel among the fields urges folks to Pause, Rest, and  Worship. 

 

The lake is a welcome change from desert, and we see quite a few ducks and this big bird which someone says is an osprey.

  Pork and sauerkraut with potatoes for dinner.

The Lake is rather isolated, but we find three other campers there.  They are snowbirds from Wisconsin and Montana and a single man from San Diego.  Friendly, interesting folks and we all meet down on the dock for a gorgeous sunset.

 Bill, from Wisconsin sports these tags, which seem to reflect the attitude of many of the campers we have met. Several sweet dogs, as well.

Thursday, January 28

46 degrees this morning at  8:00.   We go for a quick walk and then head out, past the Arizona Proving Grounds with tanks, helicopters, missels, etc on display.  Back to Highway 8 and more cultivated fields.  

We have also seen many date palms and we stop at Dateland to try a “world famous” date shake.  It is pretty tasty, very sweet, with lots of tiny pieces of date.  They advertise a lot and at www.dateland.com you  can even buy your own date palms. The parking lot features cars from Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchawan, Michigan, Ohio and more.

Another even larger solar farm near Painted Rock.

At Gila Bend, we turn south towards the towns of Ajo and Why.  We get gas at Ajo and walk around their very pretty town center which is Spanish style. 

This lovely Catholic Church was built in 1925.

Since the nearby copper mine closed in the 1980's, the town has become a haven for artists, writers and other free spirits.  Here a young lady is adding to some colorful murals.

A lady at the Visitor’s Center is very pleasant, and points us in the direction of a now-closed large pit copper mine.  There we talk to Bill Hightower at a small Visitor Center.  He worked the mine for 32 years and is happy to answer questions and show us some of the photos and displays.You can't tell from the photo, but the mine removed three small mountains and in all it is 1 1/2 miles wide by 1 1/4 miles across, and the water is up to 90' deep!

Ajo was a real company town, with the Phelps Dodge Company owning 1400 buildings including residences for workers, stores, schools, hospitals, etc.   Bill says it was a very discriminatory arrangement with the Mexicans living in one area, the whites in another, and Indians in a third.  The owners would not hire blacks.  Most of the white workers were mid-westerners fleeing the Dust Bowl, en route to California.

This coyote was crossing a vacant lot as we left the mine.

We continued south to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.  We have been seeing more and more saguaro cacti, lots of mesquite and other brush. The saguaros don't even begin to get "arms" till around the age of 65, so these are some very old cacti!   Most of the saguaros have a "nurse tree" of mesquite, palo verde (shown here) or others.

 The nurse protects the tiny cactus from sunburn and trampling and also helps feed it by freeing up nitrogen by its roots.  Unfortunately,  if the saguaro thrives, it is to the detriment of the nurse which will eventually die. I know there should be a literary analogy here but can't think of it!

We head first to the Visitor’s Center, of course. 

Kris Eggers Memorial with an Organ Pipe Cactus

Watch a 15 minute film and talk with some rangers there who make a few suggestions as to trails and things to do.  The Monument was created in 1937.  Mining and Ranching took a toll on the area, but it is recovering nicely.  It is home to bighorn sheep, deer, javelina, bobcat, an endangered pronghorn and a myriad of reptiles including the Gila Monster, desert tortoise and various snakes.  Kathy, you'll be happy to know that most of creepy crawlies, like scorpions, snakes, tarantulas, are not active during this “cooler” weather.  The high was mid-70s today and low tonight will be about 45.

Summertime temperatures reach 118 or more regularly.

 The Visitor Center is named for Kris Eggle, a ranger who was killed by a drug cartel in the desert in 2002.   The Monument contains 312,618 acres of wilderness and shares 30 miles of border with Mexico.  They recommend staying to known trails. While admitting there can be some illegal activity, those doing illegal things really don’t want to be seen, so it is extremely unlikely that there would be any contact.

It is late afternoon, so we walk a small trail, which includes this pond for the endangered pup-fish,

then decide to find a campsite and try their solar showers. The showers are not very warm, but adequate.  The controls are push-button and give you one minute at a time to encourage water conservation.

There are many pack rats in the area, and they are notorious for getting into cars/trucks and eating hoses or other soft stuff, so they recommend keeping your hood open at night for light, as they prefer to do their damage in the dark.

Hood opened later

Met a fellow-roadtreker, Mary Z. from Oregon who we have seen on Roadtrek’s Facebook page.  She has Verizon phone service and is having no problem getting phone and internet.  We have AT&T and are not so fortunate.  Phone in some areas but no internet.

We have tacos for dinner and then walk to an amphitheater for “Stories Under the Stars”.   A ranger named Sardius Stalker is the speaker.  He tells stories about how different constellations got their names, based  mainly on Greek legends or Indian lore.  Very entertaining.  He also gives a pitch for using lights which cast light only downward to help maintain dark skies.  Only about 1/3 of US residents have seen the milky way, he says, because of light pollution.  Tonight is clear here and the milky way quite visible.