Back in Bisbee

 Best climate?? Not on the day we arrived! Yesterday in Bisbee (southeastern Arizona) the temp was 47; it was raining and the wind was gale force. Bisbee's motto is "We're at 6000 feet - far away from reality." We had called ahead from Roper Lake State Park, two hours to the north, and Martha, manager at Queen Mine RV Park, said she'd save us a site. There are only 25 spaces that form a circle in a parking lot at the top of the Bisbee Open Pit Mine.

Queen Mine, which operated until 1975, is right next door. This morning we took the tour. We donned hard hats, rain slickers and lights, climbed aboard a rail trolley with about 25 other people, and got to see the inside of a mountain.



 Bisbee is an old mining town with most of its houses perched haphazardly on colorful hills and most of its downtown buildings as old as 1905. It has evolved into a funky artsy community where one can shop in antique stores and art galleries, and find prickly pear balsamic vinegar along with handmade soap that smells like dirt.

Today the sun was out, but the wind still feels mighty cold for the southwest.

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

South of Ajo, Arizona, four miles north of Sonoyta, Mexico, we found these 516 square miles of Sonoran Desert. Organ Pipe National Monument - A Biosphere Reserve. The rangers like to say this is the "heart of the Sonoran Desert." It must be. We camped smack dab in the middle of thousands of saguaros, chollas, prickly pear and organ pipe cacti, along with creosote bushes and ocotillos just coming into bloom.

Because two rainy seasons occur here each year, summer and winter, the park is lush with desert vegetation.

We liked it so much we stayed one night too long. That is, we got up this morning to leave and the Pickle's battery was DEAD! Michael has always said three nights without power is our limit, but the evening before last we had driven the 4 miles south to Lukeville, AZ (border crossing to Sonoyta, Mexico) and left the engine running for a good 15 minutes while shopping in the convenience store (did it really take that long to decide between Bud Light and Corona, Michael?) We feared it wasn't long enough to give us another night, and yep, we were right. (Schultz claims that if he had remembered to disconnect the connector between the house battery and the engine battery before trying to start the engine this morning, the engine battery wouldn't have drained into the house battery. Yeah??)

Camper neighbors are friendly, especially at Organ Pipe. The '69 VW bus from New Jersey had a jumper cable and our next door solar powered Montana neighbor had a diesel truck. Together the Pickle came to life!!

Highlights of our stay at the park included a 5-mile desert hike to the remains of an old silver mine, a Honda ride on a gravelly road through a dense  population of saguaro giants, two evening talks with Ranger Stalker in the campground's outdoor amphitheater (of course, one talk was "Star Stories") and sitting at the top of the Desert View trail at sunset while FaceTiming with granddaughter Lillian. She received a cactus identification lesson from Grandpa as well as a view of Mexico.

Ocotillo coming into bloom

 

 Oh, and did I mention it was warm?



Cholla cactus

Organ Pipe cactus



Cloudless in Patagonia

View from our "living room"

 We're on our 10th day here at Patagonia Lake State Park in southern Arizona, and, seriously, today is the first day we've seen a cloud.  There's one sitting right now over the hills to the south. 75ish has been the daily high - shorts and flipflops - and what keeps that temperature from getting monotonous, is that each evening, as soon as the sun begins to drop into setting position over the hills across the lake, the temperature drops, too.  So much so that jeans and sweaters become necessary.



On the Birding Trail

And then we turn our chairs facing west to watch the sunset, usually rather unspectacular, since there are no clouds to catch the shades of orange and red.

This is how we spend these monotonous days: hiking on the birding trail most mornings, and reading away the afternoons.

Nina swims!

Quite a life we're enjoying right now.





Rainy Night in NM

Drops of rain on windshield
Downtown El Paso

 Saturday, January 31st, we drove and drove, across Interstate 10, up and over the Davis Mountains in southwestern Texas,  after spending a rainy night at Davis Mountain State Park near Fort Davis, Texas. We drove through shrubby desert no-man's," Loose Livestock" - type land with a few buttes here and there.
 We finally got off the interstate at Ft. Hancock, southeast of El Paso. We needed gas. Ft. Hancock is a tiny border town with some irrigated flatlands surrounding it. Michael noticed that old Hwy. 20 parallels Interstate 10 from that point into El Paso. So we took it all the way.  We drove a flat road past groves of pecan trees and newly planted fields. And that is how it came to be that the Pickle did downtown El Paso, stoplight by stoplight, through the southeastern new outskirts of El Paso, through an old section of the city (so many auto dealers -- it makes the mind reel!!) right through downtown, stoplights, go lights, checking my phone's map, crossing the New Mexico line, out of town south and west, and finally to Hwy. 9.
  Hwy. 9 runs east-west and hugs the Mexican border. We drove it some 50 miles to the little town of Columbus, NM,  home of Pancho Villa State Park.

 By now we had a rainy day on our hands. It continued to rain throughout the night. Our experience with New Mexican state parks, at least in the southern half of the state, is that they have little natural splendor going for them to begin with. A scrubby rocky campground in the rain is even less of a thing of beauty. So we weren't sad to pick up in the morning to head west into Arizona, hopefully to some sunshine.
                        History Lesson
 We couldn't leave the park, though, without visiting the Visitor's Center. It tells the story of Pancho Villa's raid on the little town of Columbus on March 9, 1916. The raid lasted just a few hours in the early morning before the U.S. 13th Cavalry stationed there used machine guns and rifles to catch Villa's men in a crossfire and turn them back to the south. Death toll: 70-75 raiders, 10 American civilians, and 8 U.S. soldiers. President Wilson then ordered General Pershing with 1000 cavalry troops to the area. They set up camp at Columbus and pushed into Mexico in a hunt for Pancho Villa. Pershing at this time chose to use transport trucks instead of mules to carry supplies into Mexico. He himself rode in the backseat of a Dodge Brothers car. It was the beginning of the end of the U.S. Cavalry.( I couldn't help but think about my dad who was stationed with the Cavalry - the last of the Cavalry - in Arizona- before he was sent with the infantry to Europe at the beginning of the U.S. involvement in WWII.)