Organ Pipe National Monument

Finally it was time to take a break from Buenos Aires. We filled Speedy's water tanks and headed west to Organ Pipe National Monument, located in the real Sonoran Desert. Organ Pipe NM is about 80 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, also along the Mexican border on the western side of the Tohono O'odham Nation Reservation, but over twice that distance by road. We went north to Three Points, a familiar trip by now, but turned west rather than east to Tucson. About 100 miles later we arrived in Why (yes, that is the town's name), Arizona. There's not much to Why, a couple of RV parks and a gas station. We were going to stop at Granny Mac's Restaurant, but it seemed to be out of business, so we parked and had lunch in Speedy instead.

From there it was another 20-odd miles south to Organ Pipe, via our third Border Patrol checkpoint of the day (as we were going south, we didn't have to stop). After a short stop in the Visitor Center, we drove to their very nice campground in the desert. All the sites are drive-through and paved. In National Park Service fashion, however, there are no water or electrical hook-ups but that is fine with Speedy. We parked in the no-generator area which turned out to be unnecessary since generator hours are 8-10 AM and 4-6 PM only, a rather enlightened stance in my opinion, and the campground was fairly empty.

It is a no reservation campground and the Organ Pipe website indicated that it hadn't been filled in over ten years. According to Craig and Evelyn (fellow BANWR volunteers), who have volunteered there, it used to fill up all the time until they closed the border and migrants started sneaking across the park (much like Buenos Aires). Up until that point, it was so popular that cars would queue every morning waiting for sites to be vacated (been there, done that, not fun).

By the time we got settled, it was late afternoon so we decided to hike the Desert View Trail, a short (mile and a half) trail out of the campground into the nearby hills for a great view over the desert. Organ Pipe is in the Sonoran Desert which is considered a "green" desert as it has an abundance of flora in comparison to other deserts, particularly cactus. There were lots of them on this walk. We also saw a lot of birds but not many species. I think we only saw about six species the entire time we were in the park. The most prevalent were Gila Woodpecker, Cactus Wren, Curved-billed Thrasher and Phainopepla. We also saw several Black-tailed Gnatcatcher, which we'd only seen for the first time a week ago during the Christmas Bird Count.

Of course, we saw cactus, lots and lots of cactus. Saguaro and Organ Pipe Cactus are the big guns, but we also saw Jumping, Teddy Bear, Buckhorn, Staghorn and Pencil Cholla, Fishhook Pincushion Cactus, Hedgehog Cactus, Prickly Pear Cactus and Barrel Cactus. The next day we took a ranger-led van tour of the park and learned more about cactus than we ever could have imagined. After two days we were ready to head back to BANWR via Ajo and Sells.

Because we had headed west, it didn't look likely that we would get to go grocery shopping in Tucson this week. We were down to peanut butter and debated about where to go, even considering heading back to the refuge by way of Tucson (60 miles out of our way). Ellen thought we might re-provision in Sells where there is a small supermarket but it has a very poor selection. We finally decided to go to Ajo, 10 miles out of our way, and a complete unknown. Ajo is an old mining town (the mines closed in the late 1980s) that is now home to winter "snow birds". We were pleasantly surprised to find an IGA with a reasonable selection. After shopping we stopped in the visitor center for Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. Cabeza is another refuge directly on the Mexican border. Unlike BANWR, much of the refuge is closed. Cabeza's focus is the endangered Sonoran pronghorn as well as bighorn sheep and the lesser long-nosed bats.

With groceries stowed, we finally headed back to BANWR. Of course, there was a Border Patrol checkpoint. We've never had any problems at the many checkpoints that we routinely pass through but this day the agent walked right up to our window. He leaned over and asked, "How about those Patriots?" Seems he saw our Massachusetts license plate and he was originally from Palmer. After chatting about home, weather and sports, we were off.

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