The Adventures of T&A

We went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.  We got there at 7:30 am for a bird walk with a docent (trained volunteer) and we stayed until about 5:30, when the security guard was locking the gate.  Wow!  This place is amazing!  We’ve had several people tell us we have to see this… and they were right!  This is a LIVING museum, much of it outdoors with all of the plants and animals of the Sonoran Desert.  They showed us the invisible fencing that keeps the animals in a natural habitat without bars.  They showed us how they use latex molds to create fake rocks (both for weight and to hide lighting and wiring).  They’ve even built an artificial cave so you can explore underground passages (Yes, the area has lots of caves).  They have an interpretive area explaining the rocks and minerals in the area.  They have an aviary filled with all kinds of birds and another aviary filled with just hummingbirds!  It seem that hummingbirds migrate through the area and pollinate the cactus when they bloom.  They have large animals; mountain lions, bears, wolves, coyotes, ocelots, bobcats.  They have small animals; reptiles and snakes, pack rats, kangaroo rats and a grasshopper mouse that is carnivorous and howls!  They have interpretive displays about how termites and ants benefit the desert.  They have prehistoric animal remains; sloths, dinosaurs, horses and other animals they’ve found fossils of in the area, showing that this dry desert was once a tropical environment.  Wow!  If you’re ever in the Tucson area, you MUST see this!  

We woke this morning to a bird serenade.  We just lazed around the camp and kind of took a day off.  We worked on the computers for a little while.  We’ve got an additional battery and inverters so we can run the computers while we’re on the road.

Around noon, we went into the city of Tucson to find a restaurant that was recommended to us called “El Charro”.  This place is a Tucson owned and operated restaurant since 1922.  We ordered a sampler platter to share and were stuffed!  They are famous for “carne seca” which is marinated beef, dried there on site in the hot desert sun, then dehydrated and cooked.  We saw the beef out back, drying high on a crane above the restaurant.  Racks and racks of it, in screened boxes, drying in the sun.  While we were downtown, we went to the Fourth Avenue Street Fair and walked around for about an hour or so.  We saw some cool stuff, but we can’t take it with us.  

We came back to the west district of Saguaro NP and did a short walk around some CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) buildings that were built from the local rock and fit right into the surroundings beautifully.  However, the locals had trashed them with graffiti.  We walked up to an area with petroglyphs, but a different tribe left markings different than some we’ve seen before.  

When we got back to camp, we had new neighbors that came over to chat.  Pam and Mark (and the little dog Ziggy) were admiring our truck setup.  They’re from Santa Fe, NM and heading for a week in Mexico.  They told us about some missions built in the 1700’s that weren’t too far away and we should see them.   

We’d love to go to the Desert Museum, but we have to do our chores first.     A cholla cactus attacked my bike while driving and Andrew had to rescue Rex, my bike mascot.  Andrew has gained a new respect for the “jumping cholla” cactus.  While we were cleaning up the site (we usually pick up trash left by other camper) Andrew got too close to a cholla that “jumped” on the tip of his shoe.  He tried to shake it off and it “jumped” onto his toe (he was wearing sandals).  He then tried to pull it off with his hands and it “jumped” up and grabbed three fingers!  I had to save him with some tongs to pull it off hinds hands!  OUCH!!  We did our laundry and stopped by several stores to gather a few supplies (Andrew bought Jasmine tea at three different stores).  We found a public library and worked on the computers for couple of hours. 

We’ve decided on a campground for the next couple of nights.  The places we can camp for free are so far from where we want to be that it’s cheaper to pay the campground than spend gas in driving.  So we’re at Gilbert Ray campground near the west district of the Saguaro National Park with all the behemoth trailers.  Thankfully, they don’t allow generators here.  The campground is about half full, lots of spaces to choose from, but not the kind of privacy we’re used to.  There’s also a good chance we won’t wake to gunfire, too.

We were kind of slow getting up this morning… until the gunfire began.  We got our stuff together and got out.  As we were leaving, we saw in the next campsite someone shooting at targets with an earth berm behind it.  Not a danger to anyone, but unnerving, just the same.  We treated ourselves to a breakfast out at Waffle House.  

We headed to a truck stop for a shower and passed Pima Air and Space Museum.    Andrew was really excited about this, so after our shower we headed back and checked it out.  This place is pretty cool!  They have everything you can imagine about flight, form a full scale replica of the “Wright Flyer”, the first airplane by Orville and Wilber Wright, through many designs and models of flying machines that had marginal success, lots of actual planes and even some NASA planes that worked with the space shuttle.  They had a few Air Force One planes, one that was used by J. F. Kennedy and Johnson.  They also have a Harrier jet, an SR71, the fastest plane in the world, an F-14 Tomcat, B-52 Bombers and lots and lots more.  We kept saying (about our friend Phil Castle), “Phil would love this, Phil would love this”.  This place is a must see for anyone interested in aviation.  

We moved on to the west district of the Saguaro National Park and found a patch of BLM land in the Ironwood National Forest and set up camp for the night.  

Early this morning we saw Border Patrol pass through the camping area.  I guess we’re still not too far from the border.  

We got started early to get to Kartchner Caverns.  This is a newly discovered cave, first discovered in 1974, but kept a secret for 14 years to protect it.  It was a pristine cave, and no one had ever set foot in it.  The two guys that discovered it had seen too many caves vandalized and formations destroyed by irresponsible cavers and people trying to promote a cave for commercialism.  They worked in secret with the park service to create this park to preserve the cave.  They learned from the mistakes of previous commercial caves.  This is a living cave, water is still flowing and the formations are still growing.  To protect the humidity levels in this very dry climate, we went through 6 doors/airlocks to finally reach the cave formations.  We were even “misted” to reduce the amount of lint that might fall off of us and into the cave.  The cave formations were great, well preserved and clean, not like some we had recently seen at Carlsbad Caverns.  The tickets are a bit expensive, but they are worth it for a pristine cave.  As one of the guys who discovered the cave stated, “It took a day to find it, many years to protect it, and it will take forever to preserve it”.  “This cave is not a renewable resource, it took hundreds of thousands of years to create, once it’s destroyed, it’s gone forever”.  

We moved on to east district of Saguaro National Park, outside of Tucson, AZ.  We did the scenic drive and a short hike into the Saguaros.  These are enormous cactus, easily 20 feet tall.  We finished our hike right around sunset and went out to find some BLM or National Forest to camp on for the night.  We found an area northeast of Tucson and drove up a mountain dirt road.  We found a spot and stopped the truck, only to hear loud music from over the hill.  We got back in and found a party going on right around the corner from us.  We drove further up the road and found lots’ of people camping up here.  We finally found an empty site at the top of the mountain and made camp.  We looked around and saw lots of shell casings and things that people might use as targets.  This is a backwoods shooting range!  Its a shame that this beautiful area overlooking the city lights of Tucson, covered in saguaro cactus, is being trashed by the locals.  

Cooked a good breakfast of chorizo and eggs (Soy-rizo, actually)  It was nice to have a good breakfast.  When we’re in a hurry to catch a tour or start a hike early, we just have some oatmeal or dry cereal.  We left the National Forest and saw on the map a feature called “Paramore Crater” that should be near our location.  We went to look for it, but never saw anything.  At a roadside park we stopped a forest service truck and asked about the crater.  He said that it’s there, but we couldn’t get to it.  It’s surrounded by private land and the owner has closed public access.  This seems to happen quite a bit around here.  We can see on the map where there should be public land, but the access has been denied by the landowners (maybe due to that sign about smuggling and illegal immigration?)  He also mentioned a town called Bisbee that we might be interested in.  It’s an old mining town that died when the mine closed.  Then the “counter-culture” (his words) bought up the land cheap and it’s now an artist community.  It looks like it’s on the way, so we may stop for a minute.

We stopped at a historical marker about the location of Geronimo’s surrender.  It seems we’ve inadvertently been on Geronimo‘s trail for quite a bit of this trip.  We’ve been running into him everywhere!  In Florida, he was held at Ft Pickens, however, when we were there, Ft Pickens was closed due to hurricane damage.  In the town of Truth or Consequences, NM, he was mentioned in the museum as a local resistance fighter.  In the Gila Wilderness, NM, a memorial for Geronimo’s birthplace was at the Visitor’s Center “near the headwaters of the Gila River”.  And now we found his place of surrender, ending the Indian warfare in the United States.  The plaque reads: “Near here Geronimo, Last Apache Chieftain and Nachite, with their followers, surrendered, on Sept. 6th, 1886 to General Nelson A. Miles, U. S. Army Lieutenant Chas. B. Gatewood with Kieta and Martine Apache scouts risked their lives to enter the camp of the hostiles to present terms of surrender offered to them by General Miles.  After two days, Gatewood received the consent to Geronimo and Nachite to surrender.  The Surrender of Geronimo in Skeleton Canyon on that historic day forever ended Indian Warfare in the United States.  This Memorial erected A.D. 1934 by the city of Douglas, with Federal C. W. A. Funds.”

We stopped briefly at Coronado National Memorial to find out what Coronado really did for the area.  It seems that Coronado went to find the cities “made from gold and dripping with jewels” that were reported.  What he found were adobe mud huts.  His exploration was a failure, but what Coronado left was an open passage.  What entered that passage were strong Spanish traditions and the Roman Catholic religion that merged with the traditions of the native peoples of Mexico and America’s Southwest.  Andrew tried on the “chain mail” armor in the Visitor’s Center and said it weighed a ton.  And to think, the “Conquistadors” wore this and then armor on top through the hot, dry desert!

We called Kartchner Caverns and got tickets for Thursday morning. Otherwise, the only openings they have are more than a week away, so we really have a time constraint today.  We crossed the border from Douglas, AZ into Agua Prieta (Dark Water), Mexico and found a very easy trip into a small Mexican town.  We walked around for a bit and it looked like we would run out of town in about 8 or 10 blocks.  We walked into a small shop and bought a little trinket and asked about a restaurant for lunch.  We wanted authentic food, so we asked her where SHE goes for lunch.  She suggested Doña Maria a few blocks over and that’s where we went.  We were the only Anglos there.  Thankfully, the owner/waiter spoke a little English because our Spanish is really bad.  I got a plate full of shredded beef tostadas that were great.  Andrew wanted something really authentic, so he got the “comida corrida”, the daily special.  Everyone in there was having it, but he said he’s never had an American order it.  What Andrew got had sides of rice and beans, and a plate full of pork skins, boiled with cucumbers and topped with salsa verde (green sauce).  Andrew is so picky about the amount of fat on a steak or chicken is eating a plate full of pork fat!  I’ll expecting him to be quite ill later.  Each plate was $3.00.   We also went into a liquor store and found a small bottle of tequila, because everyone who goes to Mexico needs to buy a bottle of Tequila.  We found this border crossing very different from other border crossings we’ve had.  In El Paso, TX/Juarez, Mexico we found a big ugly city with desperate people trying to sell anything or begging for money.  In Big Bend, TX we crossed into Santa Elena and Boquillas del Carmen and found tiny towns of a few hundred people. Boquillas didn’t even have electricity (it was kind of strange seeing an adobe-mud building with a small solar panel outside).  

Further north, we did stop by the town so Bisbee, AZ that was suggested by the Forest Service worker.  We didn’t stay long.  The “Scenic View” for the town was overlooking the copper strip mine that had gone out of business.  Hopefully, you’ve never seen a strip mine… hopefully, you never will.  This one was a 3/4 mile by 1 1/2 mile gaping hole in the earth that had every bit of life stripped away.  The ground was various colors of exposed rock and mud, a few pools of water had an oily look to the surface.  There were no birds.  There were very few plants in the upper regions of the opening.  I found it very depressing.  The town of Bisbee struck us as tourist trap, a few restaurants and bars, a few street performers.  Not what we were looking for.  We left quickly.

In Sierra Vista, AZ we stopped at the Forest Service office to ask about camping near Kartchner Caverns.  We found out that in Sierra Vista we’re only about an hour away and there’s no free camping closer.  The ranger gave us a map for a mountain biking trail and showed us where some undeveloped (free) camping areas there.

Chiricahua National Monument, AZ. We caught the shuttle van to the top of the mountain and filled the last two seats open. We talked to the ranger for a few minutes and laid out a route for us to se the best formations along a one day hike. We marked out a nine mile hike. We saw lots of the strangest formations!  We ran into a crew from the Southwest Conservation Corps and the Park Service that were cleaning up and rebuilding some of the trails that have eroded.  They were using some pretty serious buckets and pulleys to move rocks from one area to an area of trail that needed shoring up.  They were doing a great job on this trail!  The park has named several formations, but others allow you to use your imagination.  After hiking a loop called “The Heart of the Rocks” Trail, we ran into some horses on the trail. (There’s a concessionaire that does trail rides in the park.) At first we were behind them, but they wanted us to move in front. So we were hiking fast down the mountain in front of about 8 horses, and we didn’t stop much for photos.

When we left Chiricahua, we headed south to the Mexican border towards Douglas, AZ and Aqua Prieta, Mexico.  We stopped for a minute in Coronado National Forest for the night.  Again we’re greeted with the sign about smuggling and illegal immigration.,   Again, we didn’t see anything going on, except for a couple of others camping.

We woke up this morning to find the truck covered in snow and the thermometer said it was 24 degrees.  We started up the dirt road but the truck had other plans.  The gas gauge began acting odd.  It would bounce to no gas and then back up to almost full (where it should be).  We didn’t like the truck acting up while we’re planning to head 50 miles or more into the wilderness, so we headed back to Silver City.  Silver City, NM is a quaint little town built on a copper strip mine, the Santa Rita mine.  It has a nice internet cafe and coffee shop, a micro-brewery (that made some pretty good beers) and a gaping hole in the earth that provides lots of jobs in a rural town.  It bothers me to see an industry, any industry, take advantage of the health of a small town, meanwhile the small town cannot consider the fate of their grandchildren (by way of pollution or toxic contamination) because they must feed their children with jobs today.  Small town, USA should not be forced to choose between the welfare of this generation vs. the welfare of the next, or the seventh generation.  I got really depressed.

We headed off to our next destination, Chiricahua National Monument, AZ.  We got to Chiricahua about 4:30, but the Visitor Center was already closed.  We took the “Scenic Drive” to the mountain top along the most incredible rock formations I’ve ever seen.  The weather has carved the coolest hoodoos.  The Native American’s called these formations “Standing Rocks” and some are easily more than a hundred feet tall!  We talked with some other hikers and found out about a shuttle bus that leaves about 8:30am and takes hikers to the top of the mountain and you hike the rest of the way down to the Visitor’s Center.  It allows people to see more of the formations without a huge elevation gain.  This is a good thing to know about, we’ll be back first thing in the morning.  We found out about free camping in the National Forest just outside the park and headed there for the night.  A sign we haven’t seen  before greeted us; “Travel Caution: Smuggling and illegal immigration may be encountered in this area”.  We didn’t see a thing.

As we were breaking camp to go, it started snowing on us.  We were earlyfor the guided tour, so we took a short 3 mile hike into the Wilderness in snowflurries.  We ran into 3 people (one was a teacher on Spring Break) whowere backpacking into Bear Canyon and Jordan Hot Springs.  There are lotsof hikes that we’d love to do, but we don’t want to spend too much time in thisarea now.  We’ll have to come back another time.  We met our guide forthe tour of the Cliff Dwellings, a volunteer from Ohio.  

After our tour, Andrew has heard about a beautiful drive on a dirt roadbetween the Gila Wilderness and  Aldo Leopold Wilderness areas.  We went through a small town to top offour gas tank and pick up a few onions at another store.  Getting freshproduce out here is a real challenge.  The little local stores just don’tget the demand to keep things fresh and there is no grocery store for 45 minutesto an hour away.  We went up FS 150 and found lots of campsites.  Wepicked one and called it home for the night.  It was very cold and snowedon us while we were making dinner.

We went to the Cafe and Bakery adjacent to the Lodge for breakfast.  We’ve been cooking almost every meal, so eating out is a real treat.  We went up to to Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument and found out there’s a guided tour at noon that we just missed.  We wanted to just relax today, so we went to find a free Forest Service campground, the Forks Forest Campground, and set up for the night on the banks of Gila River.  This is the first running water we’ve seen in a long while.  The site had a large cliff wall facing us, very similar to the Cliff Dwelling site.  We just pulled out the chairs and relaxed by the stream.